Boston Cream Cupcakes





OK! So last night I decided to finally make a recipe that I've been dying to try for the past few weeks! It's in one of my recipe books and it's just been there staring at me waiting for me to get my ingredients out and finally put it together. Basically I've been wanting to try these (1) because they look so delicious in my cookbook and (2) because I love the Boston Cream Pie yogurt that I eat.





First of all, here is what you're going to need for these delicious treats:





6 tablespoons shortening (I used butter flavored)

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour (I added like probably an extra 2 tablespoons)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons milk (recipe says 2% I used 1% because that's what I had)

about 1 cup vanilla pudding

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup heavy whipping cream





Now the original recipe only made 6 cupcakes, I doubled it here so it would make an even dozen. First thing I did was make the vanilla pudding. I just used Jell-O instant Vanilla pudding, it's so quick to make. I was just glad I had milk this week to make the pudding. Getting this done first allows you to just whip it up then put it in the fridge until you're ready for it.





After I finished the pudding I started on the cupcake batter. So go ahead and grab a medium sized mixing bowl and preheat that oven to 350 degrees!! Take the shortening and sugar and mix it until it's fluffy. I used my hand mixer, which works to blend it perfectly. Add the eggs after and beat that until the mixture is smooth. Follow that up with the vanilla, again beating the mixture until you feel the vanilla is thoroughly mixed in.





In a small bowl get the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Now what you're gonna do it put about half of it in with the shortening/sugar/egg/vanilla mixture. Beat that in really well, the batter will feel thick, but that's OK because now is the time to mix in 3 tablespoons of milk! Blend it together with that trusty hand mixer...or it can be done by hand with a whisk if a hand mixer is something that doesn't live in your kitchen. Getting a hand mixer was a life saver for me, for some reason I didn't think it was that bad using my arm strength to mix everything together? I know, clearly I wasn't thinking right.





Alrighty, so the first 3 tablespoons of milk are in the batter and mixed in well. So go ahead and mix in the rest of the flour/baking powder/salt combo. Again, mixing in well so you can add in the other 3 tablespoons of milk! Once that is all mixed in the batter is ready. Now I would recommend scooping the batter into a Ziploc bag and cutting a corner off so you can use that to distribute the batter into the paper-lined muffin cups. I did not do this last night when I was making these...so like the whole hand mixer thing I wanted to make it harder on myself. Fill the muffin cups about half full, do your best to keep them even so that your cupcakes are the same size, I still have problems with this. Even this batch had a few cupcakes that were smaller than the rest. Oh well, nothing HAS to be perfect, right?





Now, I put my cupcakes in for about 18 minutes. The recipe said do 15-20. Baking times really depend on each individual oven so always, always, ALWAYS keep an eye on whatever is in the oven the first time you make it. Cookies, muffins, cupcakes, cakes no one likes burnt cookies...except my step-mom she likes it when cookies are really crunchy.





So here are my cupcakes at around 10 minutes, as you can see they're not done. But I thought they were rising up quite nicely so I took a picture! So what I like to do while a batch of cupcakes or cookies or brownies are in the oven is to get some of the dishes done. I hate leaving it all for the end because then I feel like I have a huge mess to clean up. This makes stuff easier.







