Heart Shaped Cake

This comes from BetterRecipes.com, when I saw this recipe on Pinterest I was a little skeptical. Sometimes things on Pinterest look like a really good idea, but turn out to be a horrible idea. J's birthday was last night and since we only get to see each other once a week (we live an hour apart) I baked this cake for him.

Ingredients:
-1 box cake mix, any flavor (I used lemon)
-1 container frosting, any flavor (I used vanilla)
-Rainbow sprinkles

Mix the cake mix according the package directions, pour half of the mix into an eight inch round and the other half into an 8x8 pan.

 To measure your round cake pan, measure the inside across the diameter of the pan. Once the cake is out of the oven, allow to cool slightly and then transfer to cooling racks.

Once the cake is all the way cooled, cut the round cake in half and place the pieces together to make the heart shape. Frost.

To make the 23, I printed out the number in size 120 font and then used an exacto knife to form a stencil.

Place the stencil in the center of the frosted cake and gently press down, add the sprinkles, pressing them lightly into the cake to fill the stenciled numbers.

Lift the stencil.

Add sprinkles around the edges if desired. 

I loved how easy this was to do! I also love the endless possibilities, this is great for birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. You can mix and match cake flavors and frosting colors. I honestly don't think that frosting the cake took any longer than frosting a two-tiered round cake.

Cookie Dough Popsicles

I got these new popsicle molds, and I'm really excited to get to use them! There are a lot of recipes for fun popsicles online, and I wanted to try some out. I'll be making a few more this summer for sure. This was a good first run using the molds, they were pretty easy to make, and they tasted pretty good. I got this one from girlichef.

This recipe made 5 popsicles for us.

Ingredients:

-2 1/2 cups almond milk
-2/3 cup sugar
-2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
-mini chocolate chips (we also used mint chocolate chips)

-pinch of salt

Popsicle molds!

Put the chocolate chips or mint chips in the bottom of the molds.

Mix the other ingredients and pour into the molds.

Add the top.

Freeze for at least 4 hours.

These worked out really well! I'm excited to use the popsicle molds again. The only thing I thought could have made them better is if the chocolate was mixed throughout the popsicle rather than concentrated at the top.

Bonfire Eclairs

Summer is almost here! But not quite, J. and I took a mini-vacation a week ago and stayed at Becky's lake house for a weekend. It's always so nice to get away! We made a bonfire on the beach to enjoy these beauties. You'll need an unpainted wooden broom handle to make these beauties, we made them using dowel rods. I would highly recommend a broom handle though or a dowel rod of similar thickness, ours were too thin and made our eclairs cook unevenly.

You can find the original at Elizabeth Anne Designs.

Ingredients:
-Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
-Whipped Cream
-Chocolate Sauce

J. was our Lord of the Flame.

Undue your crescent rolls. 

Rub your dowel rod or broom stick generously with butter.
If you're on the beach, make it butter that you don't want to keep because it will get sandy.

Wrap two crescent  rolls around the end.

Roast slowly by the fire.

Let cool. 

Carefully remove from the stick. 

Fill with whipped cream. 

Drizzle with chocolate and enjoy

There were some issues with the first one that got made, some parts were burnt and some were raw, we changed strategies for the second one.

Same steps, but we wrapped the dough in foil and stuck it in the embers.

This one cooked from about 5-8 minutes.
The foil stuck a little! 

Add toppings and serve.

The one that we covered was a lot more cooked (aside from the burnt end) so it was good. The flavor was good, we just failed in execution of the recipe.

I feel confident endorsing this recipe because J. told me that if we had used a broom handle it would have allowed the dough to be spread more thinly, which would have allowed it to cook inside and out. With the small dowel rods the dough overlapped in a lot of places and they were too thick to cook through.

I will be trying this recipe again this summer! With three ingredients I think this is a really great summer bonfire recipe.

Peeps Popcorn

I love Peeps, and after Easter I always have ton, usually more than I can eat. If you are like me, this is a great way to use some of those extra peeps in a different snack. Popcorn is really not something I would ever think of to go with peeps, but it really ended up being a good combination. This really took less than 10 minutes to make, and the bright pink color was really fun on the popcorn. I found the original recipe from Simply Klassic.

If you are strictly vegetarian and don't eat marshmallows, here are some ideas for substitutes:
You can buy vegan marshmallows, or
you can make your own.

Ingredients:

-2 Tbsp butter

-5 peeps

-1 bag popcorn.

Melt the butter.

Add the peeps to the melted butter. Make sure you keep the
heat low and watch them, if you have ever burnt sugar
you know how hard it is to clean out of a pot.

It was kind of sad to watch the peeps melt like this.

They will melt down. It was a little thick still, but easy enough to
pour onto popcorn.

I couldn't really coat all the popcorn in marshmallow, but I was able to cover the top. This tasted really familiar to me, but I can't quite figure out where I have had something like this before. It was good though, it made a different, colorful snack out of regular microwave bag popcorn.

Egg Nest Cupcakes

I've had a book of cupcakes for a few years, but all the cupcakes in it look so fancy that I've been afraid of how complicated they might be, so I've haven't really used the book much. But recently I've been doing a lot more cooking at baking, I thought I might be a bit better at baking now so I thought I'd try this really cute Easter cupcake. The book is just called "Cupcakes" and it is by Hamlyn. I also watched this great youtube video to learn to make the chocolate flakes for the top.

Check out our earlier Easter blog Peep S'mores, and look for other Easter recipes in the next two days.

This makes 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

Cupcakes

-1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp butter

-1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp sugar

-1 1/2 cups self-rising flour (I used all purpose flour plus 1 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt)

-3 eggs

-1 tsp vanilla extract

Frosting

-3 1/2 oz semisweet chocolate

-2 Tbsp milk

-1/4 cup butter

-3/4 cup powdered sugar

- Extra chocolate to make the chocolate flakes for the top

-Chocolate eggs for the top

Mix the cupcake ingredients together with a blender for 1-2 minutes.
Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes.

Make the chocolate flakes for the top.
Melt chocolate. Spread out the chocolate on a cold surface.
I covered my counter with saran wrap.

Spread out the chocolate pretty thin.

Once the chocolate hardens, scrape it up with a spatula.
It should break into small shards.

Make the fudge frosting. Add the chocolate, milk, butter
to a pot, and melt on medium heat. Once it has melted, take it
off the heat and mix in powdered sugar.

The book says to frost while the frosting is still warm, but I found
that mine was really thin, and it was much easier to spread after
I let it stand for 15 minutes or so. 

Take the cupcakes out of the oven.

Frost.

Break up the chocolate flakes and add them to the top, leaving a hole in
 the middle for the eggs. It is best to do this before the frosting hardens
 so it can stick. Add two or three eggs to the center of the nest.

I tried to break up the chocolate to look like a nest.

These cupcakes were really cute for Easter, and everyone who tried them really liked the cupcake and the frosting recipe. They of course didn't look quite as good as the picture in the book, but they still looked like a nest with eggs. They definitely tasted goo though, all the chocolate on top was balanced out with the vanilla cupcake.