How to Make Italian Cream Cupcakes

Just as with many of our other doctored cake mix recipes, this recipe starts with a box mix but gets its from-scratch flavor and texture from add-ins like sour cream, sugar, cake flour, vanilla extract, and more.

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin pans with cupcake liners.
• In the bowl of your mixer, add these dry ingredients: cake mix, cake flour, sugar, salt and baking powder.  Whisk for 30 seconds to blend.
• Next, add the sour cream, water, eggs, vegetable oil and vanilla extract.
• With the mixer on low speed, blend for 30 seconds.  Increase to medium speed and mix for  2 minutes.  Stop after 1 minute to scrape the sides and bottom of bowl then continue to beat for for the second minute.
• Stir in the coconut and chopped pecans. Fill the cupcake liners. We use approximately ¼ cup of batter per cupcake.
• Bake for approximately 15-17 minutes. Bake times can vary and so peek in as the end time approaches. The cupcakes are done when they spring back when lightly touched, or when an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
• The recipe makes about 6 ½ cups batter, enough for about 30 cupcakes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Just as with many of our classic cake recipes (like hummingbird cake, red velvet cake, and spice cake), Italian cream cupcakes are most often frosted with cream cheese frosting.

Today, we used our favorite go-to recipe for classic cream cheese frosting. It is a simple combination of softened butter, softened cream cheese, powdered sugar, a bit of vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt.

This frosting is very easy to work with. If it becomes too soft at any point, simply refrigerate the bowl of frosting (or filled piping bag) for a few minutes until it thickens.

Decorating the Italian Cream Cupcakes

Decorate the cupcakes however you like! Today, we kept things very simple and used a disposable piping bag fitted with a large star (1M) piping tip. A 2D tip gives a very similar look also.

Holding the piping bag vertically, we started piping in the center of the cupcake and spiraled outward.

(Check out our cupcake decorating basics tutorial for simple cupcake decorating ideas!)

At the end we then topped the decorated cupcakes with pecans.

NOTE###

No hassle, use PONDAN Cupcake premix as cupcake base and add toppings according to your preference.