Cupcakes!

I'm not really into football, but my neighbor invited a few of us over to watch the Super Bowl. I've been wanting an excuse to make cupcakes lately, so I took advantage of this get-together.

For the cupcakes, I used a boxed French vanilla cake mix - with my own touch, of course. The instructions call for water, eggs and oil added to the mix. Anyone who eats my baked goods knows I never use oil. In its place, I added a single serving container of organic, low-fat vanilla yogurt and also added a bit of vanilla extract.

Browsing the frosting options, I saw that even the cream cheese frosting is artificially flavored. What the heck? I'll make my own, thanks. I halved the recipe and used 3 cups powdered sugar, 4 tablespoons of softened butter and 1/2 a stick of reduced fat cream cheese. Giving it a taste test, I thought the frosting was too sweet. To knock the sweetness down a bit, I added some fresh half-and-half from a local dairy farm. Perfection. It cut the intensity of the powdered sugar and still left the frosting nice and creamy. Yum!