Pumpkin Spice Puppy Chow!

Happy October! This is the month of pumpkin and so we thought we would share this delicious spin on puppy chow (it's also called "muddy buddies"). This is a delicious and easy snack/dessert to make.This is perfect for a party, bake sale, or even just to snack on.

To make this, begin by melting 1 bag of white chocolate in the microwave. When that is melted, stir in 1.5 tsp. of pumpkin spice and 2 tsp. of cinnamon. Next, mix this with 7-8 cups of chex cereal (it can be regular or cinnamon flavored). Put 1 cup of powdered sugar and 1 tsp. of cinnamon into a gallon bag. Put the chex cereal mixture into the zip-lock bag and shake it to cover the cereal in powdered sugar (but make sure the bag is sealed before you start shaking!). This last step is optional, but we think it is delicious! Last, mix in about 1 cup of candy corn (you can put in as much as you want, really).

Here are some more pictures of the pumpkin spice puppy chow:

Peanut Butter Temptations

These cookies are called Peanut Butter Temptations because it's so tempting to just eat all of them! (who doesn't love peanut butter and chocolate, right?)

These cookies are fairly simple to make, and very delicious. We just make a peanut butter cookie, but instead of cooking them like normal just cook them in a mini cupcake pan.

To make the cookies in the mini cupcake pan, simply make a ball of dough and place it inside one of the little cupcake wells. When the pan is full just bake them in the oven and when they come out push the Reese's cup into the center of the cookies. Do this directly after the cookies come out of the oven so that the Reese's cup easily goes into the cookie.

You don't have to use Reese's cups, although we think that this is the best way. You can also use Hershey kisses. We prefer to use the Reese's cups because they look the best, but you can use whatever you think would be great!

Sugar Cookie Stars

We made these cookies just for fun, because who doesn't love decorating cookies, right? (especially if you get to eat them afterwards!)

This is a picture of a way to arrange cookies onto a serving tray so that the cookies will look super cute!

This is just a close up of the cookies:

To decorate these cookies, we used royal icing. First we used a piping bag to outline the cookies. If you don't have a piping bag or tips, you can just use a sandwich bag with a little hole cut in one of the corners. Next, we "flooded" the cookies. To flood the cookies, thin out the royal icing a bit and then use a spoon to pour the icing into the already outlined cookie.

                                       

Royal icing can be made with meringue powder or egg whites. It is suggest that if you are going to eat it, and not just use it for decorating, that meringue powder is used so that raw egg whites are not eaten.

Coconut Cake with Lemon Curd Filling

This cake is simply a white layer cake with lemon curd in between the layers. If you don't know what lemon curd is, then you are missing out! It's so good! My aunt, who we made this cake for, claimed that lemon curd is like crack. She one time ate a whole jar by herself with a spoon in about a week. She loves it so much.

She asked us to make this cake for her birthday and then we surprised her and put the lemon curd in between the layers. It's a simple cake that has a 7 minute frosting on the outside, this frosting is kind of like marshmallow fluff (which is also amazing!), then you cover it with coconut.

If you don't want lemon curd in the middle, you could use strawberry jam, raspberry jam, or whatever you think would taste great. If you don't want a jam, then just put frosting a more coconut in the middle and it is just as delicious!

Carlo's Bakery

Anyone who loves to bake knows who Buddy Valastro is. Or maybe it's just us. We love to bake and so we watch any baking show that we can. Well, his show, Cake Boss, is one that we always watch. We have been watching it for a couple years and we really wanted to visit his bakery. His bakery is Hoboken, NJ and is about 8.5 hours from us :(

Well, this summer we finally got to visit! Yay! We were so excited, but we expected to have to wait in line for hours, like the website says is possible (which we were not excited to do!). Fortunately though, we didn't have to wait for hours, maybe only an hour and a half, which was great!

When you get into the bakery it's so crowded, but it's a cute shop. We went on our birthday, so we got an 8 in.  chocolate cake with fudge frosting. They also wrote "Happy Birthday" on it for us. Not only did we get that, but we also bought a lobster tail (the pastry kind, of course), biscotti, and a bag of assorted cookies. Everything was really good, but the cake was the favorite.

Above is a picture of us in front of Carlo's!

So, we didn't get to the bakery until about 6 p.m. and by the time we left the bakery it was around 7:30, and we didn't leave Hoboken until around 8, but we couldn't eat the cake until we got to the hotel (which was a 2.5 hr drive). Well, we got stuck in traffic because of a semi accident, so we didn't get to eat the cake until about midnight. Everyone was so tired, but we just had to eat the cake, so we ate cake and crashed!

Oatmeal Cake with Coconut Pecan Topping

This cake is superb. The topping is the best part, it doesn't even need a cake, simply a spoon would be great! But, eating it with the cake is just as great. 

Oatmeal cake might sound weird but it is actually good, especially with this topping. If you don't like it or don't want to try it (though you should, because its good) we think that the topping would be even better on some brownies!

This is just a closer up picture of the cake:

 From this view you can see that the cake is moist and some of the topping absorbed into the cake:

• 1/2 cup quick cooking oatmeal

• 3/4 cups boiling water

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 1/2 cup brown sugar

• 2/3 cups flour

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1 egg

• 1/4 cup of butter

Mix the oatmeal with the boiling water, stir and cover. Mix the remaining ingredients then stir in the oatmeal mixture. Grease and flour a 8×8 inch pan. Pour batter into pan and bake at 350 for 23-25 minutes.

• 3 tbsp melted butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts(we used pecans)
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly. Carefully spread frosting over the top of the cake.

 

Buckeyes

Buckeyes are one of our favorite candies/dessert to make. They are so delicious. What's better than peanut butter and chocolate, especially when the peanut butter is mixed with powdered sugar???

Here are some pictures of the buckeyes that we make:

One thing that we love about buckeyes is that they don't need to be perfectly uniform, each one is different than the other.