The "Ava" cupcake

My daughter Ava and I took time out on a rainy morning this past week and made mini cupcakes together. She requested red velvet cake with orange icing. We had a good time together and thankfully her little brother who is only 2 months old slept long enough for us to have some fun.

After we finished with them, we dipped them in red sprinkles and turned them into little lollipops.

Here's a few pics of our morning together....

Ginger Cookies

I'm typically a chocoholic when it comes to cookies, so most of the time I find myself looking for recipes that have some form of chocolate in them. However, recently, I've been dreaming of fall because I am NINE months pregnant and WISHING for cool weather. So, to get me in the spirit, I found this awesome recipe for ginger cookies. Most of the time when you think of ginger cookies, you think of a crisp, hard cookie. But these are just the opposite. They are still thin but oh so chewy. And I'm a big fan of chewy.

I have to admit, these are cookies that are best around Christmas time, but I found a way to bring a little bit of summer into them. I whipped up some lemon cream cheese filling to make them into a sandwich cookie. The lemon really does help to tone down the spices that are in the cookie. (which are ground cinnamon, ground cloves and of course, ground ginger) So, even if you aren't a huge "spice cookie" fan, these can still become a favorite.

Here is the link below to the recipe...

Ginger Cookies

TIP: Before baking them, I read the reviews and most people said to chill the dough for at least 30 minutes before rolling into balls and it really did help. I also did NOT flatten the cookies before baking. I left them rolled into balls and then just popped them into the oven.

Happy baking!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

I made these chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes for my husband's birthday. His favorite ice cream is chocolate chip cookie dough, so I made these to go along with a big heaping bowl of his favorite ice cream.

The cupcakes are yellow cake filled with a bite of chocolate chip cookie dough inside and topped with chocolate buttercream icing with a Famous Amos cookie. I also made the cupcake liners out of good ol scrapbook paper and colored the designs on them to give them a little personality.

They were incredibly easy to make. One tip I have is to make sure you don't fill the cupcake liners with too much batter because you need to make room for the big cookie dough bite to go in the center. Otherwise, they will have a large "muffin top" like mine turned out. However, it didn't make them any less delicious! I've attached the link below for those of you who would like to try these out. Believe me....you won't regret it!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

Homemade Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls

This turned out way better than I was expecting. I have been experimenting recently with homemade yeast rolls, so I wasn't so worried about the yeast part as much as I was about how soft the dough would come out. I am NOT a fan of hard rolls or any hard dough of any kind. So, when I saw this recipe had Jello pudding incorporated into it, I knew it had to be a slightly softer dough. And it WAS! YUM! The dough itself has a slight sweetness to it minus the yummy cream cheese icing, so even if you don't want a ton of icing, they are still really good by themselves.

Here I am below adding the butter, cinnamon and brown sugar to the dough.

Here they are on the pan about to rise again one last time before being tossed into the oven. You can see in this photo that the dough is not very tightly wound together. I would say that is one thing I would do different next time is make sure the dough is tightly wound as much as possible. I think that would have helped them not to spread as much in the cooking process. So, now you have a heads up for when you bake them!

The finished product! A soft, sweet dough with a thick cream cheese icing on top. Made for a large appetite! Here is the recipe below if you are brave enough! =0)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup warm water
• 2 pkg. dry yeast
• 2 tablespoon sugar
• 3 1/2 oz. pkg vanilla pudding mix
• 1/2 cup margarine, melted
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 6 cups flour

Filling:
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups light brown sugar
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon

Preparation:

Mix water, yeast, and sugar together until yeast and sugar are dissolved. Set aside. In a large bowl prepare pudding mix according to package directions. Add margarine, eggs and salt; mix to blend well. Add yeast mixture and blend well. Gradually add flour; transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead dough until smooth. Place in a greased bowl; cover and let rise until doubled. Punch down dough and let rise again.

Roll out on a floured surface. Take 1 cup soft butter and spread over surface. In a bowl mix 2 cups brown sugar and 4 teaspoons Cinnamon; sprinkle over the top. Roll up tightly. Put a notch every 2 inches. Cut with thread or a sharp knife. Place cinnamon rolls on lightly greased cookie sheet 2 inches apart; lightly press each roll down. Cover and let rise to double again.

Bake at 350° for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove when they start to turn golden - don't overbake. Frost warm rolls with a cream cheese frosting. Makes about 20 large Cinnabon-like Cinnamon Rolls.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
• ½ cup margarine, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tablespoon milk

Mix all ingredients together with a mixer until smooth. Spread over warm cinnamon rolls.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Happy Father's Day to my wonderful husband who is the greatest Daddy to both of my babies. I decided to celebrate this occasion by baking him a cake made with his favorite chocolate. Dove chocolate. This cake is called "Chocolate Lovers' Cake" and when you read the ingredients, you can see why!

The cake itself is made with Dove dark chocolate promises, then covered in a milk chocolate icing, lined in Twix bars and topped with sprinkled cocoa. All different kinds of chocolate for the chocolate lover. The cake itself reminded me of the center of a truffle. The texture of a cheesecake but melts in your mouth when you eat it. Mmmm.

At the bottom of the cake, I made Dove milk chocolate fondue but changed the recipe a little and added a spoon full of peanut butter to it. It helps hold the fondue together a little more (so you can have more chocolate in each dip) and gives it a little salty flavor that just enhances the sweetness of the chocolate a little more.

Now, if you decide to make this cake, just do yourself a favor and don't think of the calories you are consuming. It would just ruin the experience. Just make it for a special occasion and then the calories won't count! ;0)

You can find both of these recipes on Dove chocolate's website.

DOVE CHOCOLATE

Mini Chocolate Coffee Cakes with Caramel Icing

I found this little mini bundt cake pan at Walmart on the clearance rack. I've always wanted to make little mini cakes, so I thought I'd give it a try.

To make the cakes with a coffee flavor, I simply followed the ingredients on the back of a cake mix box except replacing the amount of water with strong brewed coffee. And of course, the stronger the coffee, the stronger the flavor in the cake.

The caramel icing is a recipe I found online. I've never had this type icing before and it was very good. It is a dense icing, but it instantly melts in your mouth when you eat it.

Easy Caramel Icing (makes enough for 24 mini cakes)

1/2 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup milk

About 2 cups of sifted powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt butter in saucepan, stir in brown sugar. Cook and stir over low heat 2 minutes. Add milk, continue stirring until boiling. Remove from heat. Cool to lukewarm. Put into small mixer bowl, add sugar and vanilla while beating on medium speed, then beat on low speed for one minute.

Butter Pecan Cake Balls

This was my first attempt at making cake balls. I decided I would try butter pecan cake with cream cheese icing dipped in white chocolate and topped with a pecan. These were a lot of fun to make and they turned out SO moist. They remind me of truffles. One or two of these and you've hit that sweet spot wall. But they are so worth it! I think my next attempt will be a pumpkin spice cake ball with cream cheese icing. Stay tuned!

Fall Leaf Cupcakes

I had some creative brainstorming today that just hit me, so when it strikes, I must act. I had been toying with some ideas to do something for fall and today it came to me.

The cupcakes above are yellow cake with eggplant-colored buttercream icing. The leaves are made of gum paste. I started with adding a golden yellow food coloring gel to the gum paste and then adding brown, blue, and red without mixing all the way to create the marbled color you see. The leaves were cut from a template I created (not a cookie cutter) and veined with a gum paste tool (not a veiner press). Believe me....if I had both of those tools, I would have used them. In the final stage, they were dusted with yellow luster dust to give it a shine. The paper wrappers were made from brown lunch sacks that I cut up and crumpled to provide a nice texture. I wrapped a piece of twine around them and tied it in the back to help them to stay on the cupcake.

I think what's so cool about these cupcakes is that I used ingredients and stuff that I had around the house. Now, not everyone would have gum paste or luster dust, but since I had some leftover from a previous project, it makes it easier. I had so much fun creating these. A lot of hard work but a big payoff in the end.

No-Bake Cookies

Now, I know these cookies are probably the easiest cookies to bake, but finding a good recipe can be challenging since there are so many versions of this cookie out there. I tried a different recipe before these that called for marshmallows. They were good, but had more of that marshmallow flavor than the deep chocolate flavor that I love so much. So, I found this recipe and in my opinion, they turned out great. For that deeper chocolate flavor, I added dark chocolate cocoa instead of regular cocoa and I liked it much better.

No-Bake Cookies

2 cups sugar

4 tablespoons cocoa (I used dark chocolate cocoa)

1/2 cup milk

1 stick butter

1/2 cup peanut butter

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 1/2 cups quick cooking oats

Put sugar, cocoa, milk and butter in a pan and boil for 1 1/2 minutes. Add peanut butter, vanilla and oats. Boil for 2 1/2 minutes or longer, stirring frequently. Drop on wax paper or buttered cookie sheet.

Po Po Whips

I received this recipe from my brother-in-law who is a police officer. They really didn't have a name so I decided that I would name them after him. Po Po Whips. (Hope you don't mind, Russell) =0)

They are SUPER easy to fix and you can decide on what flavor you want. You'll see in the recipe below...

PoPo Whips

Preheat oven to 350º.

1 box of cake mix (any flavor)

1 egg

1 regular sized tub of cool whip topping, thawed (no fat free kind)

Whip it all together, spoon out onto greased cookie sheets, cook for 15-20 minutes and voilá! Instant cookies!

I ended up using golden yellow cake mix and threw in 2 cups of chocolate chips. Think of all the endless possibilities!

Thank you, Russell, for your great recipe!! Love you!