A cupcake for everyone

I wish I had an actual cupcake to give everybody, but instead you'll have settle for a cupcake recipe.

Last week I threw a baby shower for my friend who is about to deliver twins. It's her first pregnancy and quite possibly her last so I wanted it to be extra special. We had yummy food. I found this recipe for AMAZING croissant chicken salad sandwiches that got rave reviews. We made appliqued onsies and adorable hair clips. (In place of guess the candy bar in the diaper!) And for dessert I thought I would try my hand at cupcakes since they are everywhere these days.

If I am going to eat cake I would prefer it to be vanilla and have cream cheese frosting on it, but I have friends who live for chocolate cake and others who love butter cream frosting, so I decided on an assortment. This way everyone would be able to find something they loved.

First on the list is Coconut lemon:

These were actually the last cupcakes I made and because I did not have an extra french vanilla cake mix I was forced to make these from scratch. I found a recipe and then ended up modifying it slightly though because I was afraid they would be to0 dry. Overall they were delicious and super moist. My only complaint is that I would have liked to taste more coconut. A few of the recipes I looked at called for coconut milk, but I didn't have any so that is why I chose this recipe.

My only suggestion is that if you do make these to use buttermilk instead of regular milk and add lemon extract to the frosting.

I found the recipe for these Oreo cupcakes in a random cupcake search and thought they would be fun. A few of the girls had to bring their kids so I knew they would get eaten up. My kids sure loved them. The best part about them is the hidden Oreo at the bottom. Oh, and the whipped cream frosting, I loved that. Recipe found here.



And I just had to try Anne's mint chocolate chip cupcakes. Except I opted for Andies mint chips instead of chocolate chips. These truly were amazing although much too sweet for me to finish a whole one. I'm wondering how mint cream cheese frosting would taste. Please don't compare the presentation of mine to hers, she has a lot more experience than I do.

And for anyone else like me who loves any type of fruit dessert I came up with these vanilla raspberry cupcakes.

For the actual cupcake I used a Betty Crocker french vanilla mix. And thanks to my friend Joni I now always substitute buttermilk for the water and Crisco for the oil. Not so healthy, but oh so yummy! And for the frosting I actually followed the same cream cheese recipe that I used for the lemon frosting but instead of lemon extract I added raspberry extract and then I mixed in a couple spoonfuls of defrosted raspberries. (Make sure to squeeze all excess juice from the raspberries or it will make the frosting runny)

Everyone at the shower had a different favorite, which was my exact intention, so I can't tell you which one is the best, but I can tell you that they are all worth trying.