Pecan Nut Cups

If you have never tired these, they are ridiculously delicious. I keep getting asked for the recipe over and over again. Highly recommend you make for just about any occasion, beware as they are very addictive! They are a lot simpler to make then you may think and are sure to impress as a gift or dessert.

 

For the Dough:

1 stick butter (softened)

3oz cream cheese (softened)

1 cup flour

Filling:

3/4 cup chopped nuts

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp butter

1 egg

1/4 tsp  vanilla

Instructions:

Combine dough ingredients and mix with hands or the dough hook on your mixer until combined and a ball forms. No need to let it rest. Use a mini cupcake pan and divide the dough into 24 sections. Lightly spray the pan with butter spray although if you do not have any on hand, they turn out fine without the spray. You still will need to use a toothpick to get them out either way. Press the dough into each section of the mini cupcake pan to form a little cup.

Combine all filling ingredients and use a spoon to fill each cup. Bake for about 30 minutes at 350. Keep an eye on them, they are done when you see the crust is brown. Use a toothpick to gently get each nut cup out of your pan.

Optional: Roll each pecan nut cup in powdered sugar, as you can see this is my daughter's favorite step. Enjoy!

Tips for Perfect Cake Pops

Cake Pops have certainly gained lots of popularity over the last year or two. I often find that people are very intimidated to make them, but they are a lot simpler to make than you think.

Here are some tips for Perfect Cake Pops:

1) Cake Pops are simply your favorite cake crumbled up and mixed with your favorite frosting that is then dipped into melted chocolate. Tip one is to check how moist your cake is! Don't follow a standard recipe that tells you to ad x amount of cake and x amount of frosting. If you have a moist cake (ex. you used one of those cake mixes with pudding mix in it) you will barely need any frosting at all!

2) The most tedious and messy part of making cake pops is crumbling the cake and then mixing in the frosting. Guess what....you can use your mixer or even a food processor to save you time! I take the cake and dump it right into my Kitchenaid mixer and let it do all the work. Then I add in frosting a little at a time until the texture is just moist enough to hold a ball shape, that's it!

3) Cake pops look a lot more professional when they are all the same size. A mini cookie scoop looks great, but if you don't have one play around with your measuring spoons. You might just find that one tablespoon + one teaspoon makes you your perfect size cake pop or perhaps you want to go a little bigger or smaller. Either way works, but the measuring spoons help make sure you have a consistent size for each cake pop!

4) Allowing yourself enough time is huge. You can't roll out balls, put a stick in them and then dip them in chocolate. You have to roll out your balls and let them chill. While they are chilling melt your chocolate, dip part of the stick in and then put the stick into the cake pop. Then let them chill again! This will ensure they don't fall off the stick because your chocolate is adhering to your cake pop.

5) Temperature is key when it comes to your chocolate. Overheat it and you will have a clumpy mess! You can get fancy and use a double broiler, but the simplest thing I find to use is your microwave. I like to use a glass for cake pops or you can even use a coffee mug. You don't want your pool of chocolate to be too shallow when you dip so I find using a glass or mug works best, especially when you want more than one color. Simply put your chocolate or candy melting wafers into your glass or mug and heat in the microwave. Stir about every 15-30 seconds and then keep heating until smooth.

Tinkerbell Cupcakes

Doing theme cupcakes can be a challenge sometimes, but keep it simple! There are plenty of free templates for cupcake toppers if you don't have a Cricut machine, or you can also try buying some on Etsy.com or at the party store. Here is an example of some Tinkerbell cupcakes we did for a friend for her daughter's birthday party. We did Vanilla cake topped with green frosting, pearls and Tinkerbell themed cupcake toppers. Came out pretty cute!

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes!

The Midwest is freezing right now, luckily these delicious ice cream cone cupcakes can be enjoyed all year round! My girls were extremely excited to make this little slice of summer on a cold snowy day. We made these over the summer for my daughter's ice cream themed birthday and they were an absolute hit! Guests thought it was so clever to make cupcakes baked inside of ice cream cones and I was oh so happy that these "impressive" treats were so easy to make!

The hardest part about these beauties is figuring out how you are going to make them stand up in your oven. You could just stand up ice cream cones on a flat baking tray and hope that your arm is steady enough to have only one or two casualties. Since I knew we were going with the ice cream cone theme in advance, I purchased some special ice cream cone baking racks on Amazon which make baking, frosting, transporting and displaying these treats a breeze!

There are no special steps you need to take when actually baking these, you just treat the ice cream cones as you would any cupcake liner! Make your favorite cake batter, pour it into the cones about 3/4 of the way and bake as you normally would.

When cool, simply frost your favorite frosting on top and decorate with sprinkles! I added a little cinnamon candy on top to act as a cherry, although you could probably do a real cherry on top as well if you like! These are so simple to make and you can customize them for any occasion or holiday by switching out the sprinkles and color of frosting. We plan on making red frosted ice cream cone cupcakes with heart sprinkles for Valentines Day! I may even get pink cones as well.