Almond Buttery Pound Cupcakes

As I always say, Think With Your Taste Buds, and that is exactly what I did when I wanted to make some cupcakes for a friend.  I remembered how good my Cream Cheese Butter Pound Cake turned out so I decided to make few simple changes and turn it into Almond Buttery Pound Cakes.  I made the recipe just as it is with the exception of using almond flavoring instead of vanilla.  I also used mini-muffin tins for cooking which changed the cooking time to 18 minutes.  This makes approximately 96 mini-cupcakes!  You can use the regular size and add about 10 - 15 minutes to the time, checking them using a toothpick to about every 5 minutes.

The other change I made was to add an icing.  I used 1 box (1 lb.) powdered sugar, 1/4 stick of butter, softened, 4 oz. of softened cream cheese and 1 tsp. of the Almond flavoring.  Mix all of this until smooth and spread on your mini-cupcakes adding a few almond slivers for garnish.  Are these good?  You bet they are.  The butter and cream cheese make the cake part stand out and the slight flavor of the almonds in the icing add just the perfect touch.

Hopefully this will give you ideas for using basic recipes like this one to get you Thinking With Your Taste Buds.