Vanilla Cupcakes

With all my healthy eating, treating myself to cupcakes was not high on my list of dessert options. However, Ed and I had been feeling a little bored with our pudding and ice cream treats, and thought that this would be a fun treat.


The recipe is officially titled, "Hungry Girl Fluff Cakes," and is a lightened version of the traditional cupcake, that can pack a mind boggling 348 calories and 14 grams of fat. This version has a much more respectable 164 calories and only 3 grams of fat. It tastes lighter, but it still really enjoyable! To see the original recipe, click here.


Light Vanilla Cupcakes
Makes 9 - 10 Servings


For Frosting
1 1/4 cups Cool Whip Free, thawed
1 1/2 tbsp. Jell-O Sugar Free Fat Free Vanilla Instant Pudding Mix


For Cupcakes
Half of an 18.25-oz. box (about 1 1/2 cups) moist-style yellow cake mix (I used my food scale to measure out 9.15 oz of cake mix)
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1 cup Sprite Zero (or another diet lemon-lime soda), room temperature (I used Fresca)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 egg whites


For Topping

3 tbsp. rainbow sprinkles


Directions:


First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. 


You'll want to make the frosting first, because it needs time to sit in order to reach it's full potential :). 


To make the frosting, place your Cool Whip in a bowl, and then add the pudding mix. Mix until smooth. Then, take plastic wrap, and press into the top of the frosting until covered, press into sides of bowl and over the top. Place in fridge and keep there until needed. 

Next, I took a large bowl and put my sifter over it. Into the sifter, place the cake mix and baking powder and sift so that there were no lumps. Then, add the soda and vanilla extract, mixing until smooth. The batter will be fizzy! That's okay :). Once you've finished this step, set it aside. 

In a smaller bowl, whip egg white with a handheld mixer, set on medium speed until fluffy, 1-2 minutes. (This part was very cool, as I've never whipped egg white before! They got very fluffy. I whipped mine for about 1 1/2 minutes). Gently mix egg white into the cake batter until thoroughly combined. It took longer than I expected to mix these together, but they got there.




Now, it's time to get the pan ready. Line 10 cups of a 12 cup muffin pan with baking cups (the recipe says it will only fill 9, but ours filled 10 with a little to spare). Evenly distribute the batter among the cups (start with filling 9 and then add to the 10th if you have enough batter). The cups will be VERY full - that's okay! All of the cups on ours will fill to just above the brim, which was perfect. 

Bake for 15 - 17 minutes (ours baked for 17) until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out fairly clean. Your cupcakes should be slightly golden and poofy. 

Remove the cupcakes from the pan using a knife and your hand to carefully lift them out and onto a plate. This will help them to cool faster. Once the cupcakes are cool (it takes what feels like a long 20 minutes, with the cupcakes removed from the pan) frost with your reserved frosting and add sprinkles. The frosting is delicious and we'll need to make a bit more to frost the last of our cupcakes, but if you do a thin layer yours should cover all of them. We only frosted the ones we were eating so that we could leave the cupcakes out overnight and have freshly frosted cupcakes when we're ready for them!

Enjoy!


Makes 9 - 10 Servings