Howdy Kitchen: Strawberry Champagne Cupcakes

Please parden my interruption of lack of blogging with this awesome recipe.  :)

If you are looking for a fabulously deliciously amazing cupcake, you MUST try these!

In addition, this was the first thing I made using my new mixer.  And what fun it was! 
Thanks to my good friend Anna for the recipe. 
{She had these at her wedding a few years ago.}

Ingredients:

1 pkg. white cake mix

2 egg whites {even though they don't look so white in the picture!}

2/3 c. strawberry wine {or cherry or another flavor }

2/3 c. water

Combine these and beat for 4 minutes.  {VERY thankful for the mixer because of that.}

Because I wanted the cupcakes a little more pink than they were looking, I added some red food coloring to the mixture while it was beating during the 4 minutes.

Just keep mixing, just keep mixing.

In the end, the texture of the batter is rather sticky.  What you see on the beater in the picture below is stationary.  It was not dripping off.  That's how it came out of the batter when I lifted up the mixer, and stayed.

Next step, filling the cupcake wrappers.  {One day when reading Kevin & Amanda, she mentioned how nice the large Pampered Chef scoop is perfect for cupcakes.  Sadly, at the time, I had only the medium one.  So that's why the scoop of batter doesn't look so clean in the wrappers.}

Remember, this batter is sticky. Where it landed in the wrappers, it stayed.

In the end, I made 24 cupcakes and 12 mini cupcakes.  So I'm guessing it would make around 28 or so regular cupcakes.

For the frosting, I had to improvise, because I didn't have all the correct ingredients on hand, and I was short on time.  I mixed together 1 tub of whipped butter cream frosting  and 1 tub of regular cream cheese frosting with a large tub of cool whip.  For a little extra fun, I added a nice pour of the strawberry wine to the frosting.  I finished it off by adding a few drops of red food coloring to get some pink color to it.  It tasted great!  But was very runny.  However, I made it work.  Next time, I will hold off on putting in too much wine in the frosting.  Oh, and I normally it is 1 tub of whipped frosting and 1 regular size tub of Cool Whip.

Now for the end product.

The texture of this cupcake isn't like your typical cupcake.  It is dense, but very soft and spongy.

And that equals YUMMY! 

Here's the recipe again.

Strawberry Champagne Cupcakes

Cake:

1 pkg. white cake mix

2 egg whites

2/3 c. strawberry or cherry wine {or any flavor you want}

2/3 c. water

Combine these & beat for 4 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.  Do NOT overbake them. 

Frosting:

1 tub white whipped frosting and 1 tub cool whip.

Anna said that the recipe card she has also has this frosting recipe on it:

1/3 c. shortening

1/3 c. milk

1 # powdered sugar

4 drops red food coloring

1/2 pt. whipped whipping cream

Combine 1st four ingredients and beat well. Use 1/2 of this mixture as the filling between layers. Fold in whipped cream. Ice cake and refrigerate.

Which means this recipe works great for a cake as well.  Use 2 9 inch pans and back for 20 minutes.

Happy Baking...and ENJOY!