Orange Dream Cupcakes - by Summer

Just as I was sitting down to write up my post, I saw Lisa's post for these cupcakes.  When I saw her picture, I immediately groaned - I should have made the chocolate frosting!  But then I realized that I don't really like the orange chocolate combination, so I am glad that I stuck with the cream cheese frosting.  But, I shouldn't get too ahead of myself - let's talk about baking them first!

I was flying solo with the kiddos this weekend, but I had all the ingredients, so I was determined to make these.  As Lisa mentioned, there were kind of a lot of steps, but fortunately the kids were sort of on a same nap schedule this afternoon (and baby girl was happy playing by herself for awhile), so I was able to make them during that time.  I don't like orange marmalade and gave mine away from the last time we made something with it.  Instead of buying more, I looked up substitutions and went with apricot preserves with some extra orange zest in it. 

It didn't even occur to me until Lisa said something in her post, but there must have been a misprint in the recipe with the vanilla.  I was confused and just added the zest to the butter and sugar to cream.  Then I looked and saw I was suppose to add the zest to the vanilla.  But instead, I just added the vanilla to the half-and-half mixture.  I think either way it turned out ok. 

I got 14 cupcakes out of the recipe.  I decided to try the cream cheese frosting, but I left the two extra cupcakes plain.  I tried one of each and yum!  I really liked it with the frosting.  Toddler boy gobbled his up and claimed it was a "yummy cupcake!"  I wasn't too excited about making these at first, but I will definitely make them again.  They were a nice change of pace.