Angel food cupcakes with light and alcoholic vodka mascarpone whipped cream and amaretto-soaked strawberries! When coupled with a strawberry basil margarita, this dish is divine.

To be honest, I don’t want to speak to you today since I am fatigued. It’s been a long week of 9-hour meeting marathons, cold, dismal, wet weather, terrible news, ticks, headaches, and exhausting and horribly unpleasant medical problems you don’t want to hear about.

Instead, let me introduce you to these cupcakes.

Reader, meet amazing light and boozy cupcakes.

Reader, meet these very light and alcoholic cupcakes.

Spoiler alert: We’re using a box cake mix.

To be honest, I used a box mix for these. I’ve been experimenting with homemade angel food cake for a long now, and I still don’t get it down pat.

And since it required a million egg whites and a dump truck of sugar, which I didn’t have on hand, I decided I didn’t want to wait any longer to share them with you, so I went with the boxed mix this time.

I try to avoid it, but it’s occasionally important for your own sanity, amirite?

On my trip to work, I had a nice foldable cupcake carrier (aff link) full with them, and as I was stepping off the boat, the captain leaned out his window and screamed, “Someone mug that lady and grab the cupcakes!”

That made everyone giggle and demonstrated that the carrier is not at all covert. Indeed, it can be a great discussion starter.

People couldn’t get enough of them when I took them into my workplace. I’m not sure whether it was the vanilla vodka-spiked icing or the amaretto-soaked strawberries that sent them over the top, but does it really matter?

Making the amaretto soaked strawberries

To make the soaked strawberries, just put them in a basin with enough amaretto to cover them and soak for an hour.

You could make them without the strawberries since the frosting is delicious on its own, but why would you pass up that stunning splash of red that also includes even more flavored liquor?

You don’t want to offend the strawberries, do you? Obviously not. Thus, be a decent person and include them so they don’t feel excluded.

They look best on the cupcakes in their natural state, but you may easily chop or dice them before topping the cupcakes for convenience. Nothing is wrong with it.

I will tell you, though, that you will not receive the same wapow! When you bite into a whole strawberry, you get a kick. Hence, if you want to make an impression, keep them complete.

If you aren’t a fan of amaretto (which I think you will be after trying these), you could soak them in the same vanilla vodka you used for the icing.

Not the same vodka, because then you’d be mixing pinkish, seedy strawberry-y vodka into your pure, white icing, and you know what I mean.

Use pineapple vodka instead. I have a feeling that would be delicious as well.

If you wanted to, you could quadruple the frosting, cut out the cores of these cupcakes, and stuff them full of boozy deliciousness.

But, since angel food cake is so fragile, you will end up with a thicker cupcake, which may surprise you because you will take one up expecting it to be as light as air.

But who am I to say how you should conduct your life? Fill ’em up. Cover the sides of the cupcakes with icing. Remove the middle of the strawberries and fill with more. Eat it with your face straight out of the bowl, so it never sees the light of day.

Just do you, pal.