Orange Julius Frosting

I have a whole cabinet full of cookbooks. Some I've received as gifts, some I have bought at second hand stores, some are from my mother, but my very first cookbook is a little homemade 15 recipe booklet I got way back in 2nd grade.

My very first cooking class was an after school class that I sort of got thrown into because my other siblings had after school activities and my mom didn't want to come to the school to get just one of us only to have to come back later to get the others so it was a class I took to fill the time. I was a little reluctant at first because I was 8 and didn't have much interest, but after the first class, when we made chocolate cake, I was hooked. I had found my passion for cooking in 2nd grade.

This week as my kids are getting ready to go back to school, I was feeling a bit nostalgic. I grabbed my little 2nd grade cookbook out of my cupboard and thumbed through it. I landed on a recipe for Orange cake. I got a container of orange juice and followed all the directions and made 24 orange cupcakes. They smelled amazing and looked beautiful...for about 3 minutes until they cooled down. Then the center of each cupcake fell and they turned into little lumps of weirdness. I figured even though they looked weird they would still taste good. Wrong!!!

See, even I have fails in the kitchen. I try things and it just doesn't taste good. This was one of those times. I wanted to try to salvage these cupcakes so I found a recipe for frosting that included dream whip and vanilla pudding. I whipped it together and it was again - ok, but not great. I was trying to brain storm to see what I could do to make it better. I wanted to keep the orange theme going. I had used the last of my orange juice in the cupcakes and I was totally out of orange flavoring. But...I happened to have one lonely looking orange in my fruit drawer in the fridge. I decided I would use it up. I grabbed my cheese grater and turned it to the zest side (that's the side with the teeny tiny holes. I took the orange and grated all of the skin. Then I cut the orange in half and used the juice from the orange for flavoring.

My end result was amazing. It didn't help my orange cupcakes and I didn't want this delicious frosting to go to waste so I made a new batch of vanilla cupcakes from a cake mix and topped them with the frosting. It was a huge success.

Orange Julius Frosting

2 pkgs Dream Whip
2 1/2 c milk
1 small pkg instant vanilla pudding
2 TBSP orange zest
Juice from 1 orange (about 1/2 cup)

Mix dream whip, milk and vanilla pudding with electric mixer for about 5 minutes, until it's nice and thick.  Then add orange zest and juice from an orange.  Mix another 2 minutes till fluffy.  Put in fridge till read for use.

Pipe onto cupcakes.  Must be refrigerated. 


Sometimes we learn by trial and error and that's ok. In the end I found one recipe that was awful (so I crossed it out in the book, since that's how I mark recipes that I've tried that I don't like) but I ended up with something amazing in the end.