I have a confession to make.

I'm a cupcake addict. I make them quite often, usually instead of running to the store for something premade, but I knew my obsession had reached great heights when I made three batches in five days (some were for birthdays, so they don't count...right?).

The other day I came across Coconut & Lime's recipe for absinthe cupcakes, which sound absolutely divine, and I started thinking about the bigger world of cupcake flavors. Until then, I had just been using Cook's Illustrated yellow cupcake recipe (which is easy and amazing), but it's just vanilla flavored, with a little tang of sour cream. If I frosted them, it was chocolate frosting (or some failed chocolate ganache). Classic and tasty? Yes. Adventuresome? Not so much.

Inspired, the next batch I made I flavored with a little orange zest and some juice in place of about half the vanilla. These cupcakes weren't very blatant, only slightly perfumed with orange. I think the flavor might have been bigger if I had used a rasp grater on the zest instead of the bigger grater that resides in my kitchen (one of the side effects of being a poor college student is not having the kitchen of my dreams), but they're on the right track. I keep imagining them with a bubbly champagne-inspired frosting (no idea if that would actually work, but I'll experiment).

Of course, thinking about semi-adventuresome orange-flavored cupcakes made me wonder what would happen if I made duck flavored cupcakes with orange icing. Yes? Maybe not.