Insta Weekend!!!

Happy St.Patty's Day!! I hope you all have had a great week! It is has been super busy over here, but we didn't forget to squeeze in some fun times and photo ops. Enjoy...

Strawberry Cake Mix Chocolate Chip Cookies

For quite some time now I've been sitting on a box of strawberry cake mix waiting to find the perfect recipe to use it for. I love baking from scratch, but these days anything semi-homemade makes me really happy! I have this new found fascination with using a box of cake mix to create other delectable treats besides the traditional cake or cupcake.

Anywho, I recently stumbled across this fabulous recipe on one of my new favorite blogs called Sally's Baking Addiction. As soon as I saw the recipe I knew it was love at first bite :-) This was the recipe I had been waiting for and what better time than Valentine's Day to try out these scrumptious pink cookies!

I followed her recipe up until the end where I split the batter in half and used mini semisweet chocolate chips in one half and white chocolate chips in the other! You can use whatever kind of morsels you prefer and even add more or less to your liking. These cookies are rather large so I only put 8 on each baking sheet!! The recipe calls for 10 minutes at 350°, but I kept them in for almost 14 minutes because they looked extremely gooey to me after 10 minutes-everyone's oven is different though.

These are some of the easiest and most amazing cookies you will ever put in your mouth!

You can find the original recipe here, but below I've put together my version that I adapted from it:

Ingredients:

• 1 box of Duncan Hines Strawberry Supreme Cake Mix (or any other Strawberry cake mix)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup vegetable/canola oil
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup of mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup white chocolate chips


Instructions:

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and place them aside.

Next you will want to combine the entire box of cake mix with the baking powder in a medium to large bowl and put aside.

In a smaller bowl, combine the eggs, oil, and vanilla extract and whisk them all together.

Mix the cake mix mixture with the wet ingredients until fully incorporated.

Next place half of the batter in a separate bowl (I just eye-balled this) and gently fold the white chocolate chips into one bowl and the semi-sweet chocolate chips into the other bowl.

Roll the batter into balls equivalent to about two teaspoons making them more tall than wide.

Bake them anywhere from 10 to 14 minutes. You can insert a toothpick or fork and see if it comes out clean to test them.

You can let them cool on the pan or move them to a cooling rack after a couple of minutes.

                   
                                      I think they taste best a little warm! Enjoy!

Cuckoo for Cookies

Occasionally you can catch me in the fabulous Land of La La dreaming about owning my own sweet shop filled with everything from chocolate truffles to cookies to chocolate dipped croissants! But when I go back to the real world you will find me in my kitchen covered in confectioner's sugar with my hand mixer, rushing through a batch of something or other while praying the kids can stay sleeping at the same time for just a tid bit longer...sigh... I love to bake...I would rather spend that half hour I have alone baking fabulous Nutella-filled chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting than picking up the toys scattered all over my living room... after all no sooner than i pick them up, are they all across the floor again... Just about a year ago I stumbled across a new hobby that I really really really love! Baking and decorating sugar cookies. I've made them for baby showers, holidays, birthday parties, and everything else in between, but most of these events took place before I had two babies. These cookies are extremely time consuming so making them now is a rare occasion, but you never know...maybe one day once the kids are in school I can focus and make my little hobby a fabulous business. Only time will tell :)

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Minnie Mouse Inspired Birthday Party

Last month we celebrated Sienna's 2nd Birthday! I can't believe how fast they grow up...it makes me sad and now I see why people have multiple children, but that's a whole other blog post....

Anywho, we decided to do a Minnie Mouse themed party at the local park because she loves Minnie and we were going to be heading off to Disney World the next day! I didn't go COMPLETELY overboard for my two year old's party, but being a former event planner, maybe I did go a little over the top...Just with the sweets though because what two year (and their parents...meaning me) doesn't like cake, cookies, and cupcakes?

Here is her fabulous cake from the lovely Michelle, she rocks! Her cakes look awesome and she iced it out of 100% buttercream!! That's right no gummy fondant! This is our second time using her and I know I will be requesting her for Daniel's 1st birthday as well!

I LOVE to bake so I made some Minnie inspired cupcakes and cookies as well:

And of course how can you have a party at the park without the piñata...but don't worry this only had a couple of lollipops and the rest was filled with prizes, goldfish crackers, raisins, and animal crackers to fill their goody bags with! I love how the piñatas are pull string nowadays too since I really don't want a bunch of 2 year olds swinging a bat at a dangling object :)

      And here is Daniel-Son wearing his Mickey ear party hat...we had Minnie headbands for the girls too, but Sienna insisted on the Mickey one as you can see above! When you are two, you usually get whatever you want, especially on your birthday :)

*If you are interested in a fabulous cake by Michelle you can find out more info here.