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.)