St. Patty’s Day Cupcakes

At work, our teams like to set up pot lucks for just about any reason we can think of lol.  Who doesn’t like to eat good food, right?!  In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I made “Irish Car Bomb”-style cupcakes …

Thanksgiving Slutty Brownie

She’ssss backkkk and ready for the holidays!

This concoction was my own creation (as far as I know), the fall sister to The Slutty Brownie. I was walking through Walmart and saw the display for all the pumpkin flavored mixes for the holiday and was hit with a stroke of genius!

Beginnings of a Holiday SB

There are no pictures of the final product. I’m sorry and also very sad I don’t have any. These definitely needed to be a trial and error type thing, but I made them thinking they’d be as easy as her sister the morning of my husband’s potluck at work – they were not.

The cookie bottom needed more time than I anticipated – I’m thinking it took over 30 minutes to bake, honestly. It may have been because I was in a rush and kept opening the door every ten minutes, but I think the consistency of all the ingredients were different that of the original.

Thanksgiving Slutty Brownie
Yields: 24 squares

Ingredients:
-Box of spice cake mix (I used  Duncan Hines® Signature Spice Cake)
-2 Eggs
-1/4 Cup Water
-3/4 Cup Vegetable Oil
-Bag of pumpkin cookie mix (I used Betty Crocker® Pumpkin Spice Cookie Mix) and the ingredients on the back to make it
-Bag of vanilla Oreos (I used Wal-Mart brand)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line pan with foil or paper. If you don’t have either, no worries! Spray that sucker with a non-stick spray and roll with it.

2. Mix the Pumpkin Spice mix according to the directions on the bag. You will want the mix to be a little gooey-er like with the first time, but not too wet.  Spread along the bottom of the pan.

3. Now you layer the Oreos on top of the cookie layer.

4. To get the cake mix to a brownie consistency, you will use the aforementioned ingredients listed under the mix above. Mix together the cake mix, eggs, oil and water in large bowl. Stir until well blended (about 50 strokes)  and do not over mix.  Pour over the cookies in the pan and spread evenly.

5. Pop it into the oven and bake for 20 to 30 minutes. This is the tricky part again because you don’t want to over bake the top and under-bake the bottom and make it too dry.  I would suggest following the bake time on the back of the spice cake mix box and checking periodically how it is looking on the top (without opening the oven door often).  I used a glass baking dish so it allowed me to see how cooked the bottom layer was looking.

6. After you take them out, let them cool for a few minutes before cutting.

I have the above ingredients on hand right now, so maybe I will take another shot at it and post the results.  I think maybe I’ll try cooking the cookie bottom a few minutes before layering the Oreos and brownie batter.  And I really wanted to try it with those mythical Gingerbread Oreos I keep hearing about but have never actually seen.  Maybe that can wait for the third sister – Winter Slutty Brownie (because Christmas and Slutty didn’t feel right in the same sentence).

Pumpkin Cupcakes

I changed departments around September of last year and decided it was time to treat my new team members to cupcakes. So, during training, I figured I might as well test a new cupcake recipe on them before I actually made them for Thanksgiving (aren’t I nice?). Lucky for me, they were a hit!

I also LOVE the fall because everything everywhere bibbidi boppity boos into pumpkin – lattes, cream cheese, donuts… is it fall yet 😦

 

This recipe was adapted from AllRecipes.com (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pumpkin-ginger-cupcakes/).

There is a video All Recipes uploaded walking through the steps, if you need a visual guide.

 

Pumpkin Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Yields: 24 cupcakes

 

Ingredients

-2 cups all-purpose flour

-1 (3.4 ounce) package instant butterscotch pudding mix

-2 teaspoons baking soda

-1/4 teaspoon salt

-1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

-1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

-1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

-1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

-1 cup butter, room temperature

-1 cup white sugar

-1 cup packed brown sugar

-4 eggs

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree

-1 batch cream cheese frosting

 

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 24 muffin cups, or line with paper muffin liners. Whisk together the flour, pudding mix, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ground ginger, allspice, cloves, and crystallized ginger in a bowl; set aside.

2. Beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. The mixture should be noticeably lighter in color. Add the room-temperature eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to blend into the butter mixture before adding the next. Beat in the vanilla and pumpkin puree with the last egg. Stir in the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared muffin cups. Fill about 1/3 way full or use an ice cream scoop (which is the same thing as a cupcake batter scoop).

3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden and the tops spring back when lightly pressed, about 20 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.  Top with cream cheese icing.

 

Sprinkled with Pumpkin Spice

 

The original recipe called for 1/3 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger to be added to the batter, but I did not use any because I didn’t have any and couldn’t find any.  From the comments on the recipes page, it adds an extra zing to the cupcakes, so I will be keeping an eye out for next time!