Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise Cupcakes (RECIPE!)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise Cupcakes 

with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

I'm making these my cupcake of the week! I've been slacking on my cupcake love, so here to go!

I found this recipe on the Good Housekeeping Recipes when searching for something to make for my hubs for his birthday. He loves peanut butter and LOVES Reese's! I knew he would be in heaven with these cupcakes. These are sooo good! Yum!!! I hope you enjoy them!

Peanut Butter Filling and Cupcakes:

-2/3 cup confectioners' sugar
-1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
-10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
-1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
-1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
-3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1 cup sour cream
-2 tablespoons milk
-1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
-2 large eggs

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting: 

-8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
-4 tablespoons butter, softened
-1/2 cup peanut butter
-3 1/4 cups powdered sugar
-1 cup cool whip

1. Prepare Filling: In bowl, with mixer on medium speed, mix confectioners' sugar, peanut butter, 2 tablespoons butter, and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla until blended. Shape mixture into 24 balls using heaping measuring teaspoons. (Balls will be sticky and don't need to be perfectly shaped.) Place balls on waxed paper-lined cookie sheet; set aside.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 24 standard muffin-pan cups with paper liners.

3. Prepare Cupcakes: On waxed paper, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. In 2-cup liquid measuring cup, mix sour cream, milk, and remaining vanilla; set aside. In large bowl, with mixer on low speed, beat granulated sugar and remaining 8 tablespoons butter just until blended. Increase speed to high; beat 1 minute. Reduce speed to low; add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat 1 to 2 minutes more or until light and fluffy. Add flour mixture alternately with sour cream mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat just until ingredients are combined, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula.

4. Spoon 1 heaping measuring tablespoon batter into each muffin-pan cup. Drop 1 peanut butter ball in center of each cup and top with another heaping tablespoon batter. Bake cupcakes 25 to 28 minutes (I baked mine about 21 minutes) or until toothpick inserted in cupcake comes out clean. Immediately remove cupcakes from pans and cool completely on wire rack. 

5. When cupcakes are cool, prepare frosting: In large bowl, with mixer on medium-low speed, beat butter, cream cheese, and peanut butter until smooth and blended. Add powdered sugar slowly, incorporating fully after each addition. Add cool whip and beat until smooth and creamy. Frosts cupcakes. 

Happy cupcake baking!!!

xo's

Cat

♥♥♥

Valentine Love

Hi Ladies! I've been a little distracted lately. I wanted to post and share my lovely Valentine's Day with y'all!

Of course I did a Valentine Swap! It was so much fun, thanks to all the people who swapped cards with me! Y'all are awesome!! I loved getting everyone of them, glittery, layered paper, cute store bought, even the cute little Valentine's that come in a package. Some special ladies surprised me with packages of Valentine goodies! Super sweet! I sent a few packages of my own out!

I decorated these plain mailboxes and made them cute for Valentine's day! I filled them with candy and small goodies! 

My sister got this one:

 

 

  

 I made her a little octopus, another no pattern thing I crocheted.

Maggie got this mailbox:

  

  

  

 Hers was filled with candies and small goodies, and I also made her this plushie owl too!

My Momma got this one:

  

  

 I had so much fun making them, and if you want to do this fun project next year, just check the $1 section at your Target right before Valentine's and they've had them there the past few years.

We got a package from my Momma and sister filled with goodies and books for all of us. Ariana got 5 books total for Valentine's this year! She loves to read, and so do we!

 

Oh and here are some of the cards I made, I thought I was done but then ended up making more!

♥

I was actually sick for the weekend of Valentine's. Crappy I know, but my hubby is the BEST, and he took good care of me. We enjoyed snuggling and watching the Winter Olympics!

On actually Valentine's Day, we cooked (well he did most of the cooking) 2 amazing meals. For lunch we had one of my favorite dishes, his sauteed ravioli and creamy spinach mushroom sauce. I took a picture but can't seem to find it.
 

For dinner, he really outdid himself!!

 

 wine and candles of course!

 

beautiful flowers, these are so pretty!

  

 Escargot to start! (these aren't as bad as they look, really!)

  

 Filet Mignon, Butternut Squash Risotto, and sauteed Rainbow Chard!

I told you he was an awesome chef!!!

And of course I got a sweet card! (One thing not many people know about my husband is he writes the sweetest things in cards. He can really put his feeling in words!  Gets me every time!)

 I love you babe!! :)

♥

Of course he got gifts too!

 

 I covered a carboard box and made it into a gift box to hold some yummies that I was making him!

  

 chocolate peanut butter mini cupcakes!

I also made him a card (not pictured) and put lots of love into making him this book.

  

 Inside there are 5 pockets and each pocket holds a tag where I listed something that I loved about him.

  

 One of the tags.

  

 Here are the pockets with the tags inside.

♥

And of course for dessert...

  

 Devil's Food cupcakes with cream cheese frosting! :)

I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's Day. 

I'm behind on some of my blogs so I want to hear how everyone spent the day. Let me know if you blogged about it so I can check it out!

xoxo,

Cat

If you love me...

If you love me, buy me this....

 

buy here 

Seriously!!! Could a picture get any cuter??!!!! I love this artist!!! I love this "cute and fun art", as their Etsy shop says. Check out more of this lovely artwork at rkdsign88 Etsy Shop.

If you aren't as in love with this owl and cupcake piece as I am, here is some more lovely eye candy from that shop. I really, really, really want one!!!! I love them all!

 

buy here 

  

buy here 

  

buy here 

  

buy here 

  

buy here 

  

buy here 

 

buy here 

  

buy here 

But seriously though, buy me a cupcake or owl picture!!!!! I love them all!!!!

xoxo,

Cat

One Crafty Little Cupcake!

It seems that every free second that I've had today I've spent doing this...

CROCHETING!!

I snagged this picture from my  Project 365 blog. If you haven't heard of Project 365, it's really a cool concept. You are suppose to take a photo a day for a year. I heard about this at the beginning of last year and I decided that this year I would take it on.

Why? 

For a couple of reasons:

1. I love photography!

2. Although I love it, sometimes I don't seem to find the time to take pictures when I know I want to.

3. I thought it would be a great way to chronicle my year.

4. If you do something for a year you're bound to get better at it, right?

5. I thought it would be a good goal, and something I thought might be easy, one picture a day, that's all it asks for, sounds easy enough, right??!

So, I created a seperate blog to post all my pictures. I wanted them all together so it was easy to look at them instead of scattered throughout this blog. Check it out here if you would like to follow me on my journey through the year in pictures!

Enough about my Project 365, what I really wanted to blog about was my SUPER cute cupcake that I made today!!

I would like to thank Allison, Sarah, Rich, and Kristy for inspiring me to make this! In my post called Amigurumi needs a little guidance, they all suggested that I made a cupcake! I'll admit I LOVE THEM! So thank you guys for being such great friends and this little cupcake is for y'all!

 

I have to say this was my first creating something other than a scarf or plain and simple blanket using crochet. I think it turned out cute, even the little cherry on top that gave me a little trouble at one point. Tell me what you think!

Now, I'm excited to make more and more cute stuff! :)

xo,

Cat

Ariana's First Birthday Crafts

My husband and I are blessed to be parents of a beautiful little girl, Ariana. She just had her FIRST birthday on November 6th 2009!

Of course, being crafty me, and being such a special birthday for her, I handmade lots of stuff for the party! From her invitations, to her birthday outfit, I think I made a little bit of everything! I decided that I would share with you some of my birthday crafts. I had such a good time and LOVED every second of all of it. I'm already planning what I'm going to do for next year!

Here are some pics of the invitations I made. (I made 25 invitations total) Some had purple bottomed cupcakes and some had aqua blue bottoms. These were made with 5 different papers, ribbon, a cupcake that I embellished with glitter!

 The pretty sparkly aqua paper is my favorite part, and the first thing I found when I was shopping for supplies! These pictures don't really do it justice!

 

 

 

 

You can see some of the sparkles on the aqua paper in this pic!

My little "signature stamp" on the back.

Once I picked the papers for the invitations and started making them, I got the idea to make a birthday banner. I love the colors (aqua, pink and purple) and couldn't find a banner anywhere that I liked. So, I went back to the store and bought the same paper and made the banner to match the invitations.

 

 

 A closeup of one of the letters. This was quick and easy to make and turned out oh so pretty!

Of course, then I had to make a party hat with the sparkly aqua paper! I got the idea for this project from Such Pretty Things Blog. She does a "Target Tuesday" posts where she buys something plain from Target and turns it into something extra cute!

I got the idea for the birthday hat from her post Pretty Party Hats. Check it out, it was really simple!

 I think it turned out really well (even if the birthday girl didn't want to wear it for long!)

I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for when it came to her birthday shirt so I created this cute cupcake shirt!

No cupcake is complete without SPRINKLES! :)

I also decided last minute to make these flower cupcakes as decorations at the food table. I painted some cupcake papers and stuck fake carnations in the top as the "frosting"!

I choose her color theme to be aqua, pink, and purple (and then I found Abby Cadabby, a character from Sesame Street, which happened to be those colors, so she was perfect!) Here is a picture of one of her tables at her party.

Everything came together really great and her party was great!

I LOVE cupcakes, and when I found this giant Wilton cupcake pan, I knew I had to get it for her party.

I also made regular sized cupcakes and my Abby cupcakes turned out so cute with the pink and purple swirl frosting and aqua star sprinkles!

**Special thanks to my sister who helped me with all the shopping for supplies and helping me put together some of the projects!! Thanks Sarah!**

Lots of LOVE,

Cat