Easter Recipe Roundup

Oh my gosh, it’s almost April! The weather is turning warmer, the snowboard season is quickly ending and Easter is this Sunday. Crazy! I have really enjoyed seeing all the creative Easter recipes floating around from my fellow food bloggers and on Pinterest! I pulled together a few of my own Easter recipes plus some recipes from some of my favorite bloggers below.

Cadbury Cookie Brittle
This was perhaps my new favorite treat. It is a soft cookie base with melted Cabdury Eggs on top. It is covered in crushed Cabury Mini Eggs and vanilla frosting.

Easter Dirt Cups
I love these little vanilla mousse cups with crushed Golden Oreos. This is very easy to throw together!

White Chocolate Coconut Cupcakes
White chocolate cupcakes will give any funfetti or chocolate cupcake a run for it’s money. The touch of coconut and cream cheese frosting make this a perfect spring time treat!

 

For the past two weeks I have been itching to make cheesecakes. Cheesecake is my favorite dessert, but I will admit that I really have no idea how to make a good cheesecake at home. I have read tons of articles about cheesecakes cracking being totally ruined and it has intimidated me every since.

 This past week I began seeing cheesecake recipes pop up all over the place and it inspired me to try some mini cheesecakes in my cupcake pan. The recipe I tried is from Ali at Gimme Some Oven. I absolutely loved the photography from her post and it inspired me to try making my own! I decided that I need to own a mini cheesecake pan, immediately! While I am pleased with the results, I think I need to make a few more cheesecakes to get some practice. Here are some other amazing cheesecake recipes that I have seen recently!

Mini Key Lime Cupcakes with Animal Cracker Crust from Lauren at Climbing Grier Mountain

Mini Churro Cheesecakes from Shelly at Cookies and Cups

Malt Ball Cheesecakes from Aimee at Shugary Sweets

I am so impressed at the endless creativity from other bloggers and these are just a few of my favorite Easter inspired desserts from around the web:

Party Peeps Eclair Cake Cups from Jocelyn at Inside Brucrew Life

Cake Batter Cinnamon Rolls from Sally at Sally’s Baking Addiction

Shabby Chic Easter Cupcakes from Kristan at Confessions of a Cookbook Queen

Carrot Cake Monkey Bread from Ashton at Something Swanky

Peanut Butter Cadbury Mini Egg Muffins from Dorothy at Crazy for Crust

Easter Egg Magic Gooey Bars from Stephanie at Back for Seconds Blog

Peeps Infused Vodka from Nicole at Baking Bites

I hope everyone has a great weekend full of Cadbury Mini Eggs! I know I am stocking up!

Easter Dirt Mousse Cups

One of the first desserts I recall making on my own was my grandmother’s “Dirt” recipe. Since it doesn’t require using an oven, it was easy for me to make when I was a little girl and it was a favorite of mine.

I wanted to take the classic Oreo and chocolate pudding recipe for dirt and make it a springtime treat. This is a simple dessert to put together than is a guaranteed crowd pleaser. I used Golden Oreos and vanilla pudding.

This and That

This weekend was a busy one for me. Normally, I would be snowboarding (sigh). This season has been rough. Although we aren’t suffering from the same lack of snow as we were last year, it isn’t exactly dumping a foot of snow every week either. I have managed to get 24 days in so far, but it’t nothing compared to last years 49 days. As spring gets closer, I feel less inclined to spend 6 hours in the car each weekend. Work, travel and cupcakes have heavily effected my riding this year, but it’s a good thing too!

Launching my blog at the end of October has allowed me to rediscover my creative juices and I love to dedicate as much time as I can to it. It allows me to make things like this:

This is a birthday cake for my boyfriend’s sister. Today is her birthday (yeah! Happy Birthday!). I love when I have an excuse to try recipes from my favorite food bloggers. This is the “Perfect White Cake” from the I am Baker blog. I have been dying to try this recipe because it’s so difficult to find a good white cake. This one IS the perfect white cake! Amanda creates gorgeous desserts.  It is topped off with “Creamy Nutella Frosting” from Sally’s Baking Addiction. Sally loves her Nutella and she has done right by her readers with this one. This frosting is one of the smoothest frostings I have ever had!

This weekend, I made these:

A friend of mine asked me to make some layered cupcake jars for her friend that just had a baby boy. I wish that cupcakes shipped better, but I do love making these cakes in a jar. I LOVE desserts in jars. This project was so fun because it also gave me an excuse to use my Silhouette Cameo and some bakers twine. Halfway through I ran out of rainbow sprinkles, but it turns out that I have so many colors of non-pariels that I could make my own rainbow sprinkles!

While I was shopping for the above jars, I spotted this 3 tier dessert stand from World Market. I all but danced in the store when I saw it. I have been looking high and low for an antique white wire cupcake stand. This was only $20 and I bought two. I wanted all six though. It will be perfect for my friend’s wedding this summer!

My boyfriend dad recently found these Cookie Chips at Vons. They are sweet like cookies but crunchy like chips. I was intrigued. Now I am addicted. I literally had to contain myself from shoveling them in my mouth. The Salted Peanut Butter flavor was my favorite.

One of things I love about spending the weekend at home (besides staying in bed past 7am) is spending the time to make good food. The past two Sunday nights have been mini burgers and baked potatoes. I am finally warming up to this time change, grilling at 6pm in the sun is fantastic. I like to coat the outsides of my potatoes in olive oil and sea salt, just because.

Last week, perhaps one of the most exciting happens since launching my blog. The above White Chocolate Coconut Cupcakes were accepted and posted on Foodgawker. After dozens and dozens of rejects, I opened my email, expecting another, and I reread the email three times before running to find my boyfriend to make him verify that I was reading it correctly. I have had several photos accepted on Tastespotting and each time is equally exciting. However, getting something accepted on Foodgawker was a pretty awesome feeling for a little blogger like myself. I am currently shooting everything with a Canon point and shoot camera, nothing fancy. As soon as my tax return is here, I am buying a Canon Rebel T3i and I am currently checking my mailbox everyday.

A few more tidbits to leave you with:

There is less than one week till Easter, which translates into about 7 or 8 more days to eat as many Cadbury Mini Eggs as I can.

This week my boyfriend and his dad installed a new flat screen in the living room, while I baked cupcakes. I was a huge help (not). I love it though because I can swivel the TV to the kitchen and watch it while I bake!

And finally, I just learned that the brand new Whole Foods which is opening about a 1/4 mile from my house is opening in June. Although it isn’t the “spring 2013” opening they were advertising, at least I have a time frame and I couldn’t be more excited. Also, there’s a Menchie’s across the street from it. Booyah!

White Chocolate Coconut Cupcakes

Let me start my apologizing for my absence lately. Between work and a few other things going on, I have been slammed! I was able to enjoy a relaxing weekend at home and got some serious baking done. White chocolate serious.

I am really excited about these white chocolate cupcakes with macadamia nuts and coconut. Only in the past couple years was I introduce to macadamia nut cookies, and I am totally hooked. I wanted to make a cupcake version of the cookie. These cupcakes are a white chocolate cupcake infused with a hint of coconut. For the frosting I made a white chocolate cream cheese rolled in toasted coconut and topped with macadamia nuts. I love the salty nuts contrasted against the creamy frosting.

You will love this cupcake, because you would never know it’s from a box! The cupcake has a very light crumb but actually has a lot of structure. What do I mean by structure? It doesn’t fall apart when you peel back the wrapper. From someone like me who likes the frosting piled high, you always appreciate a cupcake with good structure.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcakes

The cupcakes your man makes

 I called this series, Baking with Boys. From the beginning of our relationship, I knew my boyfriend liked chocolate cake, but he always talked about the chocolate cream cheese cupcakes (black bottom cupcakes) his mother used to make.

The first birthday we shared together, I was super stressed about making the best black bottom cake I could, because he didn’t have the recipe. I guess I did okay since I am still around. Finally after several months he found the recipe from his mom. I was expecting something really fancy and complicated. Turns out they’re super easy to make. He has been requesting that I make them ever since. I guess he got sick of waiting.

 While I was busy shooting my Cadbury Cookie Brittle, he insisted on making black bottom cupcakes at 9 o’clock at night. He wanted to do it all himself, to which I of course said go right ahead, just clean up afterwards! I love watching him bake, because it makes me laugh every time.

He uses as few dishes as possible. This results in him melting butter in the glass measuring cup and using the same cup to measure ALL of his dry ingredients plus oil, milk and whatever else is required. I am going to tell the rest of this story in photos taken on my iphone. Read on, I promise it’s worth it.  Also, I should tell you that he edits my posts, and may or may not agree with my recount of the story.

He’s pretty serious about his measuring. As you should be.

This is the face of concentration. He has two rules. His first rule is that he “doesn’t do eggs”, which means I have to be called in to crack the eggs.