Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

These are the cupcakes I made for the humans at Luna's first birthday party.  Not only did we need cupcakes for the wieners, but also for the humans.  I decided on cookies and cream because it was something I hadn't tried before.  I was pleased with how they turned out.  My only mistake was I didn't crush the Oreos small enough for the frosting so I kept getting larger pieces of Oreo clogging my piping tip. Here's the recipes I used.  Enjoy!

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes
(Adapted from: Cupcakes From The Cake Mix Doctor)
1 package plain white cake mix
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 t. vanilla
18 Oreos
Preheat oven to 350.  Line 24 cupcake cups with liners and set aside.
Place the Oreos in a large Ziploc bag and crush them by rolling over them with a rolling pin.  Set crumbs aside.
Place the cake mix, sour cream, oil, eggs and vanilla in a large mixing bowl.  Blend with an electric mixer until well incorporated.  Add crushed Oreos just until incorporated. 
Fill cupcake cups with liners 2/3 of the way full. 
Bake until they are lightly golden, about 18-20 mins. 

Cookies and Cream Frosting
(Source: Big Book of Cupcakes)

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 16 oz package powdered sugar
1/3 cup whipping cream
1/8 t. salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
15 Oreo cookies, finely crushed

Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.

Gradually add powdered sugar, alternately with cream, beating at low speed until blended.  Add salt and vanilla, beating until blended.  Stir in crushed cookies until combined.  Beat at high speed for 2 minutes or until creamy.  Makes 4 cups. 

Luna's First Birthday Party

Several months ago, I saw a recipe for a dog cake (as in a cake for dogs)  and I've been wanting to make it ever since so I decided a dog birthday party was in order for our Luna's first birthday. Have you seen our Luna? Here she was as a puppy:

Here she is now:

The first thing we needed for a wiener dog party was wiener food for the dogs:

Next, we needed wiener food for the humans. We enjoyed hot dogs, little smokies, and smoked sausage.

A party isn't complete without cake! We had dog cupcakes for the wieners and cookies and cream cupcakes for the humans.

The dog cupcakes turned out awesome and were a lot of fun to make. I gave one to Luna to try the day before the party. She devoured it in 30 seconds and them spent 5 minutes licking her bowl. I would definitely recommend them.

Carrot Peanut Butter Dog Cake
http://andeverythingsweet.blogspot.com/2010/12/charlies-1st-birthday.html

1 cup white flour
1 top baking soda
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup shredded carrots
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup honey
1 egg
Mix flour and baking soda together and then add all other ingredients.
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.
Frost with wiped non-fat cream cheese.
I doubled the recipe and made cupcakes out of the batter which made about 13 cupcakes. I baked them for about 20-25 mins. I only had enough whipped cream cheese for 9 of them with one package of cream cheese.
Here are the wieners eating their cupcakes:

Luna

Noodles

Axle

Luna helped Axle eat his cupcake

And of course, we had party treats for the wieners:

Next up, cookies and cream cupcakes!

Whoa!

Since my last post was in September, let me update you on what's been going on in my life.

1: I had a baby! Holy moly, I still can't believe it myself! Her name is Matilda (or Millie as we like to call her) and is just about the cutest little thing I've ever seen. Here she is:

She was born December 28th which means that she is almost a month old.  Tomorrow actually marks four weeks since she was born.  These past four weeks have been the fastest of my life.  In a way, it feels like Millie was just born while at the same time, feels like we've found our rhythm and have been going at this whole "we have a baby" thing for a long time.  While I miss having my freedom to run a few errends, stay up until 3am watching Netflix, or sleep in uninterrupted until 11am, I wouldn't change having this sweet little girl in my life for anything.  I am sure there will be many more posts about our little one in the future!

2: We bought a house!  We moved into our house in the middle of October.  The house is older, built in 1950 and in great shape for it's age.  It even includes an authentic (and totally creepy) fallout shelter in the basement!  Since moving in, we have slowly been hard at work changing things and making them our own.  I hope to post pictures and updates on some of the work we've been doing.

3: I made some pretty awesome (if I may say so!) Dr Seuss cake pops in November for our nephew's first birthday party.  I'll post about them soon!

4: Speaking of baking, I've made three batches of cookies since Millie's been born.  That's almost as much baking as I did the entire time I was pregnant.  Pathetic.  That being said, I felt like superwoman having the energy to bake while caring for a newborn.  Hopefully, more baking will follow soon.  I have a lot of recipes I've been wanting to try. 

5: I think I need a new blog name as I know this blog will now include ramblings about being a new mom, babies, our house updates, as well as whatever baking I am able to do.  So, does anybody have any suggestions?!

A Few Random Tidbits

I've obviously have been slacking on this blog.  Honestly, I have mostly forgotten about it, except for the occasional feeling of guilt for being such a slacker and never updating it.  So, here are a few of my thoughts on life, baking and creating. 

1) Since my last post was about our bun in the oven, I should tell you that bun is a girl!  I am now 23 weeks and thankfully feeling much better than I was early in the pregnancy.  Not a day goes by that I'm not very aware that I am growing a very tiny person inside of me, which is both awesome and totally weird.  I am getting very excited to meet this tiny person in several months.

Baby Girl at 19 Weeks

2) I honestly haven't baked a single thing since April.  It's crazy, I know!  For a while it was because I was feeling so horrible with the pregnancy.  But now, it's more because of a lack of motivation.  Part of that is because I don't have my own kitchen.  We are still living with my husband's family and though I am extremely grateful for the rent free living situation, things are just different for me when I don't have my own space.  I love baking but it's just not as much fun in a kitchen that's not my own.  My lack of baking will change soon as my husband has asked for key lime cake for his birthday in a couple of weeks!

3) With all that being said, the reason we are still living with my husband's family is because we have been saving and hoping to buy a house.  The good news is that we found a house we like and are now under contract on that house!  Hopefully all goes as planned and we will be in our own house mid-October which means there is still time to do some fall baking in my own kitchen!!  I can't tell you how excited I am!

4) I always like having a creative outlet in my life.  Baking has been that outlet but since I haven't been baking I've been feeling the need to create.  So instead I've been knitting a lot.  In the past few years, the only thing that I've knitted are dishcloths here and there to keep my mom and I supplied with the kind we like.  With the baby coming, I thought it might be fun to try to knit a little hat.  I found an awesome book with patterns at Michaels and have been knitting up a storm.  So far I've made two hats and have slowed down a little with the third (mostly because I have now had to start over twice!). 

Baby Beanie #1

Baby Beanie #2

And those are my thoughts at the moment.  Maybe next time I won't wait months before the next post... but don't hold your breath.

I'm 'Baking' Something Special!

I've been a very bad blogger lately.  I swear I have a good reason.  Here it is:

Ultrasound taken at 8 weeks

Yep, it's a baby!  Or a gummy bear.  Or an alien.  I can't quite tell.  Right now, we calling it our 'Gremlin'.  You might find that offensive or odd, we find it rather fitting. 

I've been feeling pretty crappy the past few months.  And the last thing I've wanted to do is be around food because either 1) I feel nauseous and nothing sounds good when I'm nauseous and therefore the last thing I want to do is bake/cook.  Or 2) I'm actually feeling ok for a few minutes or hours and therefore I absolutely have to get stuff done that's been neglected because I feel nauseous most of the time.

Although I just entered the 2nd trimester, I'm still not feeling great.  Sadly, food in general rarely sounds good (but at the moment, I really want a doughnut).  Hopefully, that will change soon and I can get back to baking.  In the meantime, I will continue 'baking' the Gremlin.

Rainbow Chip Cake Pops

Sometimes, I need a change of scenery.  So a month or two ago, a good friend that lives in the Seattle area and I decided we needed to go on an adventure.  This past week, we met up in Charleston, SC where we stayed for about four days.  Neither of us had much money to spend, so we planned our trip as cheaply as possible.  We stayed at Charleston's Notso Hostel and bought all our meals either on Groupon.com or Restaurant.com.  We brought a lot of snacks with us, ate the free breakfast at the Hostel each morning, and did all our sightseeing by walking around the city.  Most days, we only spent about $10.  It was very nice to get away and enjoy just be with a friend. 

My friend's birthday was yesterday, the day after we got back from our trip, so I decided I wanted to make her some birthday cake pops for our trip.  She decided she wanted rainbow chip cake--which I had been wanting to try as a cake pop for a while.  Have you had rainbow chip cake?  It's amazing.  It's not that funfetti stuff--it's much better.  Rainbow chip was always the cake I wanted my mom to make for my birthday growing up!  So if you've never had it, go buy some and make it with rainbow chip frosting! Turns out, rainbow chip cake pops are pretty good, too!

St. Patty's Cake Pops

Remember these green velvet cupcakes I posted yesterday?  They were mini cupcakes and I made 24 of them.  The other half of the cake I made as a nine inch round cake so I could use it for cake pops.  The recipe I used makes more than a normal batch so my round cake was huge!  I ended up making about 40 cake pops from it.  With the cake part of the cake pop being green, I had to go with the theme and make St. Patty's cake pops!

Green Velvet Cupcakes

What better way to celebrate St Patrick's Day than with green cake?!!  How do you make green cake, you ask?  Easy. Make red velvet cake, but add green food coloring instead of red food coloring. Or if you are not a red velvet fan, you might be able to make white cake and add green frosting, but I've never tried it. 
Hope you all have a great St. Patty's Day tomorrow.  And don't forget to wear green!

Carrot Cupcakes

I have so many recipes for cupcakes I've been wanting to try and this was one of them.  I love carrot cake but you just don't see too many carrot cupcakes so I thought I should find a recipe and make some.  I found this recipe on Martha Stewart's website which meant it had to be good!

Carrot Cupcakes
Source: Martha Stewart
Print Recipe Here

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, spoon and leveled
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons plain low-fat yogurt
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups grated carrots

Frosting:
1 package (8 Ounces) cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated orange zest

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Line muffin tin with paper liners.
In large bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg; set aside.
In another bowl, whisk together melted butter, brown sugar, egg, yogurt, and vanilla.  Stir in carrots.  Gradually add dry ingredients to butter mixture until well combined.  Divide among muffin tin.  Bake 25-30 minutes.
Remove from pan to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
To make frosting, use an electric mixer, beat cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar until smooth, beat in vanilla and orange zest. 

Amy's Notes:
Note that this recipe is for 12 cupcakes.  I ended up doubling it, but wasn't quite thinking and didn't have enough ingredients to double the frosting.  So I improvised, but my frosting wasn't as good as it could have been if I would have followed the recipe.  The cake of these cupcakes is very good.  I love carrot cake but don't like all the chunks that some people put in it, so this recipe is great for me.  Next time, I am going to spend the extra money and buy the bag of pre-grated carrots because, ugh, I hated grating them!

Cake Pops For Sale, Part Two

When I made my Valentine's Day cake pops, I sent a few of them in a box just like the one in the picture below to my family.  I had several reasons why I did this.  First, my dad mentions pretty regularly that if I have extra time that he would be willing to eat anything I bake and mail to him.  And let's face it.  I don't have a job so I have LOTS of extra time.  Second, I have had a few people asking about buying cake pops but because most of the people asking are across the country, I need to figure out a way to mail cake pops quickly and safely, with minimal damage to the pops. 

Well, the pops I mailed to my family arrived quickly and only a few had a couple cracks in them, so I would say the experiment was a success!  Plus, my family loved the pops.  My dad took one to his work to share with a coworker and she ended up asking if I could make more and mail her some.  Two ladies ended up wanting to 'order' cake pops from me.  I mailed each of them 12 cake pops in small flat rate boxes, which cost about $5 to send. 

They wanted the same cake pops I made for my family, which was easy to duplicate since I had already made them once.  Overall, the whole things turned out to be a success.  So, if you want a few cake pops I might be willing to make some and mail them to you--for a small fee.