Chocolate Mint Oreo Cupcakes

One of my all time favorite cookies are Oreos! Who doesn't love these chocolate sandwich cream-filled cookies? The variety of flavors sure have come a long way since I was a little kid! One of my new favorite flavors is the Cool Mint. So here's to enjoying one amazing cookie inside of a delicious cupcake jam-packed with chocolate and mint! Head on over to Half Baked to check out the recipe for these Chocolate Mint Oreo Cupcakes!

Did you know this month Oreo celebrates it's 100th birthday! What is your favorite Oreo cookie flavor?

Cupcakes + Cookies = Flower Pots

Although Spring does not officially start until this Sunday, here in Mobile we are already enjoying sunny days, temps in the 70s and flowers in bloom all over town! So to welcome this amazing Spring weather, how about some flower pot cupcakes and cookies!

I will be the first to admit that I don't quite have a green thumb when it comes to keeping a beautiful garden full of vibrant flowers ever year. I am the person that goes and spends a ton of money on flowers, plant them in my flower box, and then forget to water them and they shrivel and die. No water + extreme heat of Mobile = Sad Flowers! So this year, I thought I would take a different approach with flowers, you know the kind that are edible and don't requiring watering. The kind of flower that sprouts out of a chocolate cookie crumbled cupcake!

These flower pot cupcakes just scream spring! They make the perfect addition to any dessert table, would be an adorable party favor at a baby or wedding shower, are the perfect gift for a teacher, or would be the perfect project to assemble with your kids on a sunny day.

Flower Pot Essentials:
Clay Pots + Chocolate Cupcakes + Chocolate Ganache + Oreo cookie crumbs

You can pick up the flower pots at your local craft store. I got these at Michaels for 69 cents each!

Dip the top of the cupcake in the chocolate ganache.

Then dip the chocolate glazed cake into the Oreo crumbs.

Your cupcake now looks like potting soil! Place the cupcake in the flower pot.

Cookie Essentials:
Flower Sugar Cookies + Royal Icing & Sprinkles + Cookie Sticks

Now I bet you are wondering how the flowers are going to sprout out of the cupcakes. This is where the cookie stick comes into play. The same cookie stick that I forgot to place behind all of my cookies prior to baking...ooops! I was a little too excited to see how this idea would come together, that I completely overlooked probably the most important detail on how the cupcake and cookie would interact with each other. So please please please when you make these, be sure to add the cookie stick to the cookie prior to baking. You can find the sticks at your local craft store.

As you can see from the picture I did manage a sneaky trick to get these cookies to attach to the sticks! You can use some royal icing left over from cookie decorating to secure the stick in place. Just allow the icing to dry overnight before you try and place the cookie upright in the pot, or else it will fall right off. But my best advice is to just bake the stick in the cookie to start with, you will save yourself lots of trouble and added stress!

Don't these little flower pots just bring a smile to your face? They have brightened up my dining room this week and I love having them as a centerpiece on my table. They are also an amazing mid afternoon snack!

For these cookies I modified my current sugar cookie recipe and added a little more sugar and used vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla & almond extracts. Oh my goodness, I absolutely love the results those changes made to the recipe! The little flecks of black vanilla beans in the cookies just make them appear special and more elegant. The texture of these cookies was slightly softer and the sweeter taste just made the cookies melt in your mouth. Randolph highly approved of this recipe too, having already devoured 3 cookies at lunch!

Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies (makes about 3 dozen)

Ingredients:
-3 cups all-purpose flour
-2 tsp baking powder
-1/4 tsp salt
-1 1/2 cups sugar
-2 sticks unsalted butter, cold, cut into chunks
-1 egg
-1 tsp vanilla bean paste

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
• Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in bowl and set aside.
• In the bowl of a mixer cream the sugar and butter well.
• Add the egg and vanilla bean paste to the butter mixture and mix well.
• Gradually add the flour mixture, scraping down the bowl as necessary as mixing.
• Grab a ball of dough and knead it together.
• Roll dough out onto floured surface and cut into desired shapes.
• Place cookies on prepared baking sheets and place in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. This will prevent the cookies from spreading when baking.
• Bake for 10-12 minutes.
• Allow cookies to cool 5 minutes on cookie sheets then transfer to wire racks to completely cool.

Decorate with Royal Icing.

Here are the other recipes I used for the cupcakes.
Chocolate Cupcakes (cake recipe from I am Baker, one of the most talented cake decorators who always sneaks a little surprise into the middle of her cakes)
Chocolate Ganache Glaze (recipe from Martha Stewart)
15 crushed Oreos for garnish

Hope your Spring is full of lots of beautiful flowers, edible ones of course!

Brownie Oreo Cheesecake Bars

As you all know 2010 was the year of the cupcake, at least on my blog it was! I can't believe I got wrapped up in those sweet little cakes that I didn't have a single post devoted to cheesecake. Well the wait is over and today I'm excited to share with you my oh so yummy Brownie Oreo Cheesecake Bars. I thought I would take a walk on the wild side and combine brownies and cheesecake into one dessert with a few Oreos (only the greatest cookie invented) mixed in the middle. The result is a creamy and chocolately bite of heaven, with a little cookie crunch! I took these to a football party last night for the BCS College Championship game and everyone devoured them! If you have a pack of Oreos in your pantry right now I highly recommend you give this recipe a try.

I love the layered look to this bar. I'm already envisioning even more flavor combinations. Turtle cheesecake, strawberry or raspberry cheesecake or even a chocolate marble cheesecake would all be fabulous with the brownie base.

Brownie Oreo Cheesecake Bars (30 servings)

For the Brownie Batter:
-2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
-3 oz milk chocolate chips
-3 oz bittersweet chocolate chips
-1 1/2 cups sugar
-2 eggs
-1 tsp vanilla
-1/4 tsp salt
-1 cup flour
-1 tsp baking powder

• Line a 9 x 13 pan with aluminum foil. Spray with cooking spray.
• In microwave safe bowl melt butter and chocolate about 1 - 2 minutes and stir to combine.
• Add sugar, eggs, vanilla and salt to chocolate mixture and stir.
• Whisk in flour and baking powder.
• Spread brownie batter evenly in prepared pan.

For the Oreo Cheesecake batter:
-2 8 oz packages of cream cheese, softened
-1/2 cup sugar
-2 eggs
-1 tsp vanilla
-20 Oreo sandwich cookies, chopped

• Combine cream cheese and sugar in medium bowl and cream with electric mixer.
  
• Mix in vanilla and eggs.
• Stir in chopped Oreos.
• Spread cream cheese batter over top of brownie batter.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Cool on wire rack.
• Refrigerate 2-3 hours or until ready to serve.

Hope you enjoy these as much as I did. I'm off to the fridge to grab another one for a bedtime snack! It's only my 3rd one today, don't tell!

Creepy Crawly Cake & Graveyard Trifle

You all are in for a Halloween Treat! This post consists of two fun, creepy & spooky treats that you should definitely make for your Halloween party this weekend...only 3 more days until Oct 31...do you have your costumes and candy for the trick-or-treaters yet? My husband and I are going to be Popeye & Olive Oyl this year...you will have to check back for a picture of us in full costume after the weekend!

So to get a head start on the Halloween festivities, last night I had a few of my marathon running friends over to my house. First we met at the Mellow Mushroom, a local pizza joint for their Tuesday night running club and ran a 5K course...then we headed back to my house for a Pasta & Gel Tasting party. In case you don't know what "gel" is, that is fancy marathon lingo for the type of "fuel" you need to take while running long distances to give you energy to keep running since you are burning so many calories during the course of the 26.2 mile race. We sampled, all different brands and consistencies of fuel from GU, Powerbar, Accel Gel, Clif Bar and Luna Moons. Some were good and some were just plain yucky, it was great to watch everyone's faces pucker as they tasted the different flavors...but enough of the gel talk...lets move on to more important things...how to make these 2 cute and tasty Halloween desserts!


Halloween Dessert #1: Creepy Crawly Cake
This is a 3 layer yellow & chocolate marbled cake with a butter cream icing


Check out this buttercream icing...it is similar to a meringe consistency. This was the first time I had made an icing like this which called for sugar, 9 egg whites and guess how much butter...you aren't even going to believe how much butter, let's just say Paula Deen would be in BUTTER HEAVEN with the amount of butter in this cake....2 lbs, that's right TWO POUNDS of BUTTER...that equals 8 sticks! WOW, I have never used that much butter in a single recipe before.


I had cut out this recipe from Ladies' Home Journal magazine last year from their October 2008 edition so I have been waiting quite a long time to recreate this masterpiece.


Here goes my first spider web piping...I hope I don't mess this one up. It was nice to have the picture as a point of reference. First I sectioned off the cake by adding black line segments to disect the cake into somewhat equal sections.


Then I just started connecting the sections by drawing the web circles to fill out the spider web.


Now time to add the black, creepy, crawly spiders.


My husband even got in on the action and picked up his first piping bag and added the last 2 spiders to the cake. Maybe I can talk him into being my cake decorating assistant?


Creepy Crawly Cakes is complete! Not too bad for my first spider web.

Creepy Crawly Cake (Chocolate Marbled Spider Cake) - Ladies' Home Journal, Oct 2008

Makes 16 servings

Cake Ingredients:
2 2/3 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 cup warm water
1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, softened, plus more for pans
5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
6 large eggs
1 3/4 cups milk

• In small bowl, combine 2/3 cup sugar, the cocoa and warm water; set aside.
• Heat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter three 8-inch round cake pans. Line bottoms with parchment paper; butter paper. Set aside.
• In a large bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a mixer bowl, beat together remaining 2 cups sugar and the butter on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 1 min. Reduce speed to low and bet in extract. Add eggs, on at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl. Alternately beat in flour mixture and milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture, scraping down sides of bowl, until combined.
• Transfer 3 cups batter to bowl and stir in cocoa mixture. Evenly spoon dollops of white can coca batters into prepared pans. Using a knife, swirl batters to marbelize. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 40-45 min. Transfer pans to wire racks and let cool 15 min. Remove cakes from pans, peel off paper and place right side up, on racks; let cool completely.
• Transfer 1 1/2 cups buttercream to a decorating bag fitted wit ha #5 plain tip and set aside.
• Slice domes off cakes to level. Place 1 cake layer on a serving plate; spread just to edges with 1 3/4 cups buttercream. Cover with second layer an spread with another 1 3/4 cups buttercream. Top with a third layer. Frost top and sides, smoothing with a spatula. Using reserved piping bag, pipe dots around cake base. Refrigerate until set, 20 to 25 min.
• To decorate: Fit a decorating bag with a #2 plain tip. Cut bottom from black icing tube and transfer to decorating bag.
• Pipe a spiderweb design on top and down sides of cake in varying lengths. To pipe spiders, hold icing tip in one place while squeezing tube to form a thick, round body. Pipe 8 thin legs out from each body. (Decorated cake can be made ahead. Store in a sealed cake container in the refrigerator up to 1 day.)
  

Touch of Black Buttercream

Makes 10 cups

2 1/2 cups sugar
9 large egg whites
2 lbs unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 oz semi-sweet chocolate, melted
2 tsp pure vanilla extract

• In a medium heatproof bowl set over simmering water, combine sugar and egg whites; stir until hot and sugar is dissolved, about 5 min. Transfer to a mixer bowl and beat to firm peaks, about 8 min. While mixer is running, add butter, a few tbsp at a time, until completely combined. Reduce speed to low; beat in chocolate and extract. Use immediately. (Can be made ahead. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 2 weeks. Bring to room temperature, then beat on low speed until smooth before using.)
  

ENJOY!


Halloween Dessert # 2: Graveyard Trifle
Start out by making a 9 x 13 pan of brownies and cutting them up into small bite size squares.


Check out all these CHOCOLATE ingredients that are going into the trifle: brownies, chocolate pudding, Oreo cookies and Milano cookies...can we say Chocolate coma?


You can't have a graveyard without some tombstones. Milano cookies were the perfect shape with the rounded top to create a tombstone. I had some leftover black icing from the Creepy Crawly Cake that I was able to use to pipe on "RIP" to each cookie.


Time to assemble the trifle...brownie, pudding, cool whip, Oreo cookie crumbs...and then repeat 2 times to fill the entire bowl.


I crushed up Oreo cookies to create the look of dirt for the graveyard, added in the tombstone cookies and then stuck in some ghost marshmallow Peeps. Just in case that was too "spooky" I wanted to add a little color with some orange sugar pumpkins to brighten it up a bit.

Easy Chocolate Trifle - recipe adapted from kraftfoods.com and then I added all the extra embellishments to create the "graveyard" look.

18 servings

1 box Duncan Hines Chewy Fudge Brownie Mix, for 9 x 13 size pan
1 qt (4 cups) cold milk
2 pkg (4 serving size each ) JELL-O Chocolate Flavor Instant Pudding & Pie Filling
1 tub (8 oz) COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, thawed
16 Oreos, crushed (I crushed 10 Oreos for the middle layer of the trifle, and then 6 Oreos with the chocolate cookie part only, no cream filling for the top layer of the trifle)

• Prepare brownie batter and bake in 9 x 13 pan as directed on package. Cool completely and cut into 1/2-inch cubes.
• Add milk to dry pudding mix in medium bowl. Beat with wire whisk 2 minutes or until well blended.
• Layer half each of the brownie cubes, pudding, whipped topping and crushed Oreos in a large glass trifle bowl. Repeat all layers. Serve immediately or cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Here's a quick look at my festive Halloween Dessert table. I found these really cute purple/black and green/black striped pails at Target and just couldn't resist...I had to get them because after all the marathon group that I coach for is called Team in Training and our colors are purple and green. I filled the pails with some assorted candy and had them as party favors for everyone to take home with them!


Here's a group shot of everyone enjoying the Creepy Crawly cake!

Stay tuned for another Halloween Dessert Table coming soon that I will be creating for my friend Jennifer's costume party this weekend!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!