Strawberries and Cream Pie

These babies are in season. That means that there was no way I could pass them up and not use them in my baking. So I found this to make on a hot Friday afternoon. No bake, sweet, rich, yet somehow light. It was the perfect summery dessert.

What you'll need:
-1 graham cracker pie crust
- 2 8 oz packages of cream cheese, room temperature
- 2 cups heavy cream + 1 tablespoon
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 carton of strawberries, sliced
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips.

To Make:

- In a mixer, beat cream until it peaks.
- In a separate bowl, cream together the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla
- Fold in about 1/3 of the cream into the cream cheese mixture to mix, then fold in the rest.


I would recommend you taste this mixture. Only because it's delicious and you might not be able to stop eating it. Noah and I had issues when we made this. Just look at it. Doesn't it look yummy?

-Okay, now that you've hopefully tested this, pour the mixture into the pie crust, then top with strawberries.

One could stop right there. You would have a delicious strawberry pie and have no regrets. But since I'm a chocoholic, I had to melt chocolate chips and top the pie. The only issue was that they didn't get liquidy enough to really drizzle over the pie, so it would be smart to melt them with a tablespoon of cream.

The final product may have not been beautiful, but it was delicious. The Couets enjoyed it, and Noah and I had fun making it. We even had time for a pie fight.

Happy summer and enjoy!

Cupcakes, Cupcakes and... Oh Yeah, Cupcakes

So as of late, I haven't exactly been trying out new recipes to share on here. I've been baking lots and lots of simple cupcakes. First I had my cousin's wedding party, and I made her more of those seashell cupcakes*. Then Noah had a grad party... Then my friend Erin had a beginning of the summer party. You'd think I'd be all cupcaked out. You're wrong. I'm just looking forward to spending the summer trying out different kinds of cupcakes. I'm ready to experiment and I'd love suggestions!

So here are some pictures of cupcakes I've made or helped make recently.

Noah's grad party

Erin's party. 

*Not pictured, seashell cupcakes.

S'mores Pizza

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I don't think that I need to say anything more after showing you that. Seriously. If you don't think that looks delicious, then there's something wrong with you.

So this little experiment happened almost a month ago, but I decided to finally blog about it now, because it's crappy out and I need something to do before I stuff my face with pizza. I wish I was stuffing my face with this pizza.

What you'll need:

• One tube of Pillsbury pizza dough, or whatever brand you prefer
• 1 bag of chocolate chips
• Mini marshmallows
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 2 tablespoons softened butter
• 1/4 cup flour

To make:

- Prepare the pizza dough according to directions on tube.

-Dump the entire bag of chocolate chips on top of prepared crust, following with as many marshmallows as you'd like.

-In a bowl combine the brown sugar, oats, butter and flour. Sprinkle mixture on top of pizza.

- Bake for ten minutes, then enjoy!

Before...

After. With a bite taken.

Seashell Cupcakes

So... Last week was a long week. School is stressful on a whole multitude of levels. The only thing that got me through Friday was the prospect of these.

Aren't they adorable?! Come on, tell me they're adorable... I came home on Friday and decided to get baking. I made these for my cousin Cecilia's wedding shower that was the next day, Saturday. She's getting married next month in Iowa, but the wedding shower was beach themed, so it was time to be a little creative!

Of course, I had help with this project. Morgan took care of most of the seashells which were made with Wilton Candy Melts in a Wilton Candy Seashell mold. Those candy molds are fun to play with and they're available at almost ever craft store. I also had help from my awesome boyfriend, Noah. Look at us, rocking some aprons.

Since I had to make forty eight cupcakes, and I wanted to make they were tasty, I simply used boxed cake mix for the cupcakes. My new favorite method is to put all the batter in a large Ziploc bag then cut off the bottom corner to pipe the batter into the cupcake liners. It's so much neater than spooning batter into the liners, and I'm a messy baker as is.

Noah really likes his cupcake batter.

For the frosting, I simply used my favorite butter cream frosting recipe, found here. I dyed the frosting light blue and piped the frosting to kinda look like waves. The project was really easy and the results were phenomenal. I received many wonderful comments at the shower and I appreciated every single one of them. I'm glad my baking addiction can benefit others in some way.

As always, enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Peanut Butter Cups

Hey! Take a look at my weekend.

Oh yeah. You got that right. It's the perfectly heavenly combination of my three favorite things: peanut butter, cookie dough, and chocolate. I happened to get this recipe from my favorite food blog. This woman is probably the biggest fuel to my baking addiction. I try out a ton of her recipes. I promise to blog about them today between intervals of dancing to James Taylor and Neil Diamond with my little sister, Alaina. She really seems to love to dance with me... That probably has to do with the fact that I make silly faces while lip-syncing.
Anyways... On to these amazing things!

You can either click the link, or I'll just re-post the recipe here.

What you'll need:

• 2 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

-In a small saucepan, warm butter until melted. Whisk in the 1/3 cup of brown sugar until fully dissolved, then let the mixture bubble for a minute or two. 

-Remove pan from heat then whisk in peanut butter, then vanilla. The mixture will be very liquidy, let it set for twenty minutes to cool fully.

- Line a mini cupcake pan with 24  mini cupcake liners. Melt 1 1/4 cups of milk chocolate chips in the microwave. Then pour about one teaspoon of chocolate in each liner and using a pastry brush (or in my case, a rubbery basting brush thing, that looked more like a squid, but was fun to play with) and brush the chocolate around and up the sides of the liner. Place in freezer for twenty minutes to harden.

-Once heated mixture has cooled, whisk in powdered sugar, salt and flour and combine until just a few lumps remain. Then fold in the chocolate chips, and place the mixture in the fridge for fifteen minutes so the mixture can solidify. 

- Take mixture out of fridge and the chocolate cups out of the freezer. Roll about one teaspoon of the cookie dough mixture into a ball and place in the chocolate cups. 

-Melt the remaining chocolate and top the chocolate cups. Then place back in the freezer for fifteen minutes.

After that, feel free to enjoy! I had to keep these in the fridge because they were melty, but they were devoured all the same. I made these on Saturday with my two amazing friends Chelsea and Meghan and by Sunday they were gone. I'm definitely guilty of eating one or twelve... I can't wait to make these again.