Back to the good old days

I decided to bring out a childhood favorite for Memorial Day. I made Oreo Dirt Cake from here.

It turns out it wasn't just a childhood favorite for me, but some of my husband's friends as well. They made them in Home Economics and called them Dirt Cups. I went to the dollar store to get a beach bucket for the effect as well.

So excited that there are leftovers too! I let Portobello model the leftovers. :)

Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 package Oreo cookies

1 8 oz. tub Cream Cheese

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 Stick Softened Butter

3 1/2 cups milk

2 small pkg. Instant Vanilla Pudding

12 oz. Cool Whip

Method:
Cream together cream cheese, powdered sugar and softened butter. Mix 3 1/2 cups milk and instant pudding for 2 minutes and add 12 oz. Cool Whip. Add liquid mixture to creamed mixture.

Place Oreo cookies in large ziploc bag and crush to desired "dirt" texture with a rolling pin. Put 1 1/2 inches of cookie crumbs on the bottom of the sandpail or flower pot (lined with aluminum foil) and layer the pudding mixture and crumbs. End with pudding mixture. Refrigerate for 2 hours.

Just before serving, add 1 more inch of cookie crumbs and decorate with gummi worms. If you're using a flower pot, poke a few silk flowers - or real flowers with stems covered in foil - into the cake. (Large colored Gerbera daisies look best!) Serve with a colorful plastic trowel.

A play on words...

I decided to whip up some quick cute cupcakes for my friend Rachel’s birthday pub crawl this past Saturday.

I loved these Martha Stewart Vanilla Letter Cupcakes and knew I didn't have anything to cut R's out of sugar cookies.
However, I remembered I had bought this Williams Sonoma Cookie Letter Press kit.

So I baked a quick batch of funfetti cupcakes and decorated them with homemade sugar cookies. I may use box mix from time to time, but I always bake cookies from scratch. Funny enough I generally always have the ingredients to whip up cookies on hand as well, but I digress. I wanted to make them blue like Martha but I’m out of blue food coloring, so I settled with green. I secured a "Happy Birthday" cookie to a "Rachel" cookie with a bit of icing then stuck them in the cupcakes. They were a big hit and the surprise made my friend smile, all I could ask for. Pics of both sides below :)

Mooo-ve on over, its a Dairy Free Birthday Cake!

I have a coworker who is deathly allergic to all dairy and shellfish. He is so allergic that even stirring a spoon in a pot that contains dairy and then using that spoon on a nondairy pot sends him the hospital for days!

Today was his birthday and not the first time I've taken on the endeavor of baking for him. However, this is the first time I'm traveling for work and have to bake out of a hotel room with no supplies. Another coworker and I found a dairy free yellow cake mix and chocolate icing mix by Cherrybrook Kitchen and used the hotel stove. I doctored the icing to use the mix, vanilla soy milk, powdered sugar and peanut butter.

The cake turned out pretty darn good if I say so myself. The key to any good birthday cake is a moist cake and superb icing. You could definitely tell the cake mix contained rice flour versus cake flower, but it was nice and moist due to a tad bit of extra canola oil. The icing turned out great because peanut butter can make anything taste good! The whole team in the office was pleasantly surprised.

Inspiration: Hey Dude!

I'm an avid equestrian and I was thinking it could be cute to create horse-y cupcakes. I did a quick google search and came across some that I think I could handle and some that are so darn cute, I felt the need to share, even though I don't think I could ever replicate these!

These are from Blue Cupcake and I would be extremely proud to take these out to the barn for the pony kids!

I also came across these examples, and these might be more up my skill level.

Maybe for one of the next big horse show's I'll bring one of these "easier" examples along.

Hill Country BBQ Cupcakes

Check out my yelp review of Hill Country BBQ here: YELP

I knew right when I saw the case of cupcakes, I had to try one at the end of our meal.

We shared one peanut butter and jelly cupcake amongst five friends. After serious amounts of BBQ, we couldn't even finish it. However it was delish! There were a few reeces pieces on top of a mound of peanut butter icing. There was a nice helping of jelly inside a vanilla cupcake.