The Sophie Fund

We wanted to make Thai iced tea cupcakes, however, that did not go as planned, so we improvised with the ingredients we had on hand. We spiced up a boxed carrot cake mix by adding extra carrots, ginger, and cinnamon. We wanted to make a cream cheese frosting to pair with our carrot cake—however we did not have powdered sugar or vanilla extract, two usual ingredients needed.

So we used our blender and blended granulated sugar until it became powdered. We substituted vanilla extract with diluted honey, and voila! Our cream cheese frosting. We made a total of 18 cupcakes, and they were all eaten by friends that night.

—By Lei Lei Wu and Sophia Zhang