A Better Baking Experience

This is not an original idea, I saw it on cup cake wars, but I didn't follow a recipe. It is hard for me to have fun and be creative when I have to follow a recipe. Today I made clementine chocolate fudge cupcakes. YUM!! First things first - preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

First I cut the clementines in half and juiced them- Yummmm. I am going to use the juice to make a peach/clementine tea tomorrow for the Superbowl. We have some friends coming over so I thought I would try it. I'm not sure I've ever had it before, but I'll let you know how it goes. I sampled some today and thought it was really good! 

Then I made the cake mix. Again I usually use Duncan Hines out of the box. Its so much faster, and I feel like I have the ability to be creative and create something new. Of course there is no replacing homemade - my mom makes incredible homemade EVERYTHING and I love love love it. But for me I just feel cramped by long, time consuming directions (haha). Saturdays are my cleaning and creative days (when I make stuff for my Etsy store) so to take more than an hour to bake something is not refreshing. Anyways I used a chocolate fudge mix. It was sooo tempting to lick the bowl, but I refrained :).

Next cover a cupcake tin with foil and place your clementine halves in the holes. Spoon in the batter until the clementine shell is a little over half full. Then pop it into the oven for about 20 mins. I checked them every 7 mins. to make sure they weren't burning. 

Clementine infused chocolate fudge cupcakes...yum. The guy that did this on cupcake wars used an orange. The first time I made these I used an orange, but the orange flavor was a little strong and I wanted to make mini cupcakes for the Superbowl - so this time I used clementines. You could use lemon too to make a lemon french vanilla cupcake.

There they are .. so cute! Clementine cupcakes!! I like how they lean to the side because it adds a little character :). These would be super cute for a baby shower or child's birthday party.