I made these for a baby shower for a friend of my mother's. The nursery is kind of a jungle theme, you know, greens, yellows, and browns... hence the frosting colors.

I'm not going to lie, I hate working with cream cheese frosting. It's terribly difficult getting it to hold it's shape and must be refridgerated at all times or else it will melt all over the place, but it does look spectacular next to the deep red of the cake.

Makes 24 cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 package German chocolate cake mix with pudding 

2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3 large eggs

1 bottle (1 oz) red food coloring

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners. Set the pans aside.

2. Place the cake mix, sour cream, water, oil, eggs, food coloring, and vanilla ina large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping the sides down again if needed. the batter should look well combined. Spoon the batter into the lined muffin cups, filling each liner 2/3 of the way full. Place the pans in the oven.

3. Bake the cupcakes until they spring back when lightly pressed with your finger, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove pans from oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes. Then remove from pans and cool on wire rack for 15 minutes.

Makes 2 Cups

Ingredients: 

4 oz cream cheese

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

Pinch salt

2 1/4 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted

Directions:

1. In a bowl, using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, bat cream cheese, butter and salt until creamy. With mixer on low speed, beat in sugar, 1/2 cup at a time. Then increase speed to medium-high and beat until fluffy.

2. Spread frosting over cooled cupcakes and refrigerate until ready to serve or for up to 1 day.