Chocolate Cookie Filled Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for my son's program and open house at school last week.  I spent the week leading up to the program in complete indecision about what to make.  Nothing really sounded that good to me.  I looked through countless cookbooks and blogs, nothing.  I talked to Julee about it and made the comment, "when it comes to dessert I like to go big or go home".   I guess that is true for me.  I want it to be the best dessert and I want it to look great and I want it to be memorable.  I tend to take things over the top a bit.  So after much thought and a trip to the store I finally decided on this combo.  They got great reviews, were pretty easy to assemble and looked great.  I used a slightly modified recipe for an old fashioned chocolate cake and chocolate icing.  The icing was seriously the best part and while a little tricky to work with, I think it will be my go to chocolate icing from now on.  Here is a little tutorial of how to do these and the recipe of course.

Bake 350, make 36 cupcakes or three 8 inch layers

Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake Recipe
2 Cups boiling water
1 c. cocoa
2 3/4 c flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 c butter
2 1/2 c sugar
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs

Mix the boiling water with the cocoa and stir until smooth.  Let sit to cool off.  In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder, soda and salt.  Combine the butter and sugar in a large bowl and mix until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla and eggs one at a time, beat until combined.  Add the flour mixture in three parts and beat until combined.  Add the cocoa mixture to the batter slowly and beat until well combined.  Scrape down the bowl several times during the mixing process.

Old Fashioned Chocolate Icing
16 oz good quality semi sweet chocolate melted (I used Ghirardelli)
1/2 a bag confectioner sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 cup butter at room temp
Melt the chocolate chips.  In the bowl of your mixer add the melted chocolate and the butter.  Mix until well combined.  Add the confectioners sugar 1 cup at a time.  Add the milk.  Beat a few minutes until well combined and fluffy.  This icing is pretty soft to work with, but does set up to a pretty firm consistency.
If you are going to ice your cupcakes as heavily as I did you will need a double recipe.

Line your muffins tins with cupcake liners.  Spoon just enough batter into each cup to cover the bottom.  Place a sandwich cookie into each cup.

Cover with more batter, filling the cups 3/4 full.  Bake at 350 for 15-18 minutes.  These cupcakes are really fudgy so testing them is difficult.

I pull mine out when they no longer jiggle when I lightly shake the pan.  

After the cupcakes have cooled completely place about 1/3 c of icing on each one and using a butter knife shape into a dome shape.

Place some chocolate jimmies into a shallow container.

Gently roll the edges of the iced cupcake in the jimmies.

Cut your remaining sandwich cookies in half.

Let a cute chocolate smeared kid put one half of a cookie on top of each cupcake.

Here is what these yummies look like on the inside.  Crazy right?

Here they are posing for a picture.


-Kim

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Party Planning 101

I love throwing parties.  If I had an endless supply of money I would have lavish parties every weekend for no reason at all.  But alas, I am on a tight budget, so I have to very carefully plan my parties.  That doesn't mean that I skimp in the details it just means careful planning and preparing. Since I have several parties on my horizon I thought I would share with you some of the tips that help me make a pretty party without breaking my budget - time or money wise.

1. The most important tip that I can think of is plan ahead.  I know it's not always possible especially if you are throwing a dinner party, but I honestly start planning for the parties I know about sometimes 6 months in advance.  It gives me time to mull over the details, pick up items cheap that will work and craft things.

2.  Keep a party journal or notebook.  This is something that I have just started to do.  Before I kept everything in a folder on my computer and pretty much forgot about it.  Now I am using several pages to plan and document each party.  This way I can take it with me when I shop and actually know what I am doing.  I like to have a menu planning page, a decorations page and a crafting page. I clip inspiration from magazines and draw little pictures to remind me of what I want to do.

3.  Pick a color scheme.  It's easy to get overwhelmed when planning a party especially one with a theme. Sometimes you just start buying everything you see that is cowboy themed and you end up with a big mess.  I find that picking a color scheme of two to three colors really ties things together.  I also buy a lot of neutral dishes and serving pieces, white and clear glass, they go with everything and you won't need a second house to store all your party stuff in.

4.  Think outside of the box for your theme.  I don't think my kids have ever really had a character themed party, not that there is anything wrong with that.  Sometimes though you can make a party more personal and special by using your a favorite color, book, food, music, candy, animal, toy, etc. as inspiration.  I'm lucky because my kids usually pick the most off the wall party theme they can think of so I at least have a jumping off point.

5.  Don't just head to the party store.  I have bought almost all of my serving pieces from thrift stores. I often use fabric as table runners and have purchased cake toppers, party favors and decorations from the craft store.  I also find a lot of good party stuff at discount places like TJMaxx and Marshalls.  This goes back to tip 1 which is give yourself plenty of time.

6.  This is the best tip, in the end parties are suppose to be fun.  You shouldn't feel stressed and you shouldn't go over your budget.  Do what you can and that will always be enough.  Nobody is going to leave your party thinking to themselves, "Well, that would have been a nice party if she had just made one more fabric garland and a few more tissue paper pom poms".  If they do, they're a jerk and you shouldn't invite them to your parties anyways. :)

Check out these great handmade party supplies from Louisville artists:

pixelstopaper- invitations

crazydaizies- party decorations and supplies




-Kim

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Valentine's For The Teachers

Just popping in for a quick little post on what I took to my son's school for Valentine's Day.
I am the official cookie maker for all of his school celebrations and I always make my iced sugar cookies for every one.  This year they got heart shaped sugar cookies, iced and decorated with piped x's and o's.  If you would like a tutorial for how to ice sugar cookies like a pro check out this post.

For the teachers, I had bigger plans but as happens time fell short, so we decorated these cute tin mailboxes from the Target dollar spot with scrapbook paper and stickers.  Then we filled them with some yummy Ghirardelli chocolates and Toblerone.  I had wanted to make homemade goodies to put inside, but somehow I don't think they will mind.

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Strawberry Cheesecake Bites

These little filled strawberries taste just like strawberry cheesecake and are as delicious as they look.  The best part?  They whip up in about 10 minutes and require no cooking.

We used these on our Valentine’s Day party table, but they are perfect for spring and summer parties when strawberries are in their peak season.  Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 container of strawberries
1 package (8oz) cream cheese (room temp)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons confectioners sugar

In a bowl, mix the cream cheese, vanilla extract, and confectioners sugar.

Wash strawberries, and cut the bottoms straight across so that they will stand on your platter. 

Scoop out the middle of the strawberries. 



Fill a pastry bag with the cheesecake mixture, and fill the strawberries.



That’s it!



You can also top the strawberries with toasted almonds, crushed graham crackers, shaved chocolate, or drizzle with chocolate.  Yum!

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D.I.Y. Dessert Table On a Budget

Kim and I threw a Valentine’s Day party for ourselves our kids, and set up this lovely Valentine’s themed dessert table.

Who doesn’t love a dessert table?  It’s a table full of desserts, people.  Quite simply, it’s my version of heaven.

While planning for the party, we stuck with two solid ideas – to present something affordable, and to present something that a person with even the most limited amount of time could reproduce. 

Well, I mean, having tasty edibles on a visually fabulous table were our other ideas, but that kind of goes without saying, don’t ya think?

Our party was just for our two families, but with the amount of desserts and sweets here, this easily could have provided for a dozen people (give or take).

Are you ready for the best part?

Setting up this entire table only cost us $30!

The only thing we purchased to set up this Valentine’s Day dessert table was the edibles, and all of those were purchased at Target and Walmart. 

That means that by using items you already have on hand and purchasing only what you need at your local store, you too can provide a tasty dessert table on a budget for your next party. 

Yes, YOU!

Using scrapbook paper, we customized ordinary soda bottles to match our red and white Valentine’s theme.

To save on time, we made only a few of the edibles and purchased all pre-made candy.

To fill the candy dishes, we used $1 movie-sized boxes of color-coordinating candies.

A $1 bag of Valentine suckers became cute and easy edible cupcake toppers.

We felt a little less guilty letting our kids chow on red dye and sugar laden treats by offering them something on the healthier side.  These adorable (and delicious!) cheesecake strawberries took 10 minutes to whip up.

We all love a cake made from scratch, but in the interest of time and staying on budget, don’t snub the convenience of a box mix.

When looking for ideas on cake toppers, Kim only had one criteria – and I quote - “Something I can put a skewer in!”  Peeps and pre-packaged heart shaped chocolate covered marshmallows were perfect.  Again, she used more of the suckers, and the peppermints were leftovers from Christmas.

Red velvet, oh yeah.

You can offer a good assortment of treats without going over budget.  Using a variety of coordinating dishes creates a full table.

These simple and inexpensive ideas can be used at your next party, regardless of the theme. 

We hope this inspires you to create a fun and stress-free desert table for your next party!

This was either the best Valentine’s Day party I’ve ever been to, or I was having a mad sugar rush.  You decide.

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Valentine's Rice Crispy Candy

Okay, so a little background on these.  I had a party to go to and I had promised to make a treat.  Well as luck would have it I was running very short on time, so when I finally got to the store I grabbed the old standby box of rice crispy cereal and bag of marshmallows and figured I would make it work.  So I got home and realized that it would look pretty sad me bringing these lame rice crispy treats to a party when I'm making cute Valentine's treats for my blogger buddies to read about all the time.  So I took a couple of minutes and tried to think how to make these rice crispy treats better.  I mean Cake Boss builds robots out of rice crispy treats, these things have potential.  Of course my mind was blank so I asked the husband for a little help, I swear he said put sprinkles on them, like that was revolutionary!  Eventually however, I did come up with an idea, and it was, make them look like Valentine's Candy.  Rice crispy treats are pretty easy to mold into whatever shape you want, and after this little experiment I've been thinking of all kinds of fun stuff to do with them.  So here is a picture tutorial of how I did it.  I promise they don't take very long, I did these in less than an hour.

Rice crispy treats recipe
6 c. rice cereal
1 bag marshmallows
1/4 c. butter or margarine

Melt your butter or margarine and add marshmallows.  Stir until melted and then stir in cereal.  Pretty easy right.  Now onto shaping.

I used a little scoop to get the right amount, but a spoon will work fine too.  Make sure to spray your hands with oil because it's really sticky.  It can be a little hot, I have really tough hands and it didn't bother me, but just test a little to make sure you don;t burn yourself.  Scoop out about 1 tablespoon of the rice crispy mixture and using your hands shape it in to whatever shape you like, I did balls, squares, rectangles, disks and hearts.

I tried to think about the shapes of boxed candies.  As you are shaping kind of squeeze it together to make it stick.

Next, melt some chocolate or candy coating.  Using a fork dip each piece of "candy" in the chocolate.  Let dry on a piece of parchment or silpat liner.

Next decorate.  I looked at some pictures of boxed candies online for an idea, but here is what I did.  You want each different shape to be decorated different, like in a box of candy.  I melted some white candy coating and put it in a squeeze bottle.

 For the rectangle pieces I did a white loop design, for the squares I dipped one side in the white chocolate and then added chocolate jimmies, the hearts have white drizzled, the round ones have white drizzled and valentine's sprinkles and the disk just have chocolate drizzled.  I put mine in the fridge in between dipping them and decorating to harden up the chocolate.  After decorating they go back in the fridge.

Final step add some candy wrappers to complete the look.  I wanted to put them in a heart shaped box, but due to my time crunch they just got put on a cute plate instead.  They were a big hit with the kids, much more than I expect real chocolates would have been.

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Valentine's Cookie Pops

The other day while browsing through the grocery store I happened upon these really cute cake decorations.  I've seen them tons of times before but just never payed any attention, but these were cute and little so I grabbed a pack thinking I would maybe use them as cupcake toppers or something along those lines.  Then inspiration hit in another aisle when I saw the Oreo's or in my case generic sandwich cookies :)  When I got home the inspiration train went a little farther when I found some sucker sticks in my pantry.  So with a few store bought items and a little time I made some super cute cookie pops for Valentine's Day.  I think these would be perfect for a little gift for teachers or grandparents and they are easy enough that you could have the kids help.  I also made some with out the sticks too, which is what is in the top picture.  So here is the tutorial of sorts.

Step one:  gather your supplies, sandwich cookies, sugar decorations, sprinkles, dipping chocolate and sucker sticks

Step two:  Insert the sucker stick into the cookie.  I found the best method to be removing one side of the cookie and inserting the stick into the filling, I then used a little melted chocolate to glue the two side back together.

Step three:  Carefully dip your cookie in melted chocolate or candy coating.  I used a spoon to help cover the area closest to the stick.

Step four:  Add your decorations while the chocolate is still wet.  If you want to drizzle a different color of chocolate do this before you add the sugar decorations or sprinkles.  I laid my cookies on a silpat liner to dry, you can also use parchment.

So there you have it, pretty easy huh?  Now you just have to make a bunch for everyone you know.

Enjoy!!

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