National Chocolate Cupcake Day

Today is "National Chocolate Cupcake Day" so I thought it was a good time to do a product review.  Last week, about 8 days ago really, a friend of mine had a birthday party but he didn't have time to make a cake.  Cake isn't his favorite so I asked if I could make cupcakes for his party.  I figured that was a good way to have single serving sizes.  I let him chose between two types of Fun da-middles box mixes I got just last month when they were new, on sale, and I had coupons.  He picked the chocolate with a vanilla filling.

I followed the recipes exactly but as you can see I wasn't so great at creating a perfect center of the filling.  I've never been great with little bags that you squeeze, my hands always shake, things never flow quite smoothly, this is why I'm not good at cake decorating at all and ask my hubby to do it often.  But I hoped it would be OK.   Now while I was squeezing I also tasted some of the filling and it was very marshmallow like in both flavor and texture.  Interesting.

I think they baked up all right.  You can see a bit of the white poking up on some of these but here you can also see that they rose a good amount.  I thought I had a photo of how I decorated these but I didn't, sorry.  You see, I've cut out all store bought frosting because I can't find any that have no transfats.  My mother almost always made frosting from confectioners sugar, butter/margarine, vanilla, and skim milk.  So that is what I did plus I added a 6oz jar of sundae filling candy shaped like bananas and cherries with mini chocolate chips.  It made the frosting very difficult to spread.

What it looked like didn't matter so much.  I had cute monkey cupcake holders (also in the photo I was sure I took) and everyone who tried it said they really liked it including the birthday boy who isn't much for cake.  The chocolate was nice and chocolaty, the cake part was moist but also light, the middle, yup, tasted like marshmallow.  Over all a thumbs up for this new mix.

Have you tried it?  What did you think if you did?

Comments

Krissy said…
They look good. I didn't realize it was national chocolate cupcake day...but I did have chocolate cake that day so I unknowingly celebrated :)
Krissy, remember to always check back here for our end of the month or start of the month listing of "Chocolate on the Calendar."
Nava Krishnan said…
I am just like you, not there yet in decorating cakes but sure yours looks good, what more with the dark choc cakes with that white topping on top.
No one at the party had a photo so you could see them finished but for me the most important thing was that the birthday boy liked them and his guests did, too.