4th of July

Happy 4th of July!  My husband and I went to a bbq/pool party with friends and I volunteered to bring the cupcakes.  I made chocolate cupcakes and "yellow" cupcakes with butter cream frosting. I know, I know. I went with the box mixes because they are easy.  The frosting was from scratch of course.  I put the extra time towards making the cutest cupcake flags, instead. They are courtesy of Ellinee.  

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I have been anxiously awaiting St. Patrick's Day so that I use some tiny shamrock sprinkles...for our office St. Patrick's Day Lunch I made Chocolate Cupcakes with MINT Buttercream Frosting.  As a lover of all things peppermint, I was pretty excited.  Thankfully I used all but a tiny teaspoon of the frosting on the cupcakes because if there was anymore left over, I surely would have found myself on the couch eating a bowl of frosting.  I used Wilton grass cupcake liners and made the cutest cupcake picks courtesy of The Tomkat Studio blog.  

Seriously, how cute are these Shamrocks?

Tada! Done and ready to eat at work.

Shiny Happy Chocolate Cupcakes

For a coworker's birthday I made her favorite flavor combo...the ever popular, Chocolate Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting!  I am sad to report that i cheated and used cupcake mix but happy that i tried a new frosting recipe.  I made a chocolate frosting that called for an entire POUND of chocolate chips and promised to have a nice sheen to it.  

 A little abstract...

 Shiny goodness...

So rich my husband could only eat one.

On another note of baked love...the weekend before i made good ol' fashioned Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies for my grandfather.  It felt awesome to send them off to him since i haven't seen him or my grandmother in (eek) more than 2 years.  

I am currently waiting for dough to rise for Cinnamon Bums that i'm making for a fundraiser at work tomorrow!

Baking Weekend...

Because Sean was in Ocala this weekend, I opted for some uninterrupted baking time.  I've been wanting to make some cookies for some time now and try out some chocolate cupcakes.  I decided on White Chocolate Chip, Cranberry and Macadamia Nut cookies and Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting.  

The cookies turned out great!  They are almost as good as the cookies my college roommates Mom used to make for us.  I think hers had some granola and maybe regular chocolate chips in them.  We called them Crack Cookies.  They were fabulous.  The only flaw to these cookies was my own fault, I did not line the cookie sheet with parchment paper, like the recipe suggested and wound up needing to strategically scoop the dough, so that the cranberries weren't on the bottom, because they got all burnt on the first sheet.  Next time, I will use the parchment paper.  

White Chocolate Chip, Cranberry and Macadamia Nut Cookies

I loved the Peanut Butter Frosting I made for Sean's birthday so much that I wanted to try it with Chocolate Cupcakes.  It turned out just as fabulously fluffy as before.  The cupcakes are pretty good, maybe not as moist as I was hoping, but the frosting balances that out.  

Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting 

I made SO many cupcakes it is silly.  I decided to double the recipe, because for some reason, I thought one batch would only make 12 cupcakes.  Needless to say, there are 60 cupcakes in my kitchen right now. AND 40 or so cookies.  What was I thinking?