I never use boxed cake or brownie mixes anymore. The ingredients seem questionably over processed and the taste is too perfect, not to mention the fun it takes out of baking. I used to use boxed mixes back in my early baking days (this is the late single digit to early double-digit years); Funfetti was the boxed cake of choice, and I was too young to realize that there was any alternative to cake from a box. Once I started cooking from scratch though, I promised myself I'd never regress back to just-add-water-and-oil cakes, cause seriously, who knows what's in those anyway?
SO to preface this post, I should add that the cake mixes that I used for these cupcakes came from a tube, not a box, and they used real butter AND employed the use of my stand mixer. I'm telling you, this stuff is totally legit.
Brendan's mom baked me my first
Sprinkles cupcake this past summer, and it was absolutely delicious. She ended up sending a tube of Red Velvet cupcakes to Berkeley for me and believe me, I wasted no time in baking them.
Sprinkles also includes the recipe for their cream cheese frosting, probably one of my favorite cream cheese frostings ever. The consistency is consistently creamy and spreadable, complimenting the dense rich cake nicely. They even include their signature "Modern Dot" sprinkle to make it more authentic, although eating that was kinda weird.
More recently, I whipped up a batch of their Pumpkin cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese frosting for the lovely Esther's birthday.
They were a huge hit and perfect for fall. See, look at how happy she is with her giant cupcake and candle fireball.
Both the mix and festive sprinkles were gifts from Brendan. Throw in some
Angeline's fried chicken and baked mac and cheese and you have a totally obese and totally delicious night.