Birthday Cupcakes!

I knew I would be baking cupcakes for my birthday, but I've been feeling a need to make cupcakes with filling. I don't know why. So I found one recipe with the filling added after the cupcakes are baked and another recipe with the filling baked into the cupcakes. I've never done it either way before, so, yes, there were issues.

The recipe said to use cake mix. Alright, I'm not arguing, Plus I was a little pressed for time with the laundry and birthday dinner and dentist.

Here I go again adding too much batter to the cups. This is probably going to backfire.

Yep, they're too big. Also, they're a little burned on the part that's touching the pan. I just put extra frosting there and hoped no one would notice. That's probably because I baked them at 400 for 15 minutes so they would be done faster.

I was supposed to have two full pans, but when I made the first batch too big, I messed up the yield.

Much better size. I'll try to remember to use less batter next time.

I cut a little pyramid out of the top of each muffin and then cut off the pointy part to make more space for filling.

I went to Target for supplies, and they didn't have any lemon instant pudding. I thought about using another flavor, like vanilla or chocolate, but I thought that would be too weird.

There's about 1.5 teaspoons of pudding in each cupcake.

For the chocolate cupcakes, I had to make the cream cheese frosting separately. I didn't read the directions very carefully, so I mixed the ingredients in the wrong order.

I was supposed to cream the cheese and sugar together, whatever that means. Maybe I'll look it up later. Instead, I mixed the sugar, egg and chocolate chips.

It was a little difficult mixing the cream cheese into the chocolate chip mixture. I used neufchatel cheese instead of cream cheese, just because I've never used it before. That maybe have been a mistake.

According to the instructions, the filling should be on top of the cupcake batter. Well, that sounds more like topping than filling. I was a little worried, but after I took them out of the oven, some of the "filling" started to sink into the cupcakes. They looked weird, but the frosting took care of that.

I used cream cheese frosting for the chocolate cupcakes and lemon frosting for the lemon cupcakes. Everyone really loved them, but I didn't actually eat one myself. Sometimes after I bake something, I don't feel like eating it. Is that weird? Probably. I'm thinking maybe I'll do scones next.