Birthday cupcakes

I look for any excuse to make a cake so I can whip out my mom's secret butter cream frosting recipe. This week's excuse is my birthday, which is on Thursday. Instead of heading to the gym after work, I got started on baking cupcakes.

I will admit, I've never made a cake from scratch, so as usual, I dug out a trusty box of Duncan Hines Yellow Cake mix. I switched out the 1/3 cup of oil for 1/3 cup of applesauce and followed the remainder of adaptions to make my cake lowfat and Weight Watchers friendly, thus taking it from a 6 pt. cupcake to a 3 pt. cupcake (well, 2.5 pts. if you want to get technical). Hey, if I was going to make my mom's butter cream frosting (which ends up being 98 pts. for a 3 1/2 cups of frosting or 28 pts. per cup) I need to cut fat and calorie corners where I can.

The end result, coming in at 4 pts. total with frosting:


They will be enjoyed by my co-workers tomorrow as I am off of work on my birthday!