Easy and Festive Patriotic Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

I know, I know, it's a little late for the 4th of July but that's okay because you can use this idea anytime this summer. Change the fruit on top to whatever you like. I even saw someone put roasted banana chips on top of their cupcakes recently. It looked fabulous!

This is really simple because I used a boxed cake mix. It's just safer that way for me but if you have a great white cake recipe definitely use it. The directions actually called for egg whites and the result was a a very light fluffy cupcake. Didn't taste like it was missing anything at all. The real kicker here is the cream cheese frosting. Who doesn't like that, right? It also is great for holding toppings. My friend DD from DDPie's Slice helped me out with the frosting but I did add a little extra cream cheese and therefore doubled the extracts. This is basically her recipe but she gave me the option of using shortening mixed with butter and told me to use water to thin it out. I just used a splash of milk....well, just because I never follow a recipe completely! haha Oh and sorry about the crappy picture. It was a long day and I was tired and was too rushed to take a picture in the morning.

Ingredients:

1 Betty Crocker White Cake mix - made into cupcakes according to box directions.
1 8oz bar of cream cheese - cold
1/2 stick of butter - room temperature
1/2 tsp vanilla extract - I used DD's homemade!
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/8 tsp salt
2 cups powdered sugar
splash of milk to thin it out

Directions:

Cream the butter and cream cheese. Add in the extracts and salt and mix. Then begin adding the powdered sugar, half at a time, mixing in between additions. (You may need a little more or a little less sugar, depends on the humidity) You can also add just a few tablespoons of milk if you need to get it to spreading consistency.

Ice the cupcakes and then add whatever fruit you like on top. I slice the strawberries and put a strawberry slice and some blueberries on each one. I wanted all three colors, red, white and blue. You can do all blueberries or raspberries or anything else you want. You can even top them with nuts. Go to town!

I wasn't sure but I kept these refrigerated just in case. What do I know about baking? ;-)