Orange Cupcakes

My dear friend Scott has a birthday coming up and naturally I am in charge of the birthday cake. When I asked Scott what his favorite flavor is he informs me that his grandmother used to always make him an orange cake and that he would ask his mom if it would be okay for me to take over. Now that is a lot of responsibility taking over a family tradition and i've NEVER even made an orange cake before. Being the perfectionist that I am I had to do a test run with cupcakes. I used two slightly modified recipes I found online.

The cake recipe kind of had me worried, lemon pudding and lemon extract were added into the mix. I thought we were making an orange cake here? I tend to think I know best so I started sorting through the comments to hear others suggestions. Vanilla pudding was suggested in place of the lemon pudding and while I was at the store about to buy the lemon extract, the orange extract was right next to it and I thought why not? We're making an orange cake we should be using orange extract. I was worried that I may have gotten too overzealous and maybe my cake would be too over bearing but the result was incredible.

The cupcakes came out great and the orange cream cheese icing even better. The icing was from a Paula Dean recipe and was supposed to go on top of her orange brownies. Since I was worried about the orange flavor being too intense I omitted the orange zest from her recipe. The two together were even better than I could have wished and tasted even more amazing out of the fridge.

I also used my circle tip for the first time on these cupcakes to give them that fun swirl. I had been on the hunt for the decorating tip for a few weeks and finally found it at a restaurant supply store.

I didn't add too much flair to these as the goal was just to test the recipe. Honestly I was so relieved the recipe turned out so well I didn't even think twice about dressing these cupcakes up. I'll save my creativity for the actual cake.

The recipe for the orange cake can be found here.
I subbed in vanilla pudding for the lemon pudding.
I also subbed orange extract for the lemon extract.
I opted out from the included glaze recipe and used a Paula Dean icing recipe.
The recipe for the orange cream cheese icing can be found here.
I omitted the orange zest in my recipe.