Sneaky Chocolate Cupcakes

I bought these cute little cupcake holders for the kids lunchboxes.  Naturally, I wanted to make some cupcakes for their first day of school.  But, I wanted to see if I could make them slightly more healthy. So, I reached for my trusty Deceptively Delicious cookbook  by Jessica Seinfeld.  She did not disappoint- the following recipe even uses a box mix that I had purchased on sale for .80 cents!  And, just in case you're wondering, they were fabulous-rich and dense.



Ingredients

1 (18 oz) box cake mix

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

1/4 cup water

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

2 large eggs

1 large egg white

3/4 cup (about 6 oz.) nonfat plain Greek yogurt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg. Coat a 9" cake pan with cooking spray and flour lightly (or use that cool baking spray with flour already in it); if making cupcakes, use paper liner in the tin.
2. In a large mixing bowl combine the cake mix, pumpkin, water, oil, eggs, egg white and yogurt.  Beat until smooth, 1-2 min.
3. Pour the batter into the pan and bake until toothpick inserted comes out clean, about 20 minutes.
4. Cool and spread with cream cheese frosting, below.

Yellow Cake variation:  use lemon, banana or vanilla yogurt instead of plain.

Frosting (optional)

1 (8 oz.) pkg. reduced-fat cream cheese

1/4 cup confectioners' sugar (a.k.a. powdered)

2 Tbsp. frozen orange juice concentrate, or 1 tsp. lemon extract, or 1-2 Tbsp. vanilla extract.  You can also throw in 1/4 cup cauliflower puree, for extra sneaky veggies.