5. peppermint swirl

i think these are my favorite cupcakes so far because they are so so delicious! Betty Crocker sure knows what she's doing when it comes to baked treats.

Here's hers:

Here's a little spiel about the making of these phenomenal goodies. You start with a white cake batter and separate about 1/3 of it. That third gets some peppermint extract (make sure it says peppermint, regular old mint is not the same thing) and add some red food coloring. Then you alternate putting the white and peppermint batters into the cupcake liners and swirl it around. After they're baked you frost them with a peppermint buttercream and decorate them like peppermint swirl candies. Perfection!

Now, the only thing is mine didn't turn out exactly "white". i added vanilla pudding mix to the batter because it just makes cake so much more moist and delicious. But as you know (or don't know and are just finding out) pudding is not white and therefore made my white cake a yellow cake. No biggie.