marble cupcakes with chocolate icing

I am writing this post from a far away land called New Zealand. After 26 hours of travelling, I am at my hotel trying to stay up until bed time while all of my family and friends are asleep...

Before I left, I made a batch of marble cup cakes for the gym team with chocolate icing. They were quite simple to make since I used boxed ingredients.

I used vanilla cake mix and followed instructions on the box. Then I split the cake batter into two and added 1/4 cup of cocoa to one of them. I filled the paper cupcake holders with half vanilla and half chocolate batter.

After I baked them, I used the boxed chocolate frosting mix from Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's has one the best chocolate frosting mixes and you simply mix it with a stick of butter and few table spoons of warm water. The problem is that, there is NO Trader Joe's where I live. That is why every time I travel to California for work, I come back with a suitcase of groceries.

After I iced the cupcakes, I placed them into my two tiered cup cake holder/carrier (it has a expandable dome like lid). This was a gift to me from a friend  a while back and it has been sitting the cabinet waiting to be used. I have been searching through some blogs and I will be making more cupcakes after I am back to States.
Aren't they look beautiful?

They were also very tasty and all the girls enjoyed them...