Wannabe Pioneer Woman: Dr Pepper Cupcakes

One of the big challenges I took on this year is to cook through the ENTIRE cookbook I got for Christmas, Ree Drummond's The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays.  I decided to pull a whole "Julie and Julia" thing and cook the entire cookbook and blog about my experiences.  Julia is not really my style, but Ree Drummond and I could probably share a Dr. Pepper and eat some chicken strips or some other kind of normal food.

My mother in law gave me this book for Christmas, and knowing me well, had this page bookmarked for me:

 

Of course this would have been one of the first things I would cook in here!  Baylor had a bowl game on New Year's Day, so I decided to make these for our watching party.  

My kitchen has never been messier.  

And yes, that is a Gerber baby cereal container holding open my cookbook.  You do what you gotta do.

I also realized during these that I had no clue about some of the spices she used.  (Cardamom?  Is that when a mom looks too young to buy booze so you card her?)  These took quite a bit longer than popping open a box mix, but they were also more fun to make!

The finished cupcakes!  I had to wait for them to cool, but that's fine, because the frosting takes FOREVER to make.

Yummy!  The recipe calls for 24 cupcakes, but I split the recipe to make 12, because Lord knows my butt does not need 24 cupcakes.

 

Since I was making these for a bowl watching party, I decided they needed sprinkles.  Baylor colored sprinkles.

They definitely had a different flavor to them than store bought or box mix cupcakes, and I don't think they tasted like Dr. Pepper, but they were tasty!

Want to cook along with me this year?  Buy the book here.  (And no, Ree nor Amazon paid me for this endorsement.)