Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

I made these for a going away party for one of my best friends last night.  Kind of a bitter-sweet night.  We had so much fun but it's never easy saying goodbye.

This is a Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake with a Peanut Butter Buttercream Frosting (say that 5 times fast), topped with a Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch.  If I had had the time, I would have bought the new Reese's Minis and topped it with that.  But I didn't and I had Cap'n Crunch in my pantry!  Someone made the comment at the party that you know that if it has Cap'n Crunch on it, it's good.  I liked hearing that.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake:
1 Devil's Food Cake Mix
Ingredients on box
1/2 - 1 cup Peanut Butter, depending on how much you like.
I used 1/2 cup and thought it was perfect.  I wanted the chocolate to still be the main flavor.

Bake according to directions on box.

Peanut Butter Buttercream Frosting:
1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter, room temperature
2 tsp. Vanilla
1/2 - 1 cup of creamy Peanut Butter (again, you decide how much you like)
4 cups Powdered Sugar
2 Tbsp Milk, if you need to make it a little thinner.  I actually like the consistency that it was.  Perfect for piping.

Carson's Kindergarten Graduation Cake/Cupcakes

There are always things that I wish I could have done better but I do love how this turned out.
However, the one thing I really wish would have worked was that I planned on having fondant stars on wires sticking out of the top of the cake.  But apparently the wires that I used weren't strong enough and of course I didn't put them in until last minute so I didn't have enough time to properly fix the problem so I ended up just putting the fondant stars on top of the cake to cover the holes that I had made with the wires.

I used my pudding cupcake recipe and my marshmallow fondant recipe

Me and the graduate, Carson.

My husband cut out the wood for me to make the cupcake stand.  He said he felt like he was on Cupcake Wars.  We would make a good team on that show.

Light Saber Cake & Yoda Soda

My son, Carson, wanted a Star Wars Birthday Party.  This is the easiest cake we could come up with.

The Cake: (try to ignore the seams in the fondant)

Make a regular 9 x 13 cake.  Cut into 3 strips and lay end to end.  Frost the "light" part of the light saber and cover with Marshmallow Fondant.  Then frost the handle with gray frosting (vanilla frosting with a little black food coloring) and pipe black frosting for details. 

This was a team effort with my husband.  He is awesome!

Yoda Soda is this... green Kool Aid.  And if you can't find green Kool Aid like I couldn't last night at Walmart, buy the invisible Kool Aid and add green food coloring.  It was really cool (and simple) and the kids loved it.

Pumpkin Cake

I got this recipe from my friend Angie, who got it from My Kitchen Cafe.  They call them Pumpkin Bars but I made it in a cake pan so then it was a cake!  Either way, it's really really yummy.  I also added some spices that they didn't have in theirs.

I made this for my friend Laura's birthday so there are sprinkles on it in case you're wondering what that is.

Bars:
4 eggs
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup applesauce
15-ounce can pumpkin
2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Icing:
8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 cube of butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350. Using an electric mixer at medium speed, combine the eggs, sugar, oil and pumpkin until light and fluffy. Add flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, salt, and baking soda. Mix at low speed until thoroughly combined and the batter is smooth. Spread the batter into a greased 13 x 9 baking pan.  Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting.

To make the icing:  Soften the cream cheese and the butter.  Combine the cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the sugar and mix at low speed until combined. Stir in the vanilla and mix again. Spread on the cake.

Fluffy White Frosting

Sorry this is more of a Christmasy recipe. I guess I'm just in the spirit early this year! And yes, I actually did some Christmas shopping today. What is with me?! :)

Growing up, our family has always done Fluffy White Frosting on cakes if your birthday is in winter. Mine is, so it's extra special to me. I love it. It reminds me of my birthday but especially Christmas. Now that I'm in Arizona and we don't have snow, this is kind of like my snow. Except super delicious.


Fluffy White Frosting on Red Velvet Cake Pops

Ingredients:
1 Cup Sugar
1/4 tsp. Cream of Tartar
Pinch of Salt
1/3 Cup Water
1 Tbsp. Light Corn Syrup
1 Egg White (Room Temperature)
1/4 tsp. Vanilla

Directions:
Separate egg white from yolk. Let sit until it reaches room temperature
Bring sugar, cream of tartar, salt, water, and corn syrup to a boil. Boil until sugar is dissolved. 1-2 mintutes tops. Pour that into your mixer and mix while slowly adding the unbeaten egg white. Beat until frosting is thick and forms peaks. Add vanilla and mix.

Our favorite way to top this is with crushed candy canes. It just makes it feel like Christmas.

Pumpkin Apple Spice Cake

The Before


The After

First, a little back story.
My son's kindergarten class was studying apples last week and we were supposed to take in something with apples for the class to taste. Of course it had to be store bought so I couldn't bake anything but I was inspired to make this.

Ingredients:
1 Spice Cake Mix
1 Can Apple Pie Filling
3 heaping spoon fulls of Pumpkin Pie Puree - probably 1/2 - 3/4 of a cup
1/4 Cup Vegetable Oil
2 Eggs

Mix in a large bowl, the cake mix, oil, and eggs. Then mix in the pie filling and pumpkin. Bake at 350 for 35 - 37 minutes.
After 10 minutes, flip over onto cooling rack WITHOUT dropping your favorite piece of stoneware and destroying your cake.

The cake is heavy. The pan is also heavy and very slick especially with hot pads. I totally lost my grip mid-air and dropped it. The cake actually fell out in one piece.  It fell apart when I tried to pick it up. However, I made a "trifle" out of it and it was delicious.

I used this frosting recipe to top it
Frosting:
1 pkg. Cream Cheese
2 cups Powdered Sugar
1 cube of Margarine or Butter
1 tsp. Vanilla

Cream the butter and cream cheese together. Mix in powdered sugar and vanilla. Beat until smooth.

This actually tasted a lot like Pumpkin Pie and it was so yummy. Looked AWFUL but tasted great.

Mini Doughnuts

I made Navajo Tacos for dinner tonight and we had "leftover" roll dough. Coincidentally, I happened to watch the show "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" on the Food Network a couple nights ago where Giada de Laurentiis' favorite fried food were these bite size fried doughnuts from the restaurant Lola. However, I did a couple things differently. Instead of coating them in cinnamon and sugar, I used cinnamon and brown sugar. Huge difference, I know :)  I also made a frosting instead of dipping them in a seasonal jam and vanilla mascarpone like they do. So with our "leftover" roll dough, I made these.

Doughnuts:
One batch of my Mom's Homemade Rolls
Vegetable Oil
Brown Sugar
Cinnamon

Frosting:
2 Cups Powdered Sugar
4 Tbsp. melted Butter or Margarine
2 Tbsp. Milk or Water
1/2 tsp. Vanilla

Make the dough. Roll it out and cut it up.
Mix the frosting ingredients together.
Get the oil very hot in a frying pan.
Place dough in oil and turn when it browns.
Remove from oil and place directly into mix of cinnamon and brown sugar. The oil helps the sugar stick.  Toss and remove.
Drizzle (or coat) with frosting and eat hot. Honestly I would eat these cold but they are better hot.

Marshmallow Fondant

I got this recipe from my cousin's wife, Rachael. She also has an awesome blog which is http://thebusybeehive-rachael.blogspot.com/ if you want to check that out.  This was so much easier than I thought it was going to be.

1 Cup Mini Marshmallows
1 Tbsp. Water
1 3/4 Cup Powdered Sugar
Food Coloring

Place Marshmallows in a standard 1 cup measuring cup and pack in as many as you can. Place in microwave safe bowl and add water. Put in microwave for 45 seconds. Stir with a spoon until it is combined well. It should have a soupy consistency. If you want just one color of fondant, now would be the time to add your food coloring. If you want multiple colors, wait till later. Now add powdered sugar, mix and fold in well until it is no longer sticky. Take out of bowl and knead it in your hands. You can use a little bit of shortening to keep it from sticking. Knead for 3-5 minutes. Roll out until it is almost paper thin. If you want multiple colors, divide into separate balls and add color to those. Use plastic gloves and knead the colors in.