Red Velvet Cupcake Eyeballs

I'm sure I've seen this idea a hundred times, though no particular one prompted these cupcakes. It's not a new idea, by any means, but I've added an extra dose of macabre by making them on red velvet cupcakes. That way, if the eyeballs aren't scary enough, the way your kids look after eating them will be! Case in point:

The bath tub looked like a crime scene after this! As if that weren't enough, this is by far my favorite red velvet recipe with a yummy cream cheese icing and surprise filling. Also makes an excellent valentines day treat- minus the optical orb.

CUPCAKES:

1 pkg red velvet cake mix, plus ingredients as called for on box

1 (3.9 oz) pkg instant chocolate pudding mix

1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese, softened

1/2 C butter or margarine, softened

1 pkg (16 oz) powdered sugar (about 4 cups)

1 C thawed Cool Whip

Prepare cake batter and bake as directed on package for 24 cupcakes, blending dry pudding mix into batter before spooning into muffin cups lined with cupcake paper and sprayed with cooking spray. Cool. Use the handle of a wooden spoon to make a hole in the top of each cupcake.

Beat cream cheese and butter in a large bowl with a mixer until well blended. Gradually beat in sugar. Whisk in cool whip. Spoon 1 1/2 C into sandwich or qt sized Ziploc bag; seal bag. Cut small corner off bottom of bag. Insert tip of bag into the holes on the cupcakes and pipe about 1 tbsp frosting into center of cupcake. Frost cupcakes with remaining frosting.

EYEBALLS:
I used LifeSaver gummies for the irises and upside down chocolate chips for the pupils. I used decorating frosting to pipe the veins.

Valentines day:

Top with shaved white chocolate curls or sprinkle red decorating sugar over a stencil to make a heart.

Jack Skellington Cupcakes

When Jennifer Fulton walked in with these we immediately recognized the iconic Halloween face of Jack Skellington of "The Nightmare before Christmas". And the little guys who may be a tad young for the movie will still recognize a fun, slightly creepy face- this was emphatically requested by her 3 year-old son. Added bonus: If you needed to make a bunch of cupcakes or just wanted to mix it up a bit, you could have a pile decorated half with these guys and half with the eyeballs found here.

1 batch chocolate cupcakes
White buttercream frosting
2 toothpicks
1 tube black decorator's icing


Frost the cupcakes with the buttercream frosting. For each cupcake, use the tip of a toothpick to lightly etch the outline of two large Jack Skellington eyes in the frosting . Slowly pipe black decorator's icing onto the etched lines and then fill in the inner circles. Use another toothpick to spread and smooth the icing. {Jenn used a baby spoon and said it worked great} Pipe on two short lines for a nose. Next, pipe a long line across the bottom of the cupcake for the mouth. Randomly top the mouth with a bunch of short icing barbs.

Easy Fruit and Cream Cheese Danish

I am loving following my cousin's blog- http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/! They recently posted this tasty recipe, though it looked SOO much better in the picture. It was quite lumpy when I made it, but it tasted AMAZING! Here's the original recipe{and the much more attractive picture!}. I was just gripping about trying to find a decent danish recipe and I love the slight cheating of using crescent roll dough for that soft, flaky wrap around a creamy and fruity filling. The filling could be awesome in the Drop Danish that I was griping in! This will be a regular special breakfast around here more often!

1 tube crescent roll dough {I really think the filling would fill 2 tubes worth...}

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1/2 C granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 tbsp all-purpose flour

1 C fresh fruit or pie filling {originally calls for blackberry, but we relished the apple I used}

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar, flour and vanilla. Set aside. Pop open crescent roll dough and unroll, leaving crescents in rectangles. On an ungreased baking sheet, lay the crescent roll rectangles together, lining them up width wise. Dough should be almost the entire length of a half sheet pan. Press edges together to even out edges and seal any holes. Cut 1/2" diagonal strips up each side of the dough. Carefully spread cream cheese filling down the center of the dough to be about 2-3 inches wide. Top with fruit. Fold 1/2" dough pieces up over filling alternating sides to get a braided pattern. You may have excess dough once you reach the end of the danish, so fold it in as best you can. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until filling is set and crescent dough is golden.

Icing:

1/2 C powdered sugar

2 tbsp heavy cream {I used 1% milk, cause it's what I had, then used a little extra powdered sugar to thicken it up}

1/8 tsp vanilla extract

Cool before removing from baking sheet. Once danish is cooled, remove to serving platter. In a small bowl, mix together powdered sugar, cream {or milk} and vanilla to create icing. You may need to add more cream/milk or powdered sugar to get the desired consistency. Drizzle icing over danish. Cut into pieces and serve.

Drop Danish

Ya know how it's impossible to get good pastries at home? Why is it that every bakery from here to Timbuktu can have these light, fluffy pastries just taunting you, but they cannot be duplicated at home??? Well, this may not be light and fluffy, but it will certainly give those evil tempters a run for their money! Sweet, crumbly danishes with jam centers all covered in a sugary glaze. Thanks, Mom, for teaching me so well- Sugar to start my day right!

1/4 C butter
2 tbsp sugar
2 C Bisquick
2/3 C milk
1/4 C jam
2/3 C powdered sugar
1 tbsp milk

Cut butter into Bisquick and sugar until crumbly. Stir in 2/3 C milk until dough forms. Beat 15 strokes. Drop 2" apart onto slightly greased cookie sheet. Make a dent in the top of each with a spoon and fill with 1 tbsp jam. Bake until golden; 10-15 minutes. Stir powdered sugar and 1 tbsp milk together, drizzle over warm rolls. Serve warm.

*Strawberry or blueberry cream cheese spreads are a tasty alternative to jam.

Samoa Brownies

These brownies were featured on my cousins' blog Sixsistersstuff and I'd been dying to try it. Ya know those tasty Samoa Girl Scout cookies? They are Hubbs favorite, so I was excited to try it for him. It was a super simple recipe and should have been cake to make, but that's not my style! It was a disaster from the beginning! I thought I had everything I needed and I was so wrong. I didn't have brownie mix, like it called for, so I just made some from scratch- about 3 times more effort! Then I realized that I needed 2 bags of caramel and I only had one! Blah. But by now, I was committed, so I pulled out my recipe for homemade caramel. Except that called for Karo syrup. Which I also did not have. Two seconds from giving up, I found another caramel recipe that says you can substitute honey for the Karo. Like I said. Disaster. Finally, we made everything that didn't need to be home made and put it all together with the substitute ingredients... Blah. Anyway, I was so frustrated I'm not even going to repost the recipe. I'm just going to give you the link here. It was rich and chewy and oh, so good, but I'm betting it would be even better had it been done right! I'm not giving up on you, Samoa's!!

Molten Chocolate Cakes

We used to live pretty close to a Chili's{and no other restaurant}, so occasionally we'd get dinner there. I don't know if we ever went there without picking up their Molten Chocolate Cake for dessert. We sometimes went there JUST for that dessert! I don't remember where I found this recipe, but I was over joyed that I could stay in the comfort of my own home and have this fudgy, gooey, thigh-enlarging treat at any time! Just saved myself a $6.29 habit! This comes together quick and with the convenient individual sizes, it's a favorite for FHE...

6 oz bittersweet chocolate{This is 1 C of chocolate chips. I don't usually have this on hand, so I usually use semi-sweet. It works fine, but go with bittersweet if you have the choice}
1/2 C butter
3 eggs
3 egg yolks
1 1/2 C powdered sugar
3/4 C flour

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Generously spray the wells of a floral cupcake pan with Pam. Set pan aside. Coarsely chop chocolate and combine with butter in a medium bowl. Microwave on high 1-2 minutes or until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth, stirring after each 30 second interval. Remove chocolate mix from microwave; cool 5 minutes. Whisk eggs and egg yolks into chocolate mixture. Add sugar and flour; mix just until moist.

Divide batter equally among wells. Bake 13-14 minutes or until outside edges are just set and center is still liquid. Do NOT over bake{or you'll just have cupcakes!}. When done, immediately, carefully invert pan. Gently press on tops and sides of wells to loosen cakes. Slowly lift pan, checking to see that all cakes have released before lifting pan completely. Serve with ice cream.

Kolaches

Trina Bower's husband requested these for the evening. They were like mini cherry pie cookies, so if you like cherry pie{or any kind of pie!}, you'll love these! From her in-laws...

2 sticks of butter
1 8 oz pkg cream cheese
2 1/2 C flour
1 12-oz can fruit pie filling of your choice

Cream together butter and cream cheese. Add flour and stir. Roll out dough to your desired thickness and cut out circles about the size of a half dollar. Push thumb in the middle of the cookie. Top with powdered sugar then add filling. Bake at 375 for about 10 minutes or until golden brown.

Applesauce Beignets

I have been craving a good beignet recipe ever since I watched The Princess and the Frog where Tiana has them as her specialty dish. I had this recipe which I'd made before but wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped to be. It had been ages since I'd tried it, so I thought I'd give it another go. I made one important addition to it (sour cream) and they went from ok to fantastic! I used my mom's homemade applesauce which I'd picked up while we were back home for vacation last month (THANK YOU, Mom!). My mom's applesauce is chunky, so there were tasty bits of apples waiting to surprise you. But, if you aren't lucky enough to have my mom within applesauce-stealing distance or don't wanna make your own, you could just use store bought applesauce and if your really determined dice some apples to add... Anyway, here it is!

2 1/2 C flour
2 tbsp sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp cinnamon
3 eggs
1 C applesauce
1/2 C milk
1/2 C sour cream

In a bowl, combine all dry ingredients. Blend well. In another bowl, mix eggs, applesauce, milk and sour cream. Add to dry ingredients and mix well. Heat oil on medium heat and drop batter by tablespoonful into oil. Fry desired brown-ness- about 3-5 minutes each side. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Eat immediately.

*** Tip! To check if your oil is hot, dip the handle end of a wooden spoon into it. If it bubbles around the wood, it's hot! Thanks to my hubby for that tidbit!
I bet these would be good topped with syrup, honey, more applesauce, etc. Or just as is.

Snicker's Salad

Molly Heaton brought this to her first Exchange. It is reminiscent of the Malad Salad that Brooke Haskett brought before, but the small changes make a big difference! Have you ever had one of those massive caramel apples that are rolled in peanuts and drizzled with chocolate? This is that, as a salad! Salty and sweet snickers with tart green apples all covered in a creamy pudding and Cool Whip goo.... Thumbs up!

1 pkg mini snickers, chopped
3-4 granny smith apples, chopped
1 sm pkg vanilla pudding
1 C milk
1 tub cool whip

Mix milk and pudding mix. Set in the fridge while chopping snickers and apples. Mix pudding with Cool whip; add apples and snickers. Refrigerate leftovers. If there are any.

Cherry O'lets

This recipe is very dear to us. Well, to Matt. This was one of those treats his grandma would make for him. I'd heard him talk about it once or twice before. It wasn't until she recently passed that I heard him talking about it in a way that attached so much fondness and memories of her. That's when I decided to hunt down the recipe from his cousin. Got it just in time to surprise him with it for his birthday! So this was his 'birthday cake' this year. I'm not typically a fan of cherries, but I actually really like this! Cherries aren't for everyone, but if you like anything cherry, you'd probably really enjoy this. Tastes very much like a 9x13" pan of The Big Cherry candy. The recipe was missing a step or two, so this is the recipe with what I did to fill in the difference.

2 C sugar
2/3 C evaporated milk
12 large marshmallows
1/2 C margarine
3/4-1 tsp salt
10 oz vanilla chips
2 tbsp cherry flavoring
Small bottle Maraschino cherries, chopped
1 tsp vanilla
12 oz milk chocolate chips
3/4 C peanut butter

1 lb salted peanuts (no skins) grated or chopped

Combine sugar, milk, marshmallows, margarine and salt. Heat on medium until it comes to a full boil. Boil 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla chips, cherry flavoring, chopped cherries and vanilla {actually, the vanilla is listed in the ingredient list, but not which layer it should be in. This is Matt's best guess...}. Spread in 9x13" pan lined with waxed paper. Chill for about an hour{this was vague, but the more it's chilled the easier it is to transport}.

Melt chocolate chips, peanut butter and peanuts. Spread 1/2 of mixture in the bottom of a greased 9x13" pan. Flip chilled cherry mixture onto top of chocolate layer, spread other half of chocolate mixture over top. Chill for at least 2 hours.

Cinnamon Bun Popcorn

I was exploring some of the sites that are linked to this page one day and came across this recipe at Our Best Bites. My hubby LOVES caramel popcorn and for some reason it's the one sweet I can actually usually resist, so I thought I'd give it a try for him. WORTH IT! I'll be honest, I've got a bunch of stuff to do and the kids should be waking up any minute, so I'm going to be lazy and just let you follow the link for the recipe.

I just wanted to share this with you with my stamp of approval. The only difference we made was peanuts instead of pecans and much more white chocolate. I might also try the variation that calls for a little salt... So much for being able to resist caramel popcorn....