Koolaid

A lovely day with a lovely friend, not to mention delicious cupcakes.

Remember when I said I liked healthy dessert? Well, this is not going to be one of them.
But, before I tell you about the cupcakes, I'm going to tell you a little about my friend, Ashlyn.

Here we are hiking at Hume Lake. 

I met Ashlyn at the beginning of my freshman year of High School at WSM (Well Student Ministries). It's hard to believe that was almost 5 years ago. (!) Anyways, we were sorted into the same life group. I don't exactly remember when or how we became friends. Which, is weird for me because usually I remember the moment when that bond started to form. For some reason I don't really remember that with Ash. I think this is part of what has made our friendship so special. 

Instead of following the typical high school friendship mold. You know, meet, be bffs and spend every waking moment together, get sick of each other and start picking out all the individual quirks about the other person, and then stop hanging out for awhile and THEN form a healthy relationship... (I know, total run-on sentence.) We just kind of slowly built up this bond over high school. Which eventually led to me waking up at 4:45 on Wednesday mornings to do Bible study at her house senior year. This is when we really started getting solid. 

I know Ashlyn and are going to be friends for life. When we hang out, no matter how long it's been, it's like no time has past. All in all, she's one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I know

So, a few weeks ago Ashlyn being her creative self wanted to try out a pinterest recipe for Peach Cupcakes. 

Long story short: I could not find freeze dried peaches! So, instead, I bought some Peach Mango Koolaid mix. Ya, I know not even almost the same thing. But, the result was still lovely. 

So, instead of making peach cupcakes, we made Peach Mango Koolaid cupcakes with raspberry puree. They pretty much tasted like Rainbow Sherbet ice cream in cupcake form. YUM! 

So, here is the recipe we ended up using:

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 ⅔ cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 packet unsweetened Peach Mango Koolaid  (next time i'll probably use a little less)
3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk
1/2 cup pureed fresh raspberries
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

We had a little baking mishap. Some came out too early and got a little shriveled. I called them brain cupcakes. Which, made me wish that McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy would appear in my kitchen and magically fix them with his wonderfully handsome Neurosurgeon magic. Instead of an intervention from a scrub wearing Patrick Dempsey, we put them back in the oven. That worked, sort of.

Here I am with our lovely creations. Ashlyn didn't think they were pretty enough so she went and picked some leaves in my front yard to add to the raspberries. Love her. 

The cupcakes came out very moist and flavorful. They where pretty dense, which, I liked. However, if you like light and fluffy cakes these are not for you.