2011: A Year in Review - Top Blog Posts

I started the year strong, with lots of blog posts, but I had a huge lull from May to November. Despite that, there were some posts that stood out as the most visited. Here they are again, in case you missed them!

5. Chocolate Chip Irish Creme Cupcakes: These are some of the best cupcakes I have ever tasted!

4. Tuesday Tutorial: Cupcake Tower: I have now made several of these and they are a lot of fun!

3. Soccer Party Printables: Taking a queue from TomKat Studios, I designed my own soccer cupcake toppers and posted them as a free download!

2. Mickey Mouse Birthday Party: I made a cupcake tower, homemade cupcakes and lot of other Mickey shaped goodies!


1. Recipe Review: Cinnamon Roll Pancakes from Recipe Girl: I didn't even have time to take pictures of my final product, but this post was a big hit! The pancakes were an even bigger hit. My family went nuts over them!

Well, that about does it for my top 5 blog posts of 2011. Here's to an even better 2012!

Roundup of Christmas Cookie Recipes

I have been a buys little baker lately. I have a few favorites recipes that I make every year around the holidays, but I try to add in a few news one here and there to see if they could become favorites. Every year I make shortbread cookies from an old family recipe, and oatmeal craisin cookies from a Southern Living at Home book that I have. Last year I added Candy Cane Kiss sugar cookies (pictured above) from Recipe Girl to my annual baking.

This year I decided to try these:

Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Peppermint Frosting. I used the whoopie pie recipe posted on bakerella.com, but I bought Betty Crocker Peoppermint Frosting to pipe between the cookies. I used a Silpat liner instead of parchment paper and it worked like a dream!  I haven't tried these yet, but I rolled the edges in red and green sprinkles so they look very festive!

Butter Toffee Cookies from recipegirl.com. Instead of sprinkling bright white sugar on top, I dipped half the cookie in milk chocolate. They look fancy!

Peanut Brittle from recipegirl.com. This was my first attempt at peanut brittle. I bought a new candy thermometer, just for this recipe. It turned out awesome!

Peanut Butter Blossoms from allrecipes.com. These are fantastic! The recipe made about 7 dozen cookies too!

Holiday Baking Spread 2011

(ETA: I also made chewy coconut cookies and eggnog pound cake. Both were awesome!)

For breakfast I'm going to make these to go with our traditional cinnamon rolls:

 Blueberry Danish Puff from Chef in Training

The Puff I made at Thanksgiving

and Mini Maple Pancake Muffins from Bakerella.

These are so great when you have a crowd for breakfast!

I'm looking forward to eating all of these yummy treats, but I'm not looking forward to the diet I'm going to be on in January!

Merry Christmas!!! 

Homemade Oatmeal Cream Pies

Last fall I bought a Taste of Home magazine in the grocery store checkout isle. It was a Fall Baking Cookbook with 200 "Oven Fresh Treats" inside. I initially thought that I would try several of the recipes, because they all looked so scrumptious! The problem was that after I made this recipe, I didn't need to make anything else! Every time I made these oatmeal cream pies, they disappeared with requests for more! I've now made them several times, and I now have my own version, which is only slightly different from the original.  The way I make them, you can get almost 40 sandwich cookies from each batch, but don't try to make a double batch unless you have a HUGE mixer. This recipe has a lot of batter!

Oatmeal Cream Pies

Adapted from Taste of Home

Cookie:

1 1/2 C.   Shortening

1 1/3 C.   Dark Brown Sugar

1 1/3 C.   Light Brown Sugar

         4     Eggs

 1 Tbsp.   Vanilla Extract  ( I use the good stuff, not imitation)

2 1/4 C.   All Purpose Flour

    2 tsp.   Ground Cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp. Baking Soda

     1 tsp.  Salt

  1/2 tsp.  Ground Nutmeg

        4C.  Old-fashioned Oats 

Filling:

   3/4 C.  Shortening

      3 C.  Confectioner's Sugar

    1 Jar   (7 oz.) Marshmallow creme

1-2 Tbsp. Milk

Directions: Cream the shortening and sugars together in your mixer bowl until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and the eggs 1 at a time, beating well and scraping the bowl with a spatula between each one. 

In a separate bowl combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg and stir with a whisk. Add these dry ingredients to the wet ingredients already in your mixer bowl and mix slowly. Stir in the oats by hand. 

Using a small cookie scoop (for similar shape and sized cookies) drop the cookies onto a non-stick cookie sheet (or a lightly greased cookie sheet) and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Let the cookies cool on the tray for a few minutes before removing them to wire racks to cool completely. 

Once the cookies are cooled completely, put the filling mixture into a piping bag (or ziploc bag with the corner snipped off) and pipe a swirl on half of the cookies like this: 

 Don't get too close to the edges because, if you do, the cream will spill out when you put the top on!

When you are done you should have about 38-39  Oatmeal Cream Pies to devour ravenously enjoy! I promise, you will never want another Little Debbie oatmeal cream pie again!

Chocolate Chip Irish Creme Cupcakes with Bailey's Buttercream Frosting

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

If you have Irish heritage, I'm sure you've been looking forward to this day for a while. It's a great day to eat stew or corn beef and cabbage, and drink lots of beer! Since we aren't as young as we once were and can't drink ourselves silly anymore  we don't have a lot of Irish heritage, we don't really make a big deal of St. Patrick's Day. I did want to do something though, so I decided to bake something...shocking, I know! I found this post from Recipe Girl (one of my favorite go-to blogs) for Irish Creme Cupcakes with Bailey's Buttercream frosting. How could I say no to that? We LOVE Bailey's around here, only we tend to only drink it around Christmas time for some reason.

So first I had to go the ABC store, because we didn't have any Bailey's on hand. I decided to buy some Creme de Menthe as well to maybe put on top of the frosting (which didn't turn out so well). The only other thing I needed was mini-chocolate chips, which was easily remedied with a quick trip to Walmart. Let the baking begin!

Fresh out of the the oven

The cupcakes baked up nice and moist. I think that this was the first time I've made cupcakes with cream cheese in the batter, and I loved it! :)   The frosting is basically a simple buttercream with 4 Tbsp. of Bailey's in it. Did I mention these aren't for children? The Bailey's flavor is definitely stronger in the frosting, but it is oh so yummy!  I sprinkled the frosting with green sugar and then made these cupcake toppers from TomKat Studios and voila! The perfect adult cupcake for St. Patrick's Day!

Recipe Review: Cinnamon Roll Pancakes from Recipe Girl

First thing this morning I turned on my computer and looked at my Google Reader, which pulls in new blog posts from the blogs I subscribe to. The first one to catch my eye was from Recipegirl.com. She shared a recipe for Cinnamon roll pancakes in honor of National Pancake Day! Who knew there was such a day? I sure didn't, but I'm glad Recipe Girl did!

I decided to make these for dinner since I didn't have enough ingredients on hand to make them for breakfast. Come to think of it, all I was missing was enough butter, but I stocked up on a few other essentials like milk, eggs, and powdered sugar. Fortunately, I did so without having to leave the house! My sweet hubby stopped at the store on the way home and got here just in time for me to make the yummy cream cheese glaze.

I wish I had the forethought to take pictures of these while I was making them, but Recipegirl did a great job with hers. Check them out when you click to find the recipe! There were a couple of steps to this recipe, but none of it was difficult. Put some stuff in a bowl, and wisk it together. Then put some more stuff in another bowl, and wisk it. So easy!!!

The hard part was coordinating all of the steps. I'm usually a baker, not a cook, so my timing is not always good. I made the batter and the cinnamon/sugar "filling" before I started cooking the pancakes but had to wait for butter to make the glaze. I tried to put the filling in a plastic bag and didn't cut the hole big enough  so the bag busted when I squeezed too hard. Then I tried a pastry bag with a piping tip, and the tip wasn't big enough. I changed out the tip and thinned the filling with a little milk and finally made it all work before I burned the pancakes.

The mess occurred when I flipped the pancakes. I'm not sure if I did something wrong, like maybe had the heat of the stove too high, but the cinnamon filling oozed all over the griddle when I flipped the pancakes. It then started to smoke  after I removed the pancakes. Fortunately, by that time, I had run out of filling and we were making the rest of the pancakes without. So my hubby cleaned the griddle and we started fresh. I put the already cooked pancakes in a messy stack on a plate (burning my thumb on boiling sugar) and put them in the microwave on warm, (probably not my best idea!). When I took them out to serve, they were all stuck together by warm, goey cinnamon. Thankfully, my kids don't mind messy. I gave them each a few cinnamon roll  pancakes and topped them with the cream cheese glaze and they were instantly in heaven...a few minutes later, the bacon was ready!

Both of my older kids (the ones who talk) said this was their very favorite pancake recipe they'd ever had. My oldest son just went on and on about how good they were. Hubby was really wowed by the cream cheese glaze too! I have to admit, that the finished product was well worth the effort and I am glad I tried it!  Next time though, I'll be putting the batter into muffin cups and stirring in the cinnamon filling before baking, or maybe sprinkling it on top.

Let me know if you make some of these! I'd love to hear about it!

Brownie Bites from Scratch

I have been craving chocolate something fierce lately. Since I worked out 4 out of 5 days this week, I decided to indulge myself tonight. Besides, I was tapping into my inner Betty Crocker already today.

I've used this recipe a few times now and just love it. It's a recipe from Betty Feezor who used to be on TV. Because I always have the ingredients on hand, I never buy brownie mixes anymore!

Scratch Brownies from Betty Feezor via Cyndi Allison

• 1 cup butter or margarine (melted)
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla flavoring
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup cocoa
• 2 cups plain flour
• optional - nuts, raisins, chocolate chunks, caramel pieces

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream margarine and sugar. This works well with a mixer, but you can do it by hand.
3. After the creaming stage, do switch to a spoon for mixing. Brownies tend to get tough if worked too much.
4. Add the vanilla and eggs and mix just until smooth.
5. Pour in cocoa and flour. Again, mix until smooth and lumps are broken up. But, don't go to wild on the mixing.
6. If you want to add extras, just fold those in easily.
7. Bake for 18-20 minutes in 2 pans size 8 inches by 8 inches. You can use a larger pan like the 9 x 9 and cook for a little longer-25 to 30 minutes at 350 degrees F. If you use a single pan, then the Scratch Brownies are thicker.

I have made this recipe in an 8x8 pan and they turned out fantastic. Tonight I split the batter into two bowls and added white chocolate chips to one, and Andes mint chunks to the other. Then I scooped the batter into greased mini-cupcake pans and baked them for about 14-15 minutes. The result was delicious, homemade brownie bites, perfect for indulging my chocolate craving!