Sweet Tooth Tuesday: Chocolate Vanilla Swirled Cupcakes

Delicious and surprisingly easy these cupcakes were also made for my sisters bridal shower. The theme was tie dye but I thought that we should get some chocolate in there some how so this was my compromise.

I started out by making two cake batters, one vanilla and one chocolate. (Yes I used a box. I have a hard time bringing myself to make cake from scratch. I blame my Mom. She is an amazing cook and baker but cakes were never her thing.)

Look at my big (scary) helper.

I just used regular spoons to fill the cupcake wrappers. I alternated white and brown and ended up putting four spoonfuls total in each cup. It didn't take as long as it sounds. My pan is a little messy because I had so much "help".

Follow your recipes baking instructions.

They ended up really fun on the inside.

Next was the frosting. I used my families recipe for the vanilla frosting. It is super easy and really yummy.

Vanilla Frosting

1 1/2 lbs powdered sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
pinch salt

Whip it all together for a few min till thick and fluffy looking. You may want to start out with half the milk and add more as you need it.

And for the chocolate we have always loved the recipe on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box.

"Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup Cocoa

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Add powdered sugar and milk, beat on medium speed until desired consistency. Add more milk if needed. Stir in vanilla.

I was originally going to just try to dump the frosting in the piping bag, trying to get most of the chocolate on one side and most of the vanilla on the other, then hoping they would swirl together nicely. But while researching something else I came across this technique of filling a piping bag on The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle and thought it would be perfect for this. 

First you lay out a nice long piece of plastic wrap on your counter. Then you spoon one color of frosting in a line across the middle of the plastic wrap with the other color on top. (You could do as many colors or flavors as you want.) 

 Then you carefully wrap the sides of plastic over your frosting so it looks like a tube and twirl the ends till they are wrapped nice and tight.

Then you "thread" your tube through your piping bag pulling it down as far as it will go.

And cut off the extra plastic. If you have the cool piping bags with the removable tips you will want to do all this before adding your tip. I am not that cool. If you just leave the plastic near the end of your tip it will bunch up and not be pretty coming out. All you have to do is pull your tube of plastic back in your piping bag a bit so that the frosting will squeeze out and the plastic won't get in the way.

Next you swirl to your hearts content. I think they came out lovely. And yummy! My Dad ate three at the bridal shower alone.

Now I have ideas for all kinds of color and flavor mixes I could do with this same technique. Orange and vanilla, lemon and lime, chocolate and caramel. What do you think?