Tackling Cake Mix Cupcakes

It's time for Tackle It Tuesday with 5 Minutes for Mom and I am tackling Hoosier Homemade's Cupcake Challenge:-) This week, the challenge is Cake Mix Cupcakes. My dirty little secret is that A LOT of my cupcakes are from a box. I am very semi-homemade that way. Here are just a few that I used for ICM competitions:

1. Calatrava Cupcakes: White cupcakes embellished with a chocolate sculpture to look like Milwaukee's Calatrava.


2. Santa's Bag: a cherry red velvet cupcake with white peppermint "fringe", a cherry licorice tie and white chocolate gifts.

3. Mocha Ganache Cupcakes: chocolate cupcakes with a mocha ganache glaze. I made the mocha ganache by steeping the coffee right in heavy cream. Then, I took the hot cream to make the ganache. Oh my...they had a really, really strong coffee flavor!! But, that was the jist:-)

4. Taste the Passion Cupcakes: white cupcakes drenched in passion fruit syrup filled with passion fruit curd topped with dark chocolate ganach. The passion fruit really pairs nicely with good quality dark chocolate.


5. Wine on the Vine Cupcake Pops: I took a page from Bakerella and made my submission into cupcake pops. These are Pinot Noir chocolate cupcakes mixed with Pinot Noir buttercream dipped in white chocolate. I built the pops around a styrofoam form to make them into a bunch of grapes.

So, I guess my point is that you can take a "plain old box" of cupcake mix and turn it into something really, really specical:-)