Caramel Corn Cupcakes

Halloween is just a few days away! If you need a fun sweet for a neighborhood party or to share with your trick-or-treaters, I've got just the thing for you! These Caramel Corn Cupcakes are absolutely delicious and have fall written all over them! I think my favorite part is the homemade caramel corn on top! I shared the recipe for these sweet treats earlier this month on The Cake Blog, so head on over and check it out! Our check out Carrie's adorable Monster Eye Cake as another super fun and easy option for your Halloween festivities!

Hope you all have a great Halloween! I'm hoping my little munchkin will cooperate and wear his homemade hot dog costume that Gpaw made him, but it's not looking likely right now! What are your kids dressing up as this year?

Halloween Desserts

Halloween Desserts...need some ideas before Halloween on Wednesday, here's a peek at some cookies, cake pops, cupcakes and brownies I recently created for a party last weekend! I snapped a few behind the scenes shots as I was decorating the cookies and tombstones for the brownie graveyards! IHope you enjoy these Halloween treats!

I love how these brownie graveyards turned out! Thanks to my new Chicago Metallic Slice Solutions Brownie Pan, I was able to create uniform size brownies and didn't even have to cut them...the pan did all the work! Do you have one of these pans? If not I highly suggest getting one...add it to your Christmas list! Decorated with black fondant tombstones, a candy pumpkin and some green buttercream grass to complete the look.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Before I took the desserts to the customer, I set up a mini display in my back yard on the new Farm table my husband built for me! I came across this amazingly beautiful DIY Farm Table on the blog Our Vintage Home Love and immediately fell in love and said I need one of these for my dining room! I showed my husband the blog post with the instructions, gathered the list of supplies we needed and off to Lowe's we went. Within a few hours he had made this table! Lucky for us we had an old desk in our shed that we were able to use as the base, it just had to be painted white. So we bought the pine boards, wood stain and sanding paper for the top and probably spent less than $50 on this entire project! If you have never checked out Our Vintage Home Love before, it is an amazing site with a great story behind it and some awesome DIY inspiration! I think I seriously sat and clinked on every tab and just kept browsing and browsing for a few hours once I discovered their site! So know that you know a little about our table, let's get back to the sweet stuff!

Here's a few more pictures of all the finished Halloween treats! Hope you all have a fabulous Halloween!

Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Halloween Candy Bark

Halloween is quickly approaching, so you know what that means...it's time to stock up on candy! There are a few Halloween candy staples that I must keep in my stash the entire month of October, which include Reese Pieces, Reese Cups, Peanut M&Ms and Butterfinger! YUM! As you can see the common theme with all these candies seems to be peanuts & peanut butter! So I had the idea to create a fabulous Halloween Candy bark to use a decoration on top of some chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes! This recipe was definitely created for all you chocolate and peanut butter lovers out there!

I love the pops or orange and yellow in the Halloween bark! I'm sharing the recipe for the cupcakes, candy bark and even a super cute way to individually package up these cupcakes for all your trick-or-treaters over at Half Baked!  So head on over and check it out! Definitely look around a bit while you are there too and drool over her fabulous Fresh Apple Donuts!

I've got a few more candy themed recipe ideas up my sleeve, so check back soon! What's your favorite Halloween Candy!

Happy Friday!

Apple Cupcakes with Caramel Buttercream

We are getting in the Halloween spirit here at CIS. Several bags of candy has already been purchased...Snickers, Reese Cups, candy corn and one of my all time favorites Caramel Apple Pops! If you haven't tried those green apple lollipops covered in a shell of caramel you are missing out. They are the perfect combination of sour and sweet! In my book apples and caramel go hand in hand this time of year, so I've created a special treat that you are sure to enjoy, Caramel Apple Cupcakes!

If you are planning a Halloween party this year, these Caramel Apple Cupcakes with assorted toppings are a must have on your dessert spread. Hop on over to Half Baked for the recipe! And while you're there check out some of their other adorable ideas for decorating Halloween sweets here, here and here.

Happy October!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Hope you have a fun-filled day with lots of treats! Here's a festive recipe of my latest cake creation, a Chocolate Pumpkin Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting and Chocolate Ganache Glaze....it sure is a mouthful but it is oh so yummy and worth every single calorie!


Chocolate Pumpkin Cake (makes one 3-layer cake)

Ingredients:
-2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
-1 cup granulated sugar
-1 cup dark brown sugar
-3/4 cup cocoa powder
-1 1/2 tsp baking soda
-2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-2 tsp cinnamon
-1 1/2 cups buttermilk
-1 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix)
-1 cup vegetable oil
-1 tsp vanilla
-3 eggs

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Prepare three 8" cake pans lined with parchment paper and sprayed with cooking spray.
• In a large bowl combine all dry ingredients: flour, sugars, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and mix together.
• In a medium bowl combine all wet ingredients: buttermilk, pumpkin puree, vegetable oil and vanilla.
  
• Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and beat with mixer on medium speed just until combined.
• Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
• Pour batter evenly into prepared pans.
• Bake for 25 minutes or until cake tests done.
  
• Let cakes cool in pans for 10 minutes then move to wire racks to continue cooling.
• While cakes are cooling you can prepare the Orange Cream Cheese Frosting.
  

Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:
-12 oz cream cheese, softened
-1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
-6 cups confectioner's sugar
-1/2 tsp vanilla
-orange food coloring

• Mix cream cheese and butter with electric mixer on medium speed until creamy.
• Gradually add in confectioner's sugar one cup at a time and continue to mix.
• Mix in vanilla.
• Add in orange food coloring and mix until you reach your desired shade of orange.
• Once cake has cooled, ice your cake with cream cheese frosting and then place cake in refrigerator for about 20 minutes so icing will set up.
• Prepare the Chocolate Ganache while you wait.
  

Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients:
-1 cup heavy cream
-8 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

• In a small sauce pan heat heavy cream over medium-high heat until it comes to a boil.
• Remove cream from heat and pour over chocolate chips.
• Gently stir cream and chocolate chips so chocolate begins to melt.
• Let mixture sit 5 minutes and then stir. Mixture will begin to thicken as it sits.
  
• Remove cake from refrigerator and pour Chocolate Ganache overtop of the cake and gently push it over the sides using an offset spatula so that it drizzles down.

This cake is perfect to take to a Halloween or Fall party and I guarantee it won't last long!

Happy Halloween!

Cupcake a Week: Spooky Spiders

With Halloween only a few days away I figured I better get in on the festivities and create some spooky spider web cupcakes! It seems like new Halloween color trends are popping up all over the place this year. It's no longer your traditional orange and black, but lime greens and purples are being thrown into the mix! So after finding a pack of assorted color spider rings at the store, I thought it would be fun to display them on some matching purple, green and orange cupcakes!

Using some black glitter gel I piped on three circles and then using a toothpick pulled the gel from the inside circle towards the outside circle to create the web. It really is a super easy decorating technique so if you need a Halloween treat for this weekend, give this a try!

Of if you feel a little more ambitious and want an even bigger spider web, check out this cake I made last year.

What are your plans this Halloween? Will you be dressing up, taking the kids trick or treating or passing out candy?

Halloween Dessert Table

Happy Halloween! Here are some pics of the Halloween Dessert Table I created for my friend Jennifer's costume party! I got the inspiration for this dessert table from Amy Atlas Events, she does some amazing stuff! Check out her dessert table from last year here. I love everything on her website, she is so talented and all her tables are to die for yummy!

Here's the behind the scenes of how my dessert table came to be:


This is my bag of "tricks" to create all my "treats"...white & milk chocolate, sprinkles, food coloring, lollipop sticks, candy corn, Reese's Pieces, black licorice, sugar cones.

Dessert Table Menu:
-Ghost Lollipops
-Pumpkin Lollipops
-Chocolate Dipped Pretzels with Sprinkles
-Chocolate Dipped Cake Balls with Sprinkles
-Orange Candy Corn Bars
-Wicked Witch Cupcakes


All the baking has been done, it is time to start decorating.



Brownie molds that will turn into Ghost Lollipops dipped in white chocolate.



Ghost pops awaiting to have their scary eyes & mouth added.


Ground up chocolate cake mix that will be used to create Chocolate Covered Cake Balls with Sprinkles & Pumpkin Lollipops. I used the "One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcake" recipe found in Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book. Click here for the recipe.


Once the cake was ground up in the food processor I added a container of chocolate icing and mixed it together so they would form nice balls.


I first found the idea for cake balls & cake pops from Bakerella. Check out how to make them in more detail here. The possibilities are endless for cake balls & cake pops, just pick your favorite cake flavor and let your imagination run wild with how you decide to decorate them.


The cake balls were dipped in Ghiradelli chocolate and then sprinkled with orange, yellow & brown jimmies.


Pumpkin lollipops dipped in orange candy melts.


Pumpkin & Ghost lollipops painted with chocolate tube icing.



Chocolate Dipped Pretzels with Ghiradelli chocolate and orange & black sprinkles.


And my absolute favorite dessert of all...Wicked Witch Cupcakes. Who better to come up with such a cute idea than Martha Stewart herself...check out the recipe and decorating details here.


To decorate the cupcakes you need: 2 Reese's Pieces for eyes, candy corn nose, black licorice for hair and eyebrows and sugar cone hat.

Let the party begin! Check out some close ups of the final dessert table! I wanted to stick with the traditional orange, yellow & black color scheme so I had been keeping my eye out for a few weeks for serving pieces that would fit my color pallet. I found the black cake pedestal from Hobby Lobby, the 2 white plates from TJMaxx, and the orange & black pails from Target. I got the black spooky tree and the Happy Halloween banner from Michaels. Everything else you see on the table was a DIY project. I bought some yellow and black wrapping paper and just covered some boxes I had around the house to use for my cookie, lollipop and cupcake platforms. Then I reused some old canned good cans and just tied a cute orange ribbon around them to put the pretzel sticks in. The tree is sitting on top of an empty oatmeal conatiner that I wrapped in black paper as well. I love being able to re-purpose things that you can find around the house in a creative way.



How cute are these Orange Candy Corn Bars! My friend Robin sent me this recipe and I just had to try them. This is basically a homeade sugar cookie bar with layers dyed with yellow and orange food coloring to resemble a piece of candy corn. Check out the recipe here.


Jennifer, the host of the party made her famous sugar cookies in the shapes of pumpkins and bats. So cute!







And now it's time for the costume pictures...here I am as Olive Oyl standing by my dessert table.



Here I am with my husband as Popeye and Olive Oyl. Everyone always called me Olive Oyl in high school, I guess because my legs are so long, so when my husband suggested these costume ideas, I couldn't resist. He was having a blast showing off his muscle arms and spinach face smirk last night!


Here are the party hosts, Jennifer as a Geisha girl and her husband Brian as Big Bird...Hillarious! That brings back some childhood memories of Sesame Street.


My friends Molly as Amelia Earhart and Paul as a NERD.


Hope you all had a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!