Vanilla Porter Cupcakes with Vanilla Porter Salted Caramel Frosting

I will be the first to say I have never been a big fan of beer, any beer and my goodness I have tried.  We recently had dinner with some lovely friends and they introduced me to Vanilla Porter.  I was so surprised how well I liked it.  So this same dear friend had a birthday coming up and I thought what if I incorporate this deliciousness into a cupcake (cupcake on tap!!).  It definitely turned out better than I expected and I will definitely be making these again.  Indulge!

Hot Chocolate on a Stick

This is one of my absolute favorite times of the year.  I love the holidays and the beautiful spirit that's in the air.  My youngest is having his winter party and I wanted to give the kids in his class a special treat.  I have made this another time for my daughters Valentine party, but not for Christmas.  I was so excited when I came across the cute Christmas themed mugs and knew it would be an amazing addition.  I hope the kids enjoyed theme as much as mine did.  Indulge!

Chocolate Toffee Cupcake with Salted Caramel Frosting

Part II of Graduation Party:  Here is the chocolate cupcake I also made for the graduation party.  Indulge!

Nutella Cupcakes

Last week was Teacher Appreciation week.  Of course K's favorite day is "bring something sweet".  We had a hard time deciding what we were going to make.  We new it was going to be a cupcake of some sort and though she is not much of a chocolate fan, I convinced her into letting me make the Nutella cupcake.  Nutella is something I could just eat with a spoon it's so delicious.  In the past I have made Nutella cookies and Nutella molten lava, but not cupcakes.  I will definitely be adding this to my list of favorites.  Indulge!

Nutella No-Bake Cookies

The first time I ever had this cookie was when I was in junior high school and I thought it was the best thing I had ever tasted.  Every time the ladies in the cafeteria would make them I would always take one and sometimes two.  As I got older I came across a recipe for them and was thrilled to know I could continue to enjoy them.  Since becoming a fan of nutella I thought I would incorporate it into this recipe and oh my goodness I didn't think it could taste any better.  Hard to believe that such a simple cookie could be so amazing.  Indulge!

Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes

The end of February and the month of March are busy birthday times for me.  Every couple of weeks we are having a birthday celebration.  This year we combined our oldest daughters together.  My daughter requested her favorite Cinnamon Roll cupcakes (recipe and post coming soon) and the Mr.'s daughter requested Peanut butter cup cupcakes.  This was the first request for anything peanut butter and I have been wanting to bake with it for a while now so I was excited to give it a try.  Growing up one of my favorites was Reese's peanut butter cups (once many many years ago i bought a bag of the miniatures and ate every last one of them.. I don't think I could get away with that now).  This cupcake definitely brought back childhood memories.  Indulge!

Individual Chocolate Toffee Trifle

I have to admit this dish was created by accident after a little mishap in my kitchen (which happens quite a bit :) ).  I had invited my girlfriend over for dinner and because her birthday was the previous week I wanted to make her a special dessert.  Since I was going through a cupcake phase I wanted to incorporate a chocolate cupcake with English toffee bits and homemade salted caramel.  I had tried Ina Garten’s recipe “Beatty’s Chocolate Cake” and loved it.  It was so moist and had just the right amount of Chocolate goodness.  So I decided to try her recipe in cupcake form.  As always I was rushing to make sure everything was ready when my girlfriend arrived.  Cupcakes are in the oven and when I checked on them… let’s just say they were not pretty (I’m thinking I should have adjusted the amount of baking powder).   I was frantic, time was running out and I had a pan of spread out cupcakes.  Thank goodness I had recently viewed pictures of individual trifles that I thought were so adorable.  I had already made my salted caramel that had been cooling, so I threw in some heavy cream and English toffee bits in the food processor and created creamy toffee bliss.   I layered all the ingredients in a nice glass and voila my accident just turned into something delectable.  Indulge!

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcake

As I mentioned in an earlier post about my daughter’s birthday, how she wanted pumpkin flavored cake.  So I had decided to add two cupcake flavors one being the Tiramisu (the last recipe I posted) and this one~ Chocolate Covered Strawberry!!  There is just something about Chocolate and Strawberry that is so intoxicating.  When I was putting it together I knew I didn’t want to use store bought strawberry preserves.  I had a recipe for quick homemade strawberry jam that would work perfectly (this jam is so fresh and delicious I could eat it alone by itself).  As for the frosting I thought about incorporating the strawberry in, but decided that I would add another chocolate… White chocolate!  The way all of these flavors come together are just heavenly.  Indulge!!