Raspberry Filled Chocolate Cupcakes

I'm sorry! I did not bake this weekend. I was a little pre-occupied with a previous goal, that I finally finished! Nine months ago, I stopped playing World of Warcaft to focus on... well, life... Recently, a friend started playing so I picked it back up again and finally hit level 80 (the highest level at this point). Now that I have accomplished that goal, I can get back to baking!

I couldn't decide which recipe to do, so I asked my lunch-mates/co-workers. This is the recipe that they came up with. I actually took two recipes, and combined them. I found the cupcake recipe here, but the raspberry part called for jelly. I really wanted to use fresh (or frozen) raspberries, not a jelly or can of preserves, so I kept searching and found the raspberry filling here (I didn't use this cake recipe because I refuse to use boxed cake!). I have compiled the recipes for you below. I recently Googled "perfect cupcake frosting" and this website came up with so many comments stating the recipe was great, and easy to make. The website can be found here, and I encourage you to try it because it does look amazing, but let me tell you this: I could NOT get this recipe to fluff up when whipping. I tend to have bad luck when it comes to frostings, so maybe it's just me, but I kept searching for the perfect frosting. I Googled "the perfect buttercream frosting" and found a recipe here. I had never heard of a recipe using shortening instead of butter, but I decided to give it a try. PLEASE NOTE: If you use the recipe directly from the website, you will end up with 7 cups of frosting, so please please please make sure you make your recipe smaller if you need to.