Trying to Be Gourmet

With all the new cupcake shows these days, I began to think I might just wanna try something new. I'm a decent baker. Nothing out of the ordinary, and I usually stick with my tried and true recipes. But, I have had a hankering to branch out and try some gourmet type cupcakes.

I looked online for recipes, but nothing really appealed to me. Or if it did, it called for all kinds of expensive ingredients I never buy. So, I improvised.  I bought a package of Hershey's peppermint kisses and some butter recipe cake mix and experimented a bit.

First, I chopped up some kisses into tiny tiny pieces.

Because my first experiment with regular vanilla chocolate chips ended with all the chips on the bottom of the cupcake, I thought to try just putting the little pieces on the top of the batter, thinking they would sink a bit.
(Aren't you supposed to coat the chips in flour to keep them from sinking?)

This is how they turned out.

No sinkage. So, I tried adding batter on top of the little pieces.

This is how they turned out.

Not very gourmet looking are they? But, I learned that I can mix them up in the batter and they won't sink to the bottom. That's helpful! I made the icing from cream cheese, real butter, and powdered sugar, then dusted the top with bits. They tasted really really good. So, I will definitely make them again.

So class...
Butter recipe cake mix + Hershey's peppermint kiss bits + cream cheese icing with peppermint kiss bits = Delicious!