lip-smacking good: stuffed lemon cupcakes

Last week, my friend Sarah and I made some amazing cupcakes.  Knowing my love of all things cupcakes, and stuffed muffins, my mom gave me a gaget from Crate and Barrel that removes part of the innards of your cupcake or muffin, enabling it to be stuffed with frosting (or jam, peanut butter, nutella, marshmallow fluff, etc).  Eager to try this out, I suggested to Sarah that we make stuffed lemon cupcakes.  Andshe indulged me.  This is not really a recipe persay since we used yellow cake mix and store-bought frosting, but it lives up to its lip-smacking good title.

the goods

1 lemon cake mix & extra ingredients to make lemon cake as described on box
1 container vanilla frosting
1 orange 1/2 c orange juice

the tools

a zester or zesting-like tool
ziplock bag for frosting dispensement or fancy frosting tools
cupcake innards removal tool (could probably use a knife)

the directions

mix lemon cake batter as described on box, and pour into regular sized cupcake tray.

bake lemon cupcakes and let cool. while cupcakes bake, zest the orange. combine 1/3 container of frosting, 1/2 orange juice and orange zest to make the cupcake filling.  add more orange juice or frosting to get the right orange intensity.

remove part of the cupcake innards.  to do this, use your knife to make a small circle in the middle of the cupcake and remove a depth of 1/3 of the cupcake in the circle. 

pour the cupcake filling into each cupcake.

frost the cupcakes with the remainder of the frosting.  if your filling was extra goopy, refrigerating the cupcakes for a bit helps make eating them less messy.

enjoy!