My friend Joanne has a serious caffeine addiction. I’ve never met anyone who consumes that many lattes and cups of coffee in a day. Perhaps that’s the secret behind her sunny disposition?

J’s birthday was today, and I wanted to bake her a little somethin’. I had all these incredible dreams of creating a milk chocolate-nutella cake, or dark chocolate and chili, or caramel and sea salt, or vanilla and lavender, or…I digress, as per usual.

Anyhow, as much as I convince her to try new sweets, J’s pretty unwavering in her likes and dislikes. So I went with a pretty ingenious recipe – if I do say so myself – and made Cafe Latte Cupcakes!

*Those green things are little stir sticks from Starbucks down the block.

The recipe is as follows – I feel lame even calling it a recipe.

1 pkg Duncan Hines French Vanilla cake mix
1 pkg Duncan Hines French Vanilla frosting
1 shot of espresso

Prepare cake mix as directed, mix together frosting and espresso, and Voila: an intensely rich frosting with a bit of coffee bite, atop some seriously moist cake.