Neapolitan Cupcakes - What I do for the hubby

So last night, I forgot that I was going to bake something for Tim's team potluck at work.  Today is the last day of the old shifts, and although he is keeping his same shift (YEA!) he will have a new supervisor, and a new team of coworkers.  At his job, they do enjoy a good potluck. (they have them kind of often)  I am pretty much known for my Cake Cookies.  (I will get around to sharing them here one of these days) He told me about this a couple weeks ago while we were at Winco.  He said, "and I don't want cake cookies".  Now, I do love them because they are SO simple, and SO good.  Fine I said, what DO you want me to make.  I don't know why I ask him that, I mean really, I am just going to make what I want.  (Don't tell him that though!)  Perhaps, just to get an idea yea, that's it.  So I said, "How about strawberry whoopie pies, with Lemon Filling?"  He agreed and I picked up a box of mix.  

Enter 10:30 PM, last night.  He reminded me that the Potluck is tomorrow morning.  Why do I always wait till the last minute to do these things????? (maybe because I work full time, have a kid, and I am tired?? HA!)  I go to get started (forgot to turn off oven from dinner YES! that will speed things up!) and I find, I am out of Parchment Paper. Uggg! I pull out the  Silpat® Baking Mat and gross it need a good washing.  This is going to take too long. Well, we are no longer making Whoopie Pies...... How about cupcakes with Lemon filling? I ask him.  Do we have brownie mix? He asks back.  Why, yes we do! Along with strawberry cake mix, and yellow cake mix.  And a plan is forming....  Of course I am thinking WOW this is a MIND BLOWING IDEA! How about a Neapolitan cake? Made with Brownie, Strawberry and Yellow cake mix I ask.  He says humm look it up on Pintrest.  If it's any good you will find it there.  Well apparently I am not the only one with this idea bummer.  Can I call it my own?  Maybe.  I did think of it before looking on pintrest right?  I saw several ideas.  I clicked on this one: from SixSistersStuff.  I will say they confirmed my own inspiration.    I give you Neapolitan Cupcakes!! 

I mixed the brownie and Strawberry Cake Mix separately for that part, I followed the instructions on the box.  In the strawberry mix, I added a couple heaping spoon fulls of my home made strawberry jam and decreased the amount of water by 1/3 cup.  I used some liners from Ikea to line the pans.  They were a little tall because they were for one of ika's DRÖMMAR Muffin tin which is a bit taller than a normal pan.  I have not used them before, they were on a cheap sale. Honestly  I -really- like how they baked in them.  They make for a bit larger of a cupcake, nice and tall and don't over flow.  I will be getting some more of them!  I used my Oxo Good Grips® Medium Cookie Scoop and put one scoop of brownie mix on the bottom and 1 scoop of cake mix on the top.  I then baked them in the oven at 350F for about 25 min.  

While the cupcakes were baking I got to work on my frosting.  If you follow me on Pinterest I have a things to bake board, where I have found some pretty tasty recipes. For my sons birthday in October I made one of the "Marshmallow" Frosting recipes for his Ghost cupcakes.  I really like how well the frosting looked, and held up so I went back to the board to find the one I made before. I didn't use the same one which can be found here because it was too much.  This time I made one from Veronica Hurly's blog.  It can be found here   

It was so simple to whip up with my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer.  You combine 4 egg whites, 1 cup of sugar, heat that on the stove, and then whip it up with 1 tsp vanilla extract.  I then dumped it in a gallon zip lock bag with my  Jumbo icing tip, sniped off the end and iced away. 

24 cupcakes cooling and waiting to be iced!

all iced don't they look tasty!  

 I really like this icing, it allowed me to frost them while they were still a bit warm.  I topped them with some chocolate balls, and sprinkles  and a bit of red sugar crystals. 

I emailed the hubby to see how they went over, he said "One of the people that sits next to me mentioned the cookies. I told her you always make cookies so I asked if you could try something different. She said she likes the cookies :)"  .... ha ha could have gone with the cookies, but I got a 2nd email that said: Cupcakes are a hit. So far still have a bunch left but everyone enjoyed them and commented on how moist, professional looking, how you should make them all the time, yadda yadda....  well there you have it!

Enjoy!