In the midst of baking for a fundraiser tonight (dessert for 100 people!) I found I had mistakenly mixed up a batch of chocolate cake batter that I didn’t need (what I needed was chocolate with cinnamon and cayenne, and I had forgotten to add them). So I quickly made a dozen cupcakes and then, while I was waiting for the cupcakes I really needed to get done, I decided to fill and frost these a la Hostess.

Aren’t they cute?

Here’s what I used to make them:

The cake is Bob’s Red Mill gluten free chocolate cake mix. I’m very fond of this mix, it makes great moist cupcakes and is very economical compared to some other gluten free mixes. Just don’t taste the raw batter because it has bean flour in it. The bean taste goes away when you cook it.

For the filling and white squiggle I used Betty Crocker Whipped Cream frosting. The Chocolate frosting is also from Betty Crocker. Both kinds say Gluten Free right on the can.

The tool I used for filling and squiggles is a cheap Chinese decorating thing that I got for under $2.00 at a craft store. Not great but it did the job. It came with a filling tip, long and with a pointy end for poking the hole in the cupcake. It also came with several decorating tips, including the small hole for the squiggle.

When filling the cupcake, each one only takes a small amount of filling. There’s not a whole lot of room in there.

The chocolate frosting, I melted in the microwave until it was semi-runny and then spooned on to get that flat shiny look. (It also helped fill in the hole from sticking the filling in.) Then a few minutes later added the white squiggle.

Very yummy! And everything but the ecologically-unfriendly plastic packaging!