Margarita Cupcakes

Today i am sharing something that was ridiculously easy. Anyone can throw this together and look awesome.

My sister was graduating on Friday and i wanted to do something special but i have to admit, this was one of those weeks. You know, when all your bills get paid so you're broke, you're out of cocoa powder, Mother's Day is in 3 days and your kids are driving you bonkers.

We all have those weeks, don't we? Maybe you don't have kids to drive you crazy. But you have something driving you slowly to the brink. I know you do.

I was poking around the internet looking for a recipe. I knew what i wanted to make. Margarita cupcakes. I may not have cocoa powder, but we generally always have the makings for margaritas.

I found this recipe. She adapted this recipe from RecipeGirl, found here. The picture is what grabbed me. I love beautiful cupcakes. My cupcakes never look like the photos i see, but i like to keep trying.

I scrolled through it, and to my dismay, it calls for a boxed cake mix. For a while, i just sat here, contemplating it. I hadn't used a boxed recipe in a while. I finally decided to give it a go. I felt like i was cheating, but i figured if i drank a margarita while making these cupcakes, the guilt might fade away. And since the recipe actually called for me to drink the leftover margarita, i was all set.

The only thing i changed was using applesauce instead of vegetable/canola oil, and instead of Grand Mariner in the cake, i used Triple Sec.

The buttercream recipe calls for a lot more sugar than i normally use. I thought i'd try it since i wasn't spreading it on a cake. It turned out lovely and creamy. I was surprised. For the lime icing, i used maybe a teaspoon of orange extract in addition to lime juice for a more citrus-y kick. Her recipe calls for Grand Mariner in the frosting, and i didn't have any of that, nor did i want to risk having my icing too soft for piping.

Up next i made some cupcakes for the kids. I made another box mix white cake and topped them with standard frosting which i added a bit of caramel liquid flavoring to. They were really good.

My sister loved the cupcakes and said they devoured them overnight. In the end, i can't be too grumpy at myself for my shortcut since they turned out so well. Sometimes compromise is good, and it's the icing that really set these apart.