Caramel Dipped Devils Food Cupcake with Pecan Topping

I love to bake. I don't really like to cook that much but baking that's a different story. No cutting or peeling to be done. Just measuring, mixing, and putting in the oven to wait. It always smells so good and the result is normally delicious. I was making some cupcakes for dessert for a spaghetti dinner at the grade school and was trying to use up the rest of the ingredients I had opened to make one more batch of cupcakes. I found a devils food cake mix and I had some canned pumpkin, condensed milk, a a bag of caramels, and a few pecans. I thought that sounded like a turtle candy so I begin dumping everything into the mixing bowl. Here is the recipe:

Caramel dipped Devil's food Cake Cupcake with pecan topping

-Devils food cake mix
-a small can of pumpkin
-1/2 cup oil
-1 egg

Mix cake mix, pumpkin, oil, and egg with mixer. If too thick add a little water to the pumpkin can and pour a little at a time into the mixture until it's at almost at cake consistency. It can be a little thicker than normal.

Fill cupcake liners and bake at 350 degrees for approx 20 to 23 minutes. Check with toothpick to make sure they are done. The pumpkin makes the cupcakes really moist and you can't taste the pumpkin flavor.

Caramel and Pecan Topping

-bag of caramel bits(or 24 whole caramels)
-1/4 cup of condensed milk
-1/4 cup pecan bits

Melt caramel and condensed milk in candy melter. You could also do this in a saucepan but the candy melter is easier when you dip. Let caramel melt completely before dipping.

Let cupcakes cool. Lay out some wax paper. Dip top of cupcakes in the melted caramel. Immediately place a handful of pecans on top of hot caramel. Let stand for about 5 minutes.

ENJOY!

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

My favorite dessert of all time is my mom's pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing. It is so good it screams come and eat me while I sleep. After I eat a piece it makes me want to run a mile so I can eat another piece(and I hate to run). This recipe is great during fall but I like to enjoy it all year round. Here's the recipe so you can make a pumpkin cake or cupcake:

Pumpkin Cake
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinammon
4 eggs, well beaten
1 cup oil
2 cups canned pumpkin
Mix Well. Bake at 350 degrees. For cake - bake for 1 1/2 hours. For cupcakes - bake for about 25 minutes, check at 20 minutes with toothpick.

Cream Cheese Icing
1 stick butter
8 oz cream cheese
1 lb box conf sugar (if you don't buy boxes like me is 3 3/4 cups of conf sugar)
1 tsp vanilla
Cream butter and cream cheese together. Beat in Conf Sugar. Add vanilla.

Let cake cool and frost. ENJOY!

To create swirly frosting on your cupcake buy a pack of cake decorator bags. Cut the end off about 1/2 inch up and fill with frosting. Squeeze frosting to the bottom of the bag and swirl onto cupcake starting on outside of cupcake and working inward. YUM.

Easiest Coconut Bon Bon Recipe

About 10 years ago I went to a candy making class and they gave us a book of recipes. I love coconut so one of the first ones I tried was the coconut bon bon recipe. It looked easy and only had 3 ingredients so that was my kind of recipe. After I tried it once I was addicted. I have made these coconut bon bons for every type of event and with every color chocolate wafer there is. This is equally good with chocolate and vanilla melts in my opinion. I made some recently for work for valentine's so I thought I would share these easy treats.

Here is the 3 ingredients you need:

14 oz - coconut

1 cup - light corn syrup

Chocolate melts

Here is what you do:

1.) Pour coconut in bowl

2.) Pour corn syrup in microwave safe dish.

3.) Heat corn syrup for 1 minute in microwave

4.) Pour corn syrup over coconut and mix well

5.) Refrigerate a couple hours(I usually refrigerate overnight but it is not necessary)

6.) Remove from fridge and form coconut mixture into balls and place on wax paper

7.) Melt chocolate

8.) Dip coconut balls into melted chocolate

9.) Decorate as desired or just leave as is

When I make these for parties they are always the first thing to go. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries - Yummy

It's been a while since I have blogged but I assure you I have been very busy swapping, crafting, cleaning, painting, goingn to ballgames, etc....

Natalie was off on spring break so we decided to have a picnic. We made chocolate covered strawberries. They were delicious and so easy. It did take a little thinking to figure out how we would put them in the picnic basket without squishing them. Walleh! Egg Carton did the job perfectly. I even got another carton to take some to my mom and family. Wouldn't this be cute in a pink carton decorated with valentines paper for a valentine gift for someone. So CUTE!!! I would love to receive it :)

Pancake Cups - Yummy!

I visited Todays Creative Blog a day or so ago like I do just about everyday and I saw Sycamore Stirrings website(http://sycamorestirrings.blogspot.com/). She has some very creative food ideas that my child will love!

This morning we tried the pancake cups. They are a lot of fun and so easy to make. I love fun and easy!! I should have photographed them on a little nicer plate but they were so yummy I was doing good to get this shot :). Preheat oven to 350. Then all you do is get some microwave pancakes and microwave them like you normally would in the microwave to make them flexible. Then smoosh them down in the muffin cups to make little pancake bowls. Bake for about 3 to 4 minutes. Take them out and fill them with whatever you would like. We did strawberries and whip cream. Wouldn't these be adorable for a brunch on a cupcake stand? I think so.

New Food: Rachel Ray

Ritzy White Pizza http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/ritzy-white-pizza/

I love to watch Rachel Ray. She has a semi-new feature on her webstie called the food crew. I tried one of the recipes for Arugula. I thought it was really good. I had never tasted Arugula before or fontina cheese. I did substitute the proscuitto for ham. I recommend this recipe but I might use mozarella next time because the fontina is quite expensive.

Christmas Mice - Preschool Christmas Party

Thought I should give some instructions on the Mice posted earlier. We took these Christmas Mice to the preschool for the christmas party. They turned out really cute and the kids had a great time with them. They were chasing each other with them and talking to them. It was a lot of fun. To make these you simply need cherries with stems, chocolate for dipping, hershey kisses, oreo double stuff cookies, slivered almonds, and red glaze icing. You drain the cherries and remove as much excess liquid as possible, dip them in melted chocolate and place on half of an oreo. then you place 2 slivered almonds in between the hershey kiss and the cherry, draw on eyes with the red icing and there you have a cute little edible mouse. And it's fun to chase people with. Note**The one pictured apparently lost an ear!

More Halloween Food

Here are some more halloween treats I made for the party. Can of Worms, Magic Wands, Witch Hats. The Can of Worms are just gummies put in a clean can, The magic wands are chocolate covered pretzels with sprinkles, and the Witch Hats are Upsidedown Shortbread Striped cookies with a hershey kiss glued on with orange icing.

Halloween Party Food

Here are some of the things I made for the halloween party that we had today. I made name tags for each food item. Here are the Bone Chips and Blood Salsa, Witch Fingers, and Snake Rolls.

Altered Wooden Spools - Cookie Stand

Here is an old Wooden Spool I got at a yard sale. I took it and attached two wooden pieces on top and bottom with epoxy glue and painted it red. I found the glass hood at a store. It was supposed to be for a cheese ball. I stack cookies under the glass and they look cute.

Neighbor Christmas Gifts - 2006

Just a quick update to show what I delivered to the neighbors last year for Christmas. I had a cookie exchange party and took the cookies from it and put them in a "new clean" dustpan and attached the poem tag. I found this idea from http://www.organizedchristmas.com/ I just love that site. So many great christmas ideas. You should check it out!