Beach Bear Cupcakes

Everyone on my Facebook has been commenting about these guys so I decided to write a blog post. I didn't really take pictures as I went along but everything is fairly simple.

Ingredients:

Box of white cake mix (or recipe from scratch)
Vanilla icing
Teddy Grahams (honey flavored)
Fruit roll ups
Lifesavers
Drink Umbrellas

After making the cupcakes according to the directions, dye the icing blue. I used about 4 drops of blue food dye and half a can of icing. Crush up some of the Teddy Grahams for sand. Use the fruit roll ups as towels, lifesavers as floats, and drink umbrellas as beach umbrellas. Then.. GET CREATIVE! Here were my end results:

I made these for a luau themed party and everyone liked them!! Until next time..

Peanut Butter Captain Crunch Brownies

I read so many other baking blogs and always seem to find great recipes. I saw this one on Confessions of a Cookbook Queen and couldn't help but try.

Ingredients: 

9x13 pan of brownies (store bought or homemade)
6 reese's peanut butter cups chopped (or 30 mini ones)
1 1/2 cup of milk chocolate chips 
1 1/2 cups of peanut butter
1/2 tablespoon of butter
2 cups of captain crunch cereal

Bake the brownies according to directions and remove from oven five minutes before they are finished. Place the chopped reese's on top.

Remove after baking. Then in a medium saucepan melt on low heat the peanut butter, chocolate chips, and butter.

Then add in the cereal and coat until even.

Spread over brownies.

Refrigerate for 2 hours then cut into bars.

They turned out quite yummy! Very rich though. I only ate one and I can easily eat three normal brownies (they are my favorites sweets). Dave said they kind tasted like a butterfinger brownie. You can try with a different type of cereal if you would like. I believe the original recipe called for rice krispes but cookbook queen adapted it to the captain crunch. I was thinking to really make it a peanut butter and chocolate cereal combo to use reese puffs cereal. Until next time..!

Patriotic striped cupcakes

I normally won't post two days in a row but I had another treat up my sleeve for the weekend. Cupcakes are my favorite thing to make; so in honor of the 4th of July I made red, white, and blue striped cupcakes.

First thing's first, ingredients:

1 box of Pillsbury (or whatever box cake mix or from scratch recipe you have) Classic White mix. (I always prefer white over yellow boxed cake mixes. I think they taste much better.)
1/3 cup of oil 
1 cup of water
3 eggs 
1/2 can of vanilla icing
Festive sprinkles and decorations 
Cupcake liners 
Food dye

(Sorry the above picture is slightly out of focus) Pour mix, eggs, oil, and water into mixing bowl (shown above).

 Mix together

Divide into three separate bowls. Then dye red and blue, I used about 5 drops for each. (Looking back I could have probably used a few more for each to get bolder colors - but I'll keep that in mind next time!)

I used long handle teaspoons for measuring (sorry no exact measurement) and poured one spoonful of blue on the bottom..

White in the middle..

And red on the top..

Bake in 350 degree oven for 16-18 minutes.

The colors came out a little more pastel then I would have liked.. but I'll live.

I used white cupcake liners so you could see the stripes through the wrapper.

Then icing and decorate however you would like! I did several designs. I made 23 cupcakes total but only put icing on 19 because I ran out of icing. -_-

So, it's another non-earth shattering recipe. But it's festive and easy if you are short on time! Have a very happy 4th of July weekend everyone!!

Funfetti Confetti Cookies

So today my boyfriend Dave came over and helped me make Funfetti cookies. I bought a Pillsbury Bake-Off Cookbook this past weekend on clearance at A.C. Moore for five bucks. It was from 2008, but the recipes were still golden. Until then, I had never heard of this recipe (but when I Googled it I saw that I'm not the first one to give it a try) and I had a box of Funfetti cake mix already so we gave it a shot. I would say they turned out great and yummy! We will be taking them to his family's celebration of the 4th of July this weekend in West Virginia. Recipe below!!

Ingredients:

1 package of Pillsbury Funfetti Cake Mix
1/3 cup of oil
2 eggs 
1/2 can of Pillsbury Funfetti Vanilla Frosting

 
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Pour cake mix, oil, and eggs, in mixing bowl (shown above) and mix on a low speed until it looks like this:

Shape dough into 1 inch balls, placing them 2 inches apart on cookie sheets. (We made 41 cookies and fit them on two baking sheets.)

The directions say to bake them 6-8 minutes or until golden brown. We ended baking ours for 13. (I know, sounds crazy! They were not burnt, in fact they were perfect on top and bottom. Not sure why it took long for my oven.. if you try the recipe just start with 6 minutes and keep an eye on them and add more time if needed.)

Cool on cooling racks.. then icing! You can dye the icing with whatever food dye you have handy. We didn't do that this time, but I would love to if we tried it in the future.

 Overview of the 40 (we "tested" one!) cookies We left several plain for those who aren't a fan of icing.

And my favorite was making the Funfetti cookie "sandwiches."

Until next time, happy baking!! (If you have suggestions, tips, or ideas for future blog posts, leave a comment below! Feedback is welcome.)