A few years ago for my friend Alex’s birthday I made him some sort of Xzibit themed foods inside that food. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go back and watch some Pimp My Ride, or just read this. For that birthday, I made Noble Pig’s Cheesy Shell-Stuffed Shells and a peanut butter m&m mini-pie stuffed French silk pie. It was pretty grand.

I was back visiting DC last week, and decided to stick to the theme for Alex’s belated birthday cake. Since I moved out of that house, the amount of available kitchen tools has gone markedly downhill, so this is a box-cake based idea, but you could do it with a scratch vanilla cake if you so choose. Oh, and I totally brought all the necessary cupcake pans with me from New Hampshire. TSA wasn’t interested.

Alex with a cupcake-filled cupcake.

Ingredients:

• 1 box vanilla cake mix, plus the ingredients required on the box (water, oil, eggs)
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 can frosting
• 1 package Reese’s Minis, if desired

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 2 mini cupcake tins well.

Stir together the cake mix as instructed on the package. Using about half the batter, fill your mini cupcake tins 2/3-3/4 of the way full. Cover the remaining batter and refrigerate.

Bake until light and fluffy, 10-14 minutes.

Freeze the mini cupcakes for half an hour. Having no patience, I took mine pretty directly from the oven to the freezer, and put some pot holders under the pans so they wouldn’t burn whatever they were resting on.

When the mini cupcakes are about done chilling, whisk the cocoa powder into the remaining batter and line your regular sized cupcake tins with liners. Bring the oven back up to 350.

Scoop 1 1/2-2 tablespoons of the chocolate batter into each liner and press a frozen mini cupcake firmly into the batter.

If you want/if you have enough batter, you can spoon a little bit more over the vanilla cupcakes to cover.Bake for about 20 minutes. With these, it’s a bit tough to tell if they are totally done, as the middle was already cooked so the toothpick test is not helpful. I was worried that the bottoms of mine felt smooshy when I took them out, but they turned out to be completely cooked when we ate them later.

If you do cover the mini cupcakes.

If you don’t cover them.

Remove from the tins and let cool completely before frosting. If desired, put the tiny Mini Reese’s cups on top and frost them so that they look like even smaller cupcakes.

These were fun, and about as complex as I wanted to get in a kitchen that doesn’t even have a rubber spatula anymore! (Who are these people?! Geeze.)

Yo Dawg Cupcakes

• 1 box vanilla cake mix, plus the ingredients required on the box (water, oil, eggs)
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 can frosting
• 1 package Reese’s Minis, if desired

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 2 mini cupcake tins well.

Stir together the cake mix as instructed on the package. Using about half the batter, fill your mini cupcake tins 2/3-3/4 of the way full. Cover the remaining batter and refrigerate.

Bake the mini cupcakes until light and fluffy, 10-14 minutes, then freeze for half an hour.

When the mini cupcakes are about done chilling, whisk the cocoa powder into the remaining batter and line your regular sized cupcake tins with liners. Bring the oven back up to 350.

Scoop 1 1/2-2 tablespoons of the chocolate batter into each liner and press a frozen mini cupcake firmly into the batter.

If you want/if you have enough batter, you can spoon a little bit more over the vanilla cupcakes to cover. Bake for about 20 minutes. Remove from the tins and let cool completely before frosting. If desired, put the tiny Mini Reese’s cups on top and frost them so that they look like even smaller cupcakes.