Peanut Butter Cupcakes with a Chocolate Icing

My Daddy is a die hard Reese's fan and he passed that right onto me. We are definitely peanut butter lovers and there ain't no doubt about that. I decided that I would make him some special cupcakes for his birthday this year and oh boy did he love them. They are not hard to make. You could even go the easier route and just get cake box mix and add in peanut butter. I decided to make them from scratch just so my name would be written all over them and I would not be sharing them with Betty or Duncan. Although sometimes Aunt Betty and Uncle Duncan just cant help but to assist me in some of my desserts.

Such a beauty!!!!

So these cupcakes were not hard to make at all. They were actually quite easy. I did not have a recipe on hand for this cupcake I just knew that I wanted a peanut butter cupcake and a milk chocolate icing.

For the Peanut butter cupcake I used the following recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup chunky or smooth peanut butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup milk (I used 2% milk)
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 muffin tin cups with paper cupcake liners.

Instructions:

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.

Using a stand mixer, beat the butter, peanut butter and brown sugar, on medium speed, until smooth and ligh in color, about 1 minute. Stop and scrape the sides of the bowl, as needed. Mix in the egg. Add the vanilla and beat for 1 minute, or until the batter is smooth. On low speed, add the flour mixture in 3 additions and the milk in 2 additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and mixing just until the flour is incorporated and the batter looks smooth.

Fill each paper liner with batter, about 1/3 inch below the top of the liner. Bake just until the tops feel firm and are lightly browned, about 20 minutes. There will be a few cracks on top. Cool the cupcakes for 10 minutes in the pan on a wire rack. Carefully remove cupcakes from pan to finish cooling.

Then for the Chocolate Icing i used the following recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup butter - softened
4 cups confectioner's sugar
1 1/4 cups baking cocoa powder (I use the Hershey's cocoa powder)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup milk

Instructions:

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter.

Mix in sugar, vanilla, and cocoa

Slowly add in milk.

That is it. Very simple. I then placed the icing in a piping bag and went to town on my peanut butter cupcakes turning them into a Reese's cupcake. I then garnished the top of the cupcake with a resse's cup.

Let's just say my dad's mouth was drooling and he wanted to eat all 12 of them. These cupcakes were pretty rich and went great with a cup of coffee or a glass of milk for you non coffee drinkers like me.

Brother in Russia!!!!

So my brother got the most awesome privilege to go over to Russia. He is 16 years old and this is the 2nd time he has been. He goes with the mission group from our church. What an amazing testimony he will have just at the age of 18. He also went to Nicaragua last summer and plans to go again this summer. I am so proud of him and what he does. He is serving the Lord in other countries and man is that great. This time he took my moms nice camera over there and took some awesome pictures. Thought I would share with you a couple of the pictures from over there.  

This is the group from our church that my brother went with. Yes he was the only boy on this trip. God Bless him LOL.

This is the infamous St. Basil Cathedral. While it was blazing hot here it was snowing in Russia.

He is quite the cheerleader.

This is the kind of stuff you see in movies. How crazy!!!

Absolutely beautiful!!! 

Russian version of Sbarro :)

Look at the top of this bridge. Does not look like a bridge for little ones to cross over.

Yarn Eggs

So I decided that I was going to attempt something on Pinterest. Crazy right? Well no not really I am actually one of those people who repins things and then tries them. Well i have almost 1000 pins so not every single one but I do get around to the good ones. So for Easter I made these really cool Yarn eggs with my little brothers and sisters.

Things you need:
Flour
Liquid Starch
Mini Balloons
Colored String (get from Joanns or Michaels)
bowls
spoon
measuring cups

Here are the steps with some pictures:

Here are all the supplies you need. Not that much and very inexpensive.

1. Blow up some smaller balloons to the size you desire.

2. Combine the flour and the liquid starch to make a glue like substance.  You will need 1 cup of liquid starch and 1/2 cup of flour. 

3. Mix until you get a glue like consistency.

4. Put the embroidery floss into the mixture in a uniform fashion. When I say uniform fashion i mean  place the string in inch by inch in a circle around the bowl you are using. If you just place the embroidery floss as is you will end up with a knot. 

5. Once you place your embroidery floss into the bowl you then must submerge it into the mixture.

6. THIS PART IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!!! Before you are actually wrapping the string around the balloon be sure to run your fingers down the embroidery floss to get the excess glue mixture off the embroidery floss. This is so when it dries it will not be all flaky and showing white chunks everywhere.

7. Wrap the embroidery floss around the balloon in any design that you please. The design above where it looks like a spiral does not work. When you try to hang a spiral design it stretches out and does not look like an egg. 

8. This is what it will look like when you have finished wrapping it. This photo shows  what it looks like when you do not wipe off the excess glue before wrapping the ballon. We found out the hard way :)

My crazy Dad wanted to be apart of this step by step!!!!

9. Hang them up to dry. I used hangers with clips so i was only able to hang  2 per hanger.

Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

So I decided to open up my Pioneer Woman cookbook last night and try something new. So i decided to pick the Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce. Boy was that a good decision to choose!!!!! It was addictingly good. I know thats not a word but I just made it one. I halved the recipe since it was just me eating it. I should have only done 1/4 of the recipe because I have soooo much leftovers it is not even funny. Well it is a good thing I have all of these leftovers because me oh my was this soooo good. What I loved most was the taste and what I loved the 2nd most was there there were not many ingredients. That was the awesome part. Oh and it took me t-10 minutes to make.

So here is the link to make this awesome yummy addictingly good pasta sauce!!!!!

Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

Easter Pictures are Coming!!!!

So I used my mom's awesome camera to document all the fun things we did this Easter so you will have to wait for the pictures until she sends them to me or until I go back down there in about 2 weeks. I am thinking the 2 week mark is what it will be. We did so much this Easter weekend. I even ended up making Easter baskets for my mom and dad. They were quite surprised since they have not had an Easter basket in years. Church was amazing this year. My pastor preached on the topic One Month to Live. It was an amazing sermon. I love how he brings the word of God and makes it so clear and relevant to the present day lives we live. Well I hope to share more of my Easter with you very soon!!!

Pet Raccoon!!!

So my mom and I were casually driving down a fairly busy road just talking away. I would say we were going about 30 MPH. Then all of a sudden I look over and I swear I saw a raccoon hanging out of a car window. My mom didnt look quick enough to see. She was like ummmm you are crazy. I was dead serious though. So the car got quite a bit ahead of us and i was sooo determined to catch back up with that car to prove to my mom. Sure enough we caught up to it. I told my mom we had to attempt to take a picture. Well just our luck there were no red lights coming at all. So we had to use my high tech iphone and try to take a moving picture in the dark about 10 feet away. I say impossible. Well my mom sure did get a picture and you can totally see the raccoon straddling the door of the car. It was soooo crazy.

What a beauty!!!

Here is a close up of this cute guy!!! I wonder how he carries his heavy feathers around without having crazy back problems?!?!?!?