Lemon-Cream Cheese Cupcakes

This weekend, I am in Lubbock visiting two close friends. Being excellent hosts, they have packed this weekend full of adventures from visiting Llano winery to their favorite restaurants. I think they are trying to convince me to move to Lubbock. : ) Tonight, we are going to a little party and it was suggested to bring something to share. By now, you realize that I love baking and my friend shares this love. We wanted to bring something easy to share and different than what we normally cook. Her husband loves peanut butter. So I suggested to branch out from peanut butter just this once. In the end, we settled on this Lemon-Cream Cheese Cupcake Recipe from one of the Kraft magazines.


Ingredients
1 pkg (2-layer size) white cake mix
1 pkg (4 serving size) Jell-O Lemon Flavor Instant Pudding and Pie Filling
1 cup water
4 egg whites
2 Tbsp oil
1 pkg (16 oz) powdered sugar
1 pkg (8 oz) Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 Tbsp, lemon juice

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 350 F. Beat cake mix, dry pudding mix, water, egg whites and oil in large bowl with electric mixer on low speed until moistened. Beat on medium speed 2 min. Spoon batter evenly into 24 paperlined 2 1/2-inch muffin cups.
2) Bake 21 to 24 min, or until wooden toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 min., remove to wire racks. Cool completely.
3) Meanwhile, beat sugar, cream cheese, butter and juice with electric mixer on low speed until well blended. Frost cupcakes.

Makes 24 servings, 1 cupcake each.

Jazz It Up: Stir 1 tsp, grated lemon peel into frosting mixture. Garnish with additional grated peel.

My first comment about this baking experience is that I want a Kitchen Aid Mixer. Wow! This was my first time using one and it was so awesome. Second, be patient. We were really patient to ice these cupcakes (as in we left the house for 4 hours to drink wine and then returned) and the icing turned out great in turn. This also may be because my friend iced them instead of myself. I am not going to lie. I truly lack a gift in icing. However, I hope to hone in on this skill soon.

Overall, I had a great time making these cupcakes with my friend. I would give them 3.5 out of 5 stars. They were easy to make and very moist. They were quite good. I would consider them a solid potential choice for future cupcakes in a hurry to make.