By now I'm sure you've figured out I love baking!  I enjoy baking from scratch but I'm also not opposed to using a box mix to help me out every once in a while.  This weekend I made marble cupcakes with homemade buttercream frosting.  Of course, I had to add something to the box mix so I threw in a cup of Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Chips (Luke's favorite).  I wanted to make sure the cupcakes were chocolaty enough for Luke. :)

I thought buttercream frosting would be a yummy on the cupcakes, but instead of just spreading the frosting on the cupcakes, I decided to swirl the frosting on with a decorating tip.  Keep in mind I've never taken a cake decorating class so I'm no professional.  I'm also a little impatient so I didn't take the time to practice swirling the frosting.  I just went for it.  They're far from perfect, but it was a lot of fun swirling the frosting!


Servings:  24 cupcakes 

Cupcakes:

1 box fudge marble cake mix
3 eggs
1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spray the muffin tin with cooking spray.

Your box mix will have 2 packages inside (one package is yellow cake mix and the other is the chocolate mix).  In a large bowl, mix the eggs, water and vegetable oil with the yellow cake mix.  Once combined, reserve 1 cup of batter in a small bowl.  Then pour the remaining batter into the muffin tin. 

Next, pour the chocolate mix in the bowl with the reserved cup of the batter and stir to combine.  Then stir in the chocolate chips.  Spoon the chocolate mixture into the muffin tin over the batter and swirl into the batter.

Bake for about 18 - 20 minutes.


While the cupcakes cool, start on the frosting.  I found the buttercream frosting recipe here http://savorysweetlife.com/ but I adjusted it to get it the way I wanted it.  Below is the recipe for the frosting I made.

1 cup Parkay or butter/margarine of choice (2 sticks), softened
4 cups confectioners sugar, sifted
1/4 tsp salt