Wow.

So I’ve been really neglectful, and I apologize to any loyal readers. I’ve been lax with the cupcake recipes, and thats wrong of me. *hangs head in shame*

I decided that since its officially spring now (despite the weather being a bit cold for my liking), I’d make some spring-like cupcakes. In the past, for spring and summer I’ve used citrus fruit to make light cupcakes; I’ve made lemon-yogurt cupcakes and tangerine cupcakes but not orange, I haven’t made orange cupcakes in a while. And orange is great when paired with other flavors, like chocolate and vanilla. Now if you read this blog often you know I’m not so crazy about the chocolate, so I used vanilla frosting. And what does orange and vanilla make? Creamsicles! So here we have creamsicle cupcakes. In case you aren’t familiar with creamsicles, a Creamsicle is a type of ice cream treat made by Popsicle. Its vanilla ice cream surrounded by orange flavored (or raspberry flavored) sherbet on a stick.

CREAMSICLE (ORANGE-VANILLA) CUPCAKES

Ingredients:

• ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 tsp. orange extract
• 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp. baking powder
• ¼ tsp. salt
• ¼ cup milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and lightly butter or line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.
2. For the Cupcakes: Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract and orange extract.
3. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
5. Evenly fill the muffin cups with the batter and bake for about 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. Once the cupcakes have completely cooled, frost.

The batter was pretty thick, so it was hard to make them “level” in the pans, but they worked out just fine.

Frost them with vanilla buttercream if you want to go for the Creamsicle effect, otherwise orange flavored frosting or even chocolate would work. I tinted my buttercream orange, but next time I’d probably color the cakes themselves and leave the frosting white. The liners are by Wilton.

You can use orange zest instead of extract, use the zest of a whole orange to get the powerful flavor you want. I’d stay away from orange oil with these… just go get either an orange or some orange extract. Mine is from Watkins and it rocks.

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