4th of July Cake Pops

Well, it's August & I'm blogging about July. (Kind of like the time I blogged about Pi Day in July) I'm alway behind on my holidays. Oops! But that doesn't make these any less cute!!! My husband's family is quickly growing and this past 4th of July marks the first time we've all been together in over a year. Between the birth of my nieces and my youngest sibling in-laws being away at college, we weren't able to all be together on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter of this past year. 

So July 4th marked a reunion of sorts. It was a great day. My sister-in-law & I ran the Ephrata 5 Mile Fire Cracker. It was her first post-triplets race. I especially enjoyed it because I got to push 2 of my nieces in a stroller. Annabelle & Grace were quite the hit and I felt like a rock star for running all 5 miles while pushing a double-wide stroller. We squeezed in a family photo, some dutch blitiz, and had a great dinner. I put myself in charge of dessert where I made a vanilla pudding trifle dish dessert and these awesome mint oreo ball American flag. I make these oreo balls, just like I would cake pop balls, but instead of cake & frosting I use oreo (or mint oreo) and cream cheese. I had to melt 3 different colors to dip these into. You have to use a spoon to scoop them out of the chocolate, then place them on wax paper to dry. I also had special colored sprinkles & paper liners to match. It was a lot of work to make, but worth it. Did I mention I LOVE mint oreo???

 If you are not up for making 42 cake balls, here is a simpler design you can do.

What a good looking group!

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

I usually reek havoc in the kitchen. My poor husband. I whip up a delicious meal, but then I leave behind chaotic mess for him to clean up. So I've been trying to turn over a new strategy in the kitchen. Pre-layout ingredients as much as I can, then clean up as I go. It went very well when I made this chocolate chip zucchini bread. (see picture above). 


Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose unbleached bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1& 1/8 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 large egg, beaten
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 cup apple sauce
1.5 cups zucchini, shredded


Directions:
Preheat oven to 325.
Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. 
Mix well.
Add chocolate chips and mix some more.
In a separate bowl, mix egg, vanilla, butter, apple sauce, & zucchini.
Add to flour mixture and stir until blended. 
Pour into a loaf pan. 
Bake for 45 to 55 minutes. 
Use toothpick to check to see if it's done. 
Cool for 10 minutes before slicing. 

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes

I just love dessert! I found a great recipe for Cookie Dough Cupcakes. 


Ideally you would make cookie dough from scratch, the cupcake batter from scratch, and the frosting from scratch. But I pride myself on taking the easy way out if I think the results will be just as good. So I bought a tube of cookie dough and used a box of cake mix to make the cup cakes as well as a can of chocolate frosting. I thought the results were fantastic! You can judge me, but I'm ok with it.


Check out this awesome old-school mixer we have at the beach house. Works just as good as my one at home!



Ingredients:
1 tube of cookie dough (you probably won't use the whole package)
1 box yellow cake mix
1 1/3 cups water
1/3 cup canola oil
3 eggs
1 can of chocolate frosting








Directions:
Roll the cookie dough into 1 inch balls and place in freezer for 2 hours. 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Using a mixer, beat eggs.
Add cake mix, water, & oil and mix on medium speed for a couple minutes until smooth.
Place cupcake liners in a cupcake tin and fill most of the way (but not all of the way) with the cupcake batter.
Place cookie dough ball in center of each cupcake. 
Don't worry about the ball being completely covered, it will be covered when it bakes. 
Bake in oven for about 20 minutes. Check with toothpick to make sure that the cupcake is cooked through, don't worry about the cookie part.
Remove and let cool for 10 minutes before covering with frosting.
Serve with sprinkles if you so desire!






I had some leftover batter and cookie dough so I poured the rest of the batter in a square cake pan and placed 9 cookie dough balls in the middle then baked it the same way, but a little bit longer because it was cake. It was equally awesome.

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

More Peanut Butter Oatmeal

I had posted months ago about Peanut Butter Baked Oatmeal. I made some again, last week at the beach for my family. 

I wanted to make it fun so I put mini chocolate chips on 1/3 of it and rainbow sprinkles on another 1/3 of it. It was mostly just for the enjoyment of my niece Maddie. And it worked because she thought it was dessert for breakfast. She loves sprinkles (and cake pops!) See the picture below, she is attempting to give me a thumbs up. 

Wanted to show off this breakfast/dessert & all it's glory. We had a great time at the beach and I enjoyed my day to cook. 

MMMMMMMmmmmmmm! This was an amazing breakfast.  Oatmeal & Sunflower Seed Pancakes with honey & bananas, Bacon, Onion, & Hashbrown Medley, & Ramen Noodle Quiche. 

And you can't forget mimosas....Perfect start to the day!

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

More Baby Shower Fun

If you want some great baby shower ideas, then you've come to the right place!


I recently shared about my sister-in-law's belated Baby Shower. But I also helped throw a baby shower for my friend Jessie last month. Such a great shower! Her mom, Kelly Steadman, owner of All Things Beautiful, was my fabulous wedding florist 5 years ago, and let me tell you, she knows how to throw a party! 


This was an owl-themed baby shower for baby Trevor. 


For food we did a slider bar as the main meal.

But we also had fruit kabobs, cups of pasta salad, veggies & dip.

But I just loved these mini twice-baked potatoes. So cute!

All the food was great, but dessert was even better! We had a dessert bar. We had owl cookies. Kelly made these delightful sugar cookies with blue fondant and chocolate icing. The noses are chocolate covered sesame seeds. The mouths are candy necklace pieces. 

There were chocolate cigars in honor of Baby Boy Smoker. 

The best part was the Make-Your-Own S'more Bar

Besides the traditional ingredients that you use to make a s'more, we also included Reese's Peanut Butter Cups & Peppermint Patties. So good! And everyone could make their own on the fire pit. 

And of course, no party would be complete without cake pops! We did owl cake pops as favors and baby boy cake pops that were ready to eat. Check out that sweet cake pop stand!

These two were a highlight for a lot of the guests at the shower!

HOW CUTE IS THIS!?!??!

Isn't it nice to have a florist in the family???

My very own mother helped out with this shower by making this poster using her cricut. We all signed a leaf with a word of encouragement for baby Trevor. Then the leaves will get attached to the branches and it will be hung for him in the nursery. So stinkin' cute!

This post is so long I will need to stop here. But another fantastic part of the day, besides the great weather, was the baby shower games. Instead of doing traditional games, my friend Ashley found lots of Minute-To-Win-It games with a baby-theme to them. They were a riot! Stay tuned for a later post on that. 

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

Diet Soda Cake :-)

One time I was trying to make cake pops and I ran out of eggs. But with a little help from google I learned how to solve the problem of making no-eggs cake. The secret is a can of soda! For real! 


If you are using a regular cake box mix you use the same amount of oil and mix. But do NOT add the water specified by the box. Instead replace with one can of soda for the eggs. 


You will have to cook the cake for an additional 5 to 10 minutes past what the box directions say. It will come out more moist than a regular cake and will be perfect for cake pops (even though it will make creating the cake pops extra messy). 


Use a light colored-soda for a light cake and a dark soda, like coke, for chocolate cake. This also helps eliminate calories if you use diet soda instead of eggs.


Those who know me well know I have a strong addiction to Diet Coke. So if there is a way to incorporate it into any of my recipes I'm all for it. ENJOY!


What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

Mint Oreo Cake Pops

I was at a friend's bridal shower a few weeks ago. I had made special bride & groom cake pops for the occasion but there were other awesome foods & desserts at the party too. There were these delicious pastel-colored oreo cake balls. As each guest took a bite into them they realized they weren't just oreo, they were mint-flavored too! MINT!! LOOOOOVE Mint! We were trying to figure out the secret. Was it mint extract? Was the melted chocolate that the oreo was dipped into mint-flavored? Well it dawned on me when I was at the grocery store recently. The cake balls (which don't actually have cake in them) are made from Mint Oreos! Amazing!!!! These are just as fun to work with as the regular cake balls. But a little less time consuming because you don't have to bake an actual cake. They work well if you need to freeze them too.


Ingredients:
1 18 oz. package of mint oreos

1 8 oz. package of cream cheese, softened
All additional supplies for making cake pops: melted chocolate, sticks, etc.


Directions:
Place oreos (several at a time) in a small food processor. [It's crazy how the green oreo creme filling just disappears!]
Once all the oreos are broken down mix in broken up pieces of soft cream cheese.
Mix with fork and spatula.
Use hands to form oreo balls. Approximately 30.
Freeze then proceed with regular cake pop directions.


What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)