My son is going into first grade, and he is still of the age when cupcakes are really the coolest thing ever. Well, I guess half the world is still "of that age," when you get right down to it. Cupcakes have gotten much more fancy and dare I say, even sexy, over the past few years. Although we can't just pop into our local cupcake boutique, we can still make them at home. I should be able to post for you my homemade fancy (even sexy) cupcake recipe, but I'm really not that brave as of yet. Instead, I buy the box cake mix. Betty Crocker, the angel that she is, now makes a GF cake mix, and I buy the yellow cake variety.
Anytime there is a bake sale, class party, or family dinner thing at my son's school, I make sure to send a big box of GF cupcakes, just so he won't feel left out. I was actually complimented by a friend on my tasty cupcakes, when she accidentally ate a GF one, so I guess they're pretty good. However, I thought that they were just okay. I think that the cupcakes taste a little too strongly of vanilla, and I think the texture is a little dense. So I started tweaking the box recipe a little, and this is what works for us.
The box recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. I only use one (1) teaspoon instead of two. The box recipe calls for 2/3 of a cup of water. I use 1/3 cup water, and 1/3 cup orange juice. I also add just shy of one tablespoon of baking POWDER. Any more than that is too much. The only other thing that I might do in the future is possibly add a little orange zest, if I happen to have an orange around that day.
Little kids seem to have cupcake parties every time you turn around. I got caught unprepared once last year, when there was a surprise birthday party in my son's kindergarten class, and I vowed that it wouldn't happen again. Now we have a freezer full of these little gems. And as a bonus, I picked up a travel cupcake container (plastic) at BB&B, so I can put it in his lunchbox and not worry that it will get smashed. Or thrown. Or slung around.
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