Devil's Food Cupcakes with Cream Cheese

This summer, Little Lawyer wants to perfect her dessert making technique instead of her sleeping until noon technique, or her eating chicken nuggets and pop tarts until she blows up technique. She originally wanted to hone her infamous "I'm SOOOO Bored!!!" summer battle cry, but I quickly suggested the 'make desserts yourself every week over summer break' thing before she could think of something worse.

She picks what she wants to make. She makes 'em. We eat 'em.  Deliciousness ensues.

She made a special Fathers Day dessert yesterday, as I mentioned in yesterdays post about our Fathers Day dinner. Never fear! She will return this Friday with her regularly scheduled dessert-of-the-week post.

These cupcakes were super easy since they are made from a mix.

The ingredients were simple:  Devil's Food cake mix, eggs, water, oil, sugar and cream cheese.

Heat your hot box to 350 and line your muffin tins with paper liners.  Combine the cake mix, eggs, water and oil for the batter.

Fill up your liners about 2/3 of the way full.  She went a little overboard...

Combine the cream cheese and sugar in another bowl. Put all of the cream cheese mixture into the corner of a medium sized gladlock bag. Snip off a small portion of that corner so you can pipe.

You can pipe letters, numbers, designs...whatever. Multi-occasional cupcakes, these are! LL decided to display her wishes for a happy Fathers Day. Or Happ Yfat Hers Day. With her, you just never know...

Learn from my idiocy:  Pipe small. She (we) piped the letters a bit too big and they really got lost in the cupcake. It didn't help either that the liner were a little too full. But we touched up the letters with the remaining cream cheese once the cupcakes were out of the oven and completely cooled, so they looked just fine!

Devil's Food Cupcakes with Cream Cheese

1 box Devil's Food cake mix
3 eggs
1-1/3 cups water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar

Heat oven to 350. Place paper baking cup in each of 24 regular-size muffin cups. In large bowl, beat cake mix, water, oil and eggs with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds. Beat on medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Divide batter evenly among cups (2⁄3 full).

In small bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar with electric mixer until smooth. Spoon into corner of small ziplock bag. Snip about 1⁄8 inch off one corner of bag. Pipe mixture onto batter in a small designs or letters to
decorate tops of cupcakes.

Bake 20 to 23 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from
pan to cooling rack. Cool completely, about 30 minutes. Make any adjustments or corrections when completely cool.