Oreo and Thin Mint Cheesecakes

I specifically left off the 'S' on 'Thin Mints' above because I feel like unless you're eating the entire box you should just keep it to singular cookie form. No judgement here. 

This recipe came about by mere accident. I planned on making Oreo cheesecake cupcakes using the Martha Stewart recipe I've used before (seen here). However, the particular package of Oreos the hubs purchased only included 36 individual cookies, which means the package has been significantly decreased from the 42 needed to fulfill this recipe. Not to let things go to waste I did something a little crazy and it worked beautifully.  

Enter Thin Mints*

I took my emergency stash of Thin Mints and substituted one tube (you know - half the box!) of those minty goodies for half of the Oreos needed to make these cheesecakes. Problem solved! And I got to eat the rest of the Oreos! 

Ingredients: yields 30 standard cupcakes or individualized cheesecakes if that's the term you prefer.

• 15 whole Oreo cookies and an additional 6-8 crushed Oreos (add more crushed Oreos if you want bigger cupcakes and more cookie bites)
• 15 whole Thin Mint Cookies and whatever Thin Mints are left in the tower of goodness (you know how Thin Mints come wrapped in two plastic wraps in the box. Just one one wrapped half of the box.) Am I the only one who remembers these boxes holding more cookies as a child?
• 2lbs cream cheese, room temperature (don't get low fat! It's too runny.)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
• 1 cup sour cream

I made the batch two different ways - half with a Thin Mint lining each cup and half with an Oreo as a base.  Honestly, pick whichever cookie is your favorite and go with that, but you can't beat the combination of Oreos and Thin Mints. 

Again, just add a mix of Oreos and Thin Mints, crush accordingly and enjoy your cookies and cream.  My favorite method of crushing cookies is to throw them in a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to break them up. No mess, no fuss! 

Directions: Step by step found here. 

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Prepare standard cupcake liners as seen above. Use an electric mixer on medium-high speed and mix cream cheese until smooth. Gradually add sugar and mix with cream cheese until combined. Mix in vanilla.  Slowly add eggs, approximately one at a time. Mix in sour cream.  

Stir in chopped cookies with a large spoon. Fill cupcake liners (these don't rise so ignore the standard "fill 3/4 way method") and bake for roughly 22 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely. 

Now, these hold their shape the best if you cool them while they are still in their cupcake pans. I'm very glad I now have enough cupcake pans to do this and the really do hold up better that way.  Remove from refrigerator just before serving.  Enjoy! 

Did you know that you can download an app to find your nearest Girl Scout cookie location? Or hit up a grocery store/religious center/mass transit hub. They got me at two out of three locations this year.  

So seriously, how many boxes of Girl Scout cookies do you have at the moment?  I'm going to let you in on a little secret - if you're in my house you better leave my Tagalongs alone because I will get red head crazy on you if you eat any of them.  Honestly, I buy at least one box of Tagalongs and Thin Mints every year that way I can say to the rest of the Girl Scouts when they hound me, "Oh, sorry, I've already purchased my boxes for this year."  

*This recipe is in no way, shape, or form sponsored or affiliated with the official Girl Scouts Cookie people. However, I was a Girl Scout for years and I approve these cookies. You're welcome! 

Martha Stewart's Pumpkin Doughnut Muffins

I saw this image on Pinterest last week and though to myself, "yes, welcome back pumpkin season." I stood in line at Starbucks for 20 minutes on Saturday morning just to get my first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the year and even though my legs were tired from a 16 mile run it was worth it. 

I followed up that first taste of pumpkin by making these scrumptious pumpkin doughnut muffins from Martha Stewart. It doesn't matter if your preferred spelling is "doughnut" or "donut" you'll agree that these things are amazing. 

Ingredients: Yield 12 muffins 

For the Batter

- 10 Tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

- 3 cups all purpose flour (spooned and leveled)

- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

- 1 teaspoon coarse salt 

- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

- 1/3 cup buttermilk

- 1 1/4 cups pure pumpkin puree (from a 15 - ounce can) 

- 3/4 cup light brown sugar

- 2 large eggs 

For the Sugar Coating

- 3/4 cup granulated sugar (I reduced this to 1/2 cup and had plenty of coating material) 

- 2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 

- 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted. 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour 12 standard muffin pan. 

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and allspice). In a small bowl, whisk together buttermilk and pumpkin puree. 

3. Using an electric mixer beat butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, scrapping down bowl as needed.  

4. On low speed, combine the flour mixer with the butter/brown sugar in three additions alternating with two additions of pumpkin mixture. Beat until just combined. 

5. Spoon roughly 1/3 cup of batter into each muffin cup and bake for 30 minutes (toothpick should come out clean). 

I usually skip the flour step for most cake recipes and only use butter. However, I have found that pumpkin sticks to everything and even though I'm using these amazing aluminum pans from Nordic Ware I still used the flour/butter combination and didn't have any sticking issues. 

Prep the sugar coating.

1. Heat butter on low heat until melted. Mix cinnamon and granulated sugar. 

2. Let muffins cool 10 minutes in a pan on a wire rack. Working with one at a time, remove muffins from pan, brush all over with butter, then toss to coat in sugar mixture.  Let muffins cool completely on wire rack.

3. EAT! 

Words cannot accurately describe these things! Fresh off the pan these treats were warm and just melted in your mouth. Later in the day they were cooler, dense, and definitely more donut like. 

My only recommendation is to half the ingredients and make 6 of these rather than 12. I know that sounds crazy, but if you're a family of two humans (and two Bostons who do not eat sugar) consuming all 12 of these in one weekend might be a bit much. I'm not saying we didn't eat them all this weekend and that they were absolutely delicious, but I imagine it would have been better for our waistlines if we ate half as much.

Forget it, I ran hard over the weekend! Bring on the treats :)

Are you ready for pumpkin season? What is your favorite pumpkin treat? 

Chocolate Malted Cupcakes with Cookies and Cream Sprinkles

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One of my co-workers graduated from college over the weekend and for a full-time working grandma that is reason enough for a celebration.  I've had the craving for malted milkshakes lately and figured why not capture that vibe in a cupcake.  You know how malted milkshakes sound good until it's 90 degrees outside and you realize, "milk was a bad choice!" Thank you Ron Burgundy for that pearl of wisdom. 

Back to the cupcakes!  Pretty standard chocolate cupcakes with two magical ingredients: malted milk powder and cookies and cream sprinkles. 

Recipe from the genius Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook. 

Ingredients: Yields 28 standard cupcakes 

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1 1/4 cups malted milk powder
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 3 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup sour cream, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• vanilla frosting recipe
• cookies and cream sprinkles (optional, but awesome)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together flour, cocoa, both sugars, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl, whisk together milk and malted powder until powder is dissolved (I used a large 2 cup measuring cup and just whisked in the cup. Saved a bowl!).
2. Beat flour mixture, milk mixture, and oil until combined on medium-high speed with a mixer. Add eggs, one at a time. Add sour cream and vanilla, and beat until just combined.
3. Divide batter into lined muffin tins.  Bake for 20 minutes. 
4. Frost with frosting of choice (I used my go-to vanilla frosting recipe).  Eat some frosting straight out of the bowl, leave an extra heaping of frosting on your mixer because that's fair game as well. Sprinkle as desired (eat more sprinkles).
5. ENJOY! 

How good are these cupcakes? So good that the hubs not only asked where I got those sprinkles (craft store find), but I also made a batch for him to take into work.   Really I'm just setting myself up for failure because that means his co-workers are just going to "expect" baked goods from now on and I already bake for one office! 

Not gonna lie, I ate three cupcakes! That's a lot for me because I usually don't have much off a sweet tooth.  I have no idea how much batter I ate. Yeah, I said it. 

There's something old school about these cupcakes. It's got to be the malted chocolate taste, but they remind me of a 50s diner and I love them.  

Any other cupcake recipes I should look into for this summer? Leave a recommendation in the comments section. Thanks! 

Molten Lava Cupcakes

A certain co-worker of mine completely spoiled me on my birthday and brought in not only hostess-style cupcakes, but a strawberry cake as well.  Woman went cray, but I knew the reason she did it was because she was dropping serious hints and guilt trips that she wanted molten lava cake for her birthday. 

Well played co-worker, well-played.

Most recipes I found for molten lava cake yielded a small result and seemed liked I'd have to make a ton of them in order to feed my office.  Thank goodness I found this recipe for red velvet molten lava cupcakes from Crazy for Crust. 

I made the cupcakes above with my favorite Devils Food cake recipe and added the ganache center.  Overall an easy and quick recipe.  Mine made 22 cupcakes. 

For the ganach you're going to simmer a 1/2 cup of heavy cream and add it to 8oz of semi-sweet baking chocolate.  Now, if you're lazy like me (see above) and barely break up your chocolate pieces prior to adding the heated heavy cream you're going to have to put your mixture in the microwave a bit to soften up the chocolate pieces.  This is a PSA to not be lazy and you should go ahead and break up your chocolate pieces more than I did.  I'm looking out for you. 

You want your chocolate ganache to look like that above - smooth, creamy, delicious, etc.  You might also be tempted to dip your whole face in the bowl of chocolate, but I recommend that you avoid temptation.  Throw that bowl in the fridge to cool for an hour or two.  The fork is totally fair game though. Just saying. 

Follow the directions and only fill up your tins half way! Remember you've got to add the ganache!

Okay, every other recipe I looked at said they used an ice cream scope to get perfect sized teaspoon balls of ganache. LIARS!  My ice cream scoop is for giants and wasn't giving me a teaspoon sized ball of chocolate goodness.  Instead, I used a melon baller thingy and it gave me two nice balls of chocolate and then massive chunks of chocolate.  Whatever, it was ganache in a cupcake. If someone came to me and said they didn't feel that the ganache was a perfect ball inside the cupcake I might have snatched their cupcake and said, 

"No cupcake for you!"

Overall: a pretty easy recipe!  Highly tasty!

Yes, most other recipes say to dust with powdered sugar and you can certainly go that route.  I didn't because I made these the night before and let's be honest... powdered sugar looks good if applied and then eaten immediately.  Otherwise it soaks into the cake and disappears. 

One final thing: definitely pop these bad boys in the microwave for 5-10 seconds before eating if you don't eat them fresh out of the oven.  That quick zap heats up the center and makes these things delicious on a high level.

Enjoy!

Anyone else tried to make molten lava cakes? What's your favorite recipe? 

Martha Stewart's Gingerbread Cupcakes

I have cupcakes on the brain it seems. I recently upgraded my  bakeware to include the Nordic Ware aluminum muffin tins and they are so amazing all I want to do is bake more cupcakes.

Enter my dear Martha Stewart Cupcakes book with another recipe.  Now, I've looked for this recipe on MarthaStewart.com and the recipe listed online differs significantly from the one I used and found in my book.  The recipe listed in the book calls for decorating the cupcakes with little gingerbread cookies, but I didn't do all that. I'll save that for the holiday season.

Ingredients: Yield 22 cupcakes

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 tablespoons unsulfured molasses 
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together flour and spices.
2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.  Add the molasses, and beat until combined.  Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until each is incorporated.  Beat in vanilla.  Reduce speed to low.  Gradually add flour mixture, beating until just combined (that's key, don't overmix the batter)
3. Fill muffin liners 3/4.  Bake for 25 minutes.  Transfer tins to a wire rack to cool 10 minutes; turn out cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely.  
4. Ice with your favorite frosting.  I went with a simple creamy vanilla frosting.  

I definitely didn't intend for it to happen, but I swear my quick tab of frosting on that one cupcake came out looking like a heart. Am I the only one who sees it that way?

Martha Stewart's Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes

Warning: You might be in the mood for some individual-sized cheesecakes after reading this post.  This recipe is super easy to follow and it's one of those things that'll make you look like a fantastic baker even though it's so easy to make.

This recipe comes from my beloved Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book, but I could not locate this specific recipe on MarthaStewart.com.  If you find this recipe there, please let me know so I can provide the correct link.

My only beef with this recipe is it calls for 42 cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies and the standard bag of Oreos only contains 39 cookies.  I hate when that happens! The hubs quickly pointed out that perhaps Nabisco reduced the amount of Oreos they put in their standard package since Martha's book was published, but I just think it's a ploy to make you buy two packages of Oreos. Let's be honest, there are times when you can go generic brand and there are times you can't and when it comes to Oreos I don't think you can go off brand.

Ingredients: Yield 30 cupcakes

• 42 cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies, 30 left whole and 12 coarsely chopped
• 2 lbs cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
• 1 cup sour cream
• Pinch of salt (I skipped this) 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. Yes, you read that right! I was surprised too by the low baking temperature.  Plop 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each standard muffin liner and place in muffin pan.        
2. Use an electric mixer on medium-high speed to beat the cream cheese until smooth.  Gradually add sugar and beat with the cream cheese until combined.  Beat in vanilla.
3. Slowly add eggs, roughly one at a time (remember they should have been lightly beaten prior to adding to your sugary, cream cheese mixture).  Beat in sour cream and salt.  Stir in chopped cookies by hand. 
4. Divide bater evenly among your cookie-filled cups and fill each almost to the top (these cupcakes don't rise so don't follow the standard "fill up 3/4 of the way").  Bake your cupcakes for roughly 22 minutes.  Transfer tins to a wire rack to cool completely.  Refrigerate (suggested in tins, but I didn't have enough tins to do that and mine survived in a 13 x 9 cake pan) at least 4 hours.  Remove from tins just before serving. 

Funniest thing happened Monday morning when I gave the hubs a small tray of these to take to work he stalled and said, "there's more of these here for me, right?" Yes, dude, there's more in the fridge for you. Gesh, I just wanted him to take a few to his coworkers who ran the Baltimore Half Marathon and Marathon. Be a team player dude!

Margarita Cupcakes: Let's get this weekend started!

Need a quick pick-me-up or fast party treat for this weekend's festivities?  If you answered yes, then I highly recommend these Margarita Cupcakes from Brown Eyed Baker. One of my co-workers sent me the recipe and I had to make it.  Next time I'll garnish the cupcakes with lime slices, but I didn't have enough limes to do that this time around. 

Here is how Michelle, author of Brown Eyed Baker, describes these cupcakes: 

"They are definitely not innocent. They are all things tequila and lime."

The hubs said almost the same thing when he acted as my official taste tester. 

Cupcakes Ingredients: Granulated Sugar, All-purpose flour, Salt, Butter, Vanilla Extract, Baking Powder, Limes, Eggs, Buttermilk, and Tequila 

You'll need two limes for this recipe.  1.5 limes for the cupcakes and then the remaining half of a lime to juice for the frosting.

I have a minor obsession with lime and lemon zest.  Anytime I can zest something I'm going to do it. I just love the smell.

I switched up the recipe and made mini-cupcakes rather than full size cupcakes. I just switched up the prescribed baking time from 25 to 18-20 minutes.

Frosting Ingredients: Butter, lime, course salt, powdered sugar, and Tequila.

You can definitely taste the tequila, especially in the frosting :)

Enjoy!

Again, full recipe here: http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2011/05/05/margarita-cupcakes-cinco-de-mayo/ 

I followed the directions to a T, except for a minor modification for the mini cupcake size baking time, and these came out great! I'll definitely be trying a few more recipes from Brown Eyed Baker in the future. 

What are you baking this weekend?  Any other favorite baking blogs you want to share? 

2nd Annual Pig Roast

Dear vegetarian and vegan friends: Skip this post! There's a lot of meat here.

Just a few short weeks after the hubs and I moved into our house last summer the guy had a crazy idea to throw a pig roast.  It was kind of nuts considering we still had a lot of unpacking to do, but I'm a fan of parties so I went along with his crazy notion.

We had so much fun that we decided to throw a pig roast every August.  When it came time to pick the date for this year's festivities we kept hearing from folks that the second weekend in August was good for them.  That happened to be our five year wedding anniversary and we didn't want to throw an "anniversary party" and therefore we didn't market the pig roast as an anniversary party. 

Silly me forgot to take pictures during the party, but thankfully I have a few to share that a fellow party-goer took with my camera.  I was kind of busy hosting a party for 80 people! 

The festivities began with the hubs purchasing an 8lb brisket from Wegman's.  Apparently the cashier asked him, "you'd buy the whole cow if you could, wouldn't you?"  The hubs immediate response, "do you have one?"

He marinated the brisket and started cooking it at 8:30am! Dude has dedication. 

As a small nod to our wedding I made a desserts table.  The hubs and I had a blue and white candy buffet at our wedding and this time around I ditched the candy and the color scheme, but kept the sweets flowing. My dad's favorite dessert is pineapple upside down cake and I was more than happy to make it for him. Seriously, I think he ate about half of it. 

Red velvet cupcakes have kind of become my signature treat! I think it's because I'm a red head. 

I do happen to have a few vegetarian and vegan friends, so I thought I'd throw them one and make the easiest vegan cupcakes in the world.  Non-vegetarian friends thought they were yummy as well. 

The hubs has really been getting into his grilling this year and has been making his own BBQ sauces.  He made four of his more popular sauces to add to our condiment selection. Even better is I love it when the hubs asks, "can you go to the craft store and pick up mason jars?"  Don't mind if I do! And come home with a few other things! 

In addition to the pig and brisket, the hubs also manned the grill during the beginning of the party and made hot dogs, chicken wings, and hamburgers. Basically if it was a standard BBQ meat product the hubs grilled it! 

I bought bubbles and smores ingredients for the kids, but I guess I forgot that the main attraction for the adults was the pig! 

I haven't shared previously, but after making one too many rounds of Jack and Coke slushies this summer I bought a better blender! Thank goodness because the hubs and I stock piled frozen Coke cubes in freezer bags so I could mass produce Jack and Coke slushies for the pig roast.  I don't think my old blender would have been able to handle the work load.  

Things were going great at the party.  The weather was cooperating. The kids were being adorable playing with sticks, chasing each other, blowing bubbles, etc. The adults were having fun noshing, playing corn hole, and ladder golf.  Things were looking good.

Then mother nature said, enough of this!

And it started to POUR!  I've got to say, it was awesome because it was all hands on deck. Every single person grabbed something and pulled it into the house.  Thankfully it didn't start to rain until around 7pm, so by that time a lot of folks were getting ready to head out anyway.  

I knew once I saw the shots being poured inside that the party was taking a different turn.  The kids went home and the drinking games began!  I finally went to bed at 1:30am and told the guys outside that if they fell asleep with the fire pit still burning the fire would be the least of their worries!  Somewhere around 10pm it stopped raining and we went back outside and made smores.  I guess adults like smores just as much as kids.

The hubs and I had a great time and we were even glad to have a few friends crash at our house. Drinking and driving is NOT cool and we were more than happy to let a few guys sleep things off at the house.  They even appreciated me distributing bottles of water in the morning.  

Looks like we're going to continue to throw a pig roast every August. Hopefully, next year I remember to take a few pictures of all the little things the hubs and I did to make the party a good time. 

This year's pig roast will certainly always hold a special place in our hearts. Call us sappy, but it was amazing that so many of our friends and family came to our house.  Our family members knew it was our anniversary and I'm so grateful that so many members of my family made the trek down from New Jersey and New York.

The icing on the proverbial cake: the 80 guests we had.  At first we thought we had 79 guests and then the hubs thought that we should say 80 because two guests were very pregnant. His rational, two pregnant ladies eat enough for three people.  Turns out, I didn't write down one of our guests name and once we added him in that brought us up to 80 people.  (The hubs and I are total nerds and we track how many people come to a party versus how much food is consumed that way we can make adjustments, if needed, in the amount of food for the next party.)

80 people. The exact same number of people we had at our wedding five years ago.  Thankfully, the weather was a bit better on our wedding day, but we'll take a little rain during a pig roast over rain during our  outdoor wedding ceremony any day of the week.

Marital bliss it is.