Dark Chocolate Cake with Dark Chocolate Chips and White Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

We had our last spring birthday celebration around here recently.  My son requested dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate chips and white chocolate frosting.  After some thought, I decided to add some melted white chocolate to buttercream frosting.  It actually worked pretty well!  After baking the cake, which was simply a dark chocolate cake mix with some dark chocolate chips added in, I made my favorite buttercream frosting recipe.  Then I melted 6 oz. of Baker's White Chocolate.  I added the white chocolate gradually, since it was much warmer than the frosting, so as to sort of temper it.  The frosting really tasted good.  I do believe I'll do this again.  I'm sure that this could be a way to make some chocolate buttercream frosting as well.  Writing on cake isn't the easiest thing to do.  Maybe I'll have it down before they are all grown up.

Butterfly Cupcakes

We have most of our birthday celebrations in the spring here.  I asked the birthday girl what she wanted for her birthday, cake or cupcakes, flowers or butterflies or princess.  First, she had been asking for a Justin Bieber cake...well, I'm not that talented.  So these were the options I gave her and she settled on butterflies.  I saw cupcake liners that looked like flowers and was struck with an idea.  Bake the cupcakes in the flower liners and use the butterfly decorations to turn it into butterflies that were sitting on flowers.  I used a box mix for the cupcakes but made my own butter cream frosting, a recipe I've been using for a few years now.  I got the butterfly decorations, the pink gel  that I used for the butterfly body and the cupcake liners from Walmart, but they are by Wilton.  I missed taking pictures of the packages before using them.  Forgive me for being human, but this Momma will use products that can simplify making a birthday special for my kids when I also have to make sure that school happens for the non-birthday kids and meal times happen too.

 Here's the cupcake liners.

The butterflies resting on the light purple and pink flowers.

I filled a plastic zipper bag with the frosting and cut a bottom corner off to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes.  Then I positioned the butterfly wings on the frosting.  Then I used the glitter gel to pipe the butterfly body.  They were a hit!  Thank you, Wilton, for making my life just a little bit easier!

Baby's 1st Birthday and Her Cake is...Oreo Pudding Poke Cake!

We recently celebrated baby's 1st birthday.  She hasn't really been a fussy eater, so I was challenged in deciding what to make for her meals.  See, we have a tradition around here of the birthday person choosing the meals for their birthday.  So I needed help from the family in deciding what we were going to eat for baby's birthday. 

We settled on cinnamon sugar blintzes for breakfast, which she hadn't had yet.  We love blintzes!  They are rather simple, but they take time to cook enough for each person.  So it ends up taking me, or the person who jumps in and helps me, usually Steve, about an hour to cook and serve everyone.  For that reason alone, we only do them on occasion.  She seemed to enjoy her blintz.

Then for lunch we treated ourselves to some Papa John's pizza, which the kids tell me is second to my homemade pizza.

For dinner, we had panko breaded tilapia (which sometimes is nice to have on hand from our local warehouse store)and sauteed veggies.  I have sauteed frozen green beans many times and change it up each time.  This time around, I had bought some red peppers that were a manager's sale for $.99/lb.  I also had bought some green squash after lunch on my weekly grocery trip.  So, Steve suggested adding both of them to the green beans this time.  Such a good idea!  No real recipe, just more or less throwing good things together to make them even better.  But, I realize that a recipe format might be easier.  So here it is:

Ingredients:

1/2 c unsalted butter
Approx 3 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
2 green squash, halved and sliced lengthwise
3 red peppers, sliced lengthwise
1 onion. sliced
2 - 3 generous handfuls of frozen petite green beans (I get these in bulk from our warehouse store)
2 - 3 cloves of garlic chopped (or a couple teaspoons of pre-chopped garlic)
Fresh ground sea salt, to taste
Fresh ground pepper, to taste

Here I had sliced lengthwise the green squash, red bell peppers and onion.

Melt the butter and add the extra virgin olive oil.  Saute the onions and garlic for about 2 minutes.  Add the rest of the veggies.

And saute until tender.  Doesn't that look good?  If you like your squash firmer, just add it a little later.

She sure thought her dinner was good!  See that cupcake on her shirt?  Totally unplanned!  Steve dressed her in that outfit in the morning.  Good job, right?

Now, her birthday cake!  I got this inspiration from Pinterest.  The link that had been pinned lead me to Chef-in-training, but she got it from The Country Cook.

Ingredients:

1 Box Chocolate Cake Mix

Ingredients needed to make cake (usually eggs, oil and water)

2 (4 oz.)packages of Instant Oreo pudding

4 cups milk (2% or higher)

Crushed Oreo Cookies (optional)

Directions

Make cake mix according to directions and bake in a well-greased 9x13 pan (I use the nonstick spray that has flour in it).

Just before cake is done, start making pudding. In a medium bowl, add milk to pudding mixture and continue to whisk until most of the lumps are removed. Let pudding mixture sit for about 2 minutes. You want it to thicken slightly so it isn't overly runny but not fully thickened into pudding.

Pour pudding mixture over warm cake.

When cake is finished, while still warm, poke holes all over cake (about 1-inch) intervals using a wooden spoon handle or a straw.  (I didn't get any pictures of thus, but Brandie, aka, The Country Cook did)

Spread it out with a spoon and gently push down on the pudding to help get it into the holes.
Allow the cake to cool for several minutes on the counter then put into the fridge to set up. About an hour.

Once it is set, top with crushed Oreo cookies

Cook’s Note: This is great with so many different combinations; yellow or white cake mix with chocolate pudding is a good one. The Oreo pudding combination is our favorite.

Enjoy!

Steve helped make and bake the cake while I was checking out at the grocery store and making my way home with birthday balloons and groceries.  We used a dark chocolate cake mix.  I wanted her first taste of chocolate to be a good one, as well as memorable.  Here's what the cake looked like after poking the holes with the wooden spoon handle and pouring the Oreo pudding over top.

Since it's Oreo's 100th birthday, and I had found these on sale a week or two ago, we used them.  How appropriate!

My 12-year-old son crushed the Oreo's in a Ziploc bag with one of my pans.

My 10-year-old daughter sprinkled the crushed Oreo's over the cake.

My 7-year-old daughter was my helper at the store.  My little dilemma in deciding to make a cake that doesn't leave room for writing on the top was, how to identify that this is a 1st Birthday Cake.  We had decided to get these letter candles that I had seen on a previous grocery trip, and she had suggested that we get the 1 too.  Smart girl!  Warning though, the letter candles are basically a one time use candle set.  The letters end up melting away too quick to use again.  No biggie.

Apparently the B candle looked yummy!

Finger in the cake!

Her first official taste of chocolate!

Oh yea baby!  That was good!

Well, would this make you happy?

She seemed to think it was good enough to lick the plate!

Definitely a happy birthday cake for her!  To be honest, I think a couple of us had a second helping.  Believe me, it will be worth your time to try and make this cake.  Thank you for sharing the recipe Brandie!

Another Birthday Celebrated

We recently celebrated another birthday here! We have a tradition that the birthday person gets to pick the meals for the day. So, my dear son decided that we were going to have Cinnamon Blintzes for breakfast, Jambalaya for lunch and Papa John's for dinner! Definitely some favorites around here. He said that he chose those meals because we haven't had them in while. He also wanted a Bakugon Cake. That was going to be a challenge for me since I couldn't order one from the bakery.



Cinnamon Blintzes are really, really good and really easy to make. But, they do take time. I didn't think about taking any pictures of them, mostly because I was busy making them.



Jambalaya is wonderful! A friend of ours who happens to have a Creole background introduced us to it. I haven't looked for a recipe to make it, but have use the mix by Zatarain's. I did two pots. One mild, (picture on the top) made with smoked beef sausage and the other, (picture on the bottom) spicy Creole style with Andouille sausage! The kids absolutely love the mild version, except for my youngest with the severe food allergies. The birthday boy tried the spicy version and really liked it, but the second serving ended up being a little too much for him.










I don't need to say much about Papa John's except for the fact that the order got a little mixed up. But, after I called to let them know of the mix up, they sent the correct pizza, so we got 3 for the price of 2! Can't really complain about that!



Now the Bakugon cake had me a little baffled! I go to the local Party City store to get the specialty items that I can't get at Target, Walmart, or the grocery store. Nobody had any cake topper type stuff for Bakugon. So I got an idea while I was standing in the isle at Party City. There was a large Bakugon key chain. I figured, well, I could use that as a topper and put it on a doilie so as to not contaminate the cake. Yes, I actually have to think of that. I think it worked pretty good! At least he was pleased with it! He specified a triple chocolate cake, and that was what he got!



All in all, a fun day!

Neeley's Cookies and Cream Cake

I made the Neeley's Cookies and Cream Cake the other day for the most recent birthday and it was really good! It was so good, that it lasted the night of the birthday and one more day. It is now gone! I served it with a bit of cookies and cream ice cream on the side. Empty plates! Worth making again! I think it was the first birthday cake I've made from scratch. I've always used the convenience of the cake mixes or the bakery. It was easy to make. After icing the bottom layer, it looked a bit like an Oreo!

I decided to pour the icing over the top of the cake. I had several people talking to me while I was counting the cups of powdered sugar, so I was either right on or just under. The icing turned out to be pourable. I need some practice on writing freehand on cakes though.

I need to make those Oreo truffles again. I thought I took some pictures, but haven't been able to find them.

I've done some cookies and cream brownies recently too that I'll have to make again.