Italian Cream Cupcakes

"Recipe names are a funny thing. Take the Italian Cream Cake, for instance. The name suggests that it comes from Italy, right? Nope. Not at all. In fact, there is very little Italian about an Italian Cream Cake. The cake is topped with a tasty cream cheese frosting…but cream cheese isn’t really common in Italian cooking. Mascarpone is. But not cream cheese. It seems that the first recipe for an Italian Cream Cake actually appears in a Dallas, TX newspaper in the mid 1930’s. Some folks say that an Italian baker living the southern part of the U.S. invented the cake…thus the name. No-one really knows. But then again, I’m not sure I really care. Italian Cream Cakes are one heck of a delicious dessert!"