Sweet Orange Cupcakes

I had some oranges that were nice and ripe, but I was being finicky about eating them. Since I also had a desire for some kind of baked good, I decided to make orange cupcakes. I used a yellow cake recipe from the grand old Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book. Magically enough, the recipe is also online! For the frosting, I used a recipe from Woman's Day (April, 2007) for their Chocolate Orange Blossom Cake, also online! I, of course, made a few adjustments based on my desires and kitchen stock (below). Overall, the cake was a little dense, but tasty, and didn't have a strong orange flavor. I think next time would add twice as much zest. The frosting was perfect. It was sweet and orangey, and had a pretty glossiness from the marshmallow fluff.

• I made half the cake recipe, which resulted in 11 cupcakes.
• Instead of milk, I made up that volume with about half soy milk, half orange juice from the orange, and a couple tablespoons vanilla to make to full volume.
• I added about 2 teaspoons orange zest to the cake batter.
• I only made half the frosting recipe.
• Instead of orange juice, I just added more vanilla to the frosting.
• I used about 3 tablespoons orange zest in the frosting, and about 2 tablespoons honey.

Butter and sugar - a favorite step of mine. I use a whisk to help get bubbles to make it fluffy.

Orange zest! This was from one orange.

Batter ready to go - to the right you can see t cookie scoop I used to put the batter in the pan.

Mmm.

I made largish cupcakes; two scoops using my cookie scoop which is about 3 tbs. per scoop.

So sweet!

After baking - I baked for about 12 minutes.

Ingredients for the frosting.

I ended up adding a bit more powdered sugar to stiffen the frosting a bit more.

It was so good!

I love the sheen the marshmallow fluff gave the frosting.

Yum!

And again :)