Peanut, Peanut Butter... and Chocolate

Decided to do a spin on the Oreo cupcakes and try them out with Reeses Peanut Butter cups instead of cookies. YUM. I still prefer the Oreo... but these were a big hit as well! I used Martha Stewart's Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting and it was awesome.

For the Cupcakes
1 box Chocolate Cake Mix
1 cup sour cream
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
Bag of Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
A few pb cups set aside for topping

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine above ingredients, beat on high speed for 2 mins. If the batter is a little thick (like mine was) add 1/2 cup water. Put a tablespoon of batter in the bottom of each liner. Press in a pb cup. Top the pb cup with another layer of cake batter. Bake for 18 mins at 350 or until firm to the touch.

For the Frosting
6 tbsp milk (recipe called for 3, I added more to make the consistency right)
2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup peanut butter (creamy)
1 stick butter

Beat the sugar, peanut butter, and butter together until crumbled. Add the milk, 1 tbsp at a time, until you get your desired consistency.

And now the pics...

Mmm peanut butter cups.


The batter. You can see it's a bit thicker than regular cake batter. It crawls up the beaters as you're mixing it!


Filling the cupcake liners and then pressing in the pb cups.


A closeup... mmm pb cups again!


Once out of the oven, they look like regular chocolate cupcakes.


Unless of course you run out of batter and fail to top a few, then they look like this. Haha.


The peanut butter frosting. I had to add much more milk to mine than the recipe called for to get the desired consistency. It piped very well!


Chopped pb cups for the top.


M&M checking out the birds outside while I'm putting together the frosting.


The finished product. After the cupcakes cooled, I piped the frosting on, then topped each with some chopped pb cup. I really liked how they looked.


All ready to go to the bbq.


Closeup!


Obligatory 'cupcake stands alone' pics.




Last but not least, the inside. If I were to make these again, I think I'd use full size pb cups. Once you split these guys open, it's just not that exciting to see a little dot of peanut butter. :)

With A Cherry On Top

Mini Cheesecakes! I saw these on Bakerella's blog and wanted to try them.
1) Instead of the foil cups she used I just used plain white ones (they were all that was available).
2) I took step-by-step pictures this time. Not sure if it's worth it or not, or if they're even interesting to look at, but I did it!
3) I'm not sure why all the pics on the blog tend to 'lean' to one side of the screen when posted. When I figure it out I'll try to fix it.

Without further adieu....

The ingredients for this one are very simple.

Ingredients
2 blocks cream cheese
3/4 Cup sugar
1 T vanilla
1 T lemon juice
3 eggs

All the ingredients in the bowl.


After mixing, I thought the batter was *really* thick... then I figured out why. Duh, forgot to add the eggs.


There we go! That's more like it.


Line a mini muffin tin with mini muffin cups, then drop a mini Nilla wafer into each cup. Mini mini mini!!!


Pour a tablespoon of the batter on top


Bake @ 350 degrees for 17 minutes
Crap, I deleted my baking photo. Boo hiss. But here's something really weird that happened! With the second batch, about 8 of the cheesecake's nilla wafer crusts randomly floated to the top. They were dotted all over the pan, so I have no clue what would cause this. Weird!


Marley assessing everything from the top of the cabinets


Mya, 'helping' unpack the groceries while the cheesecake bakes


Let cool, then top each with a dollop of cherry pie filling. Refrigerate.


Pretty!


Wafer crust


They turned out very cute. I'm not big on the taste... the wafer gets a little soggy and the whole thing just tasted like a ball of cheesecake filling. I guess I prefer a graham cracker crust. But for a quick easy treat to bring to a party or something, these would probably be a hit!

Pics from the Past

Over the years I' ve taken pictures of some of the things I've made to share with friends/family who are interested in seeing what I'm baking. Since I have so many, I might as well share them here!

Cupcakes from this past Easter


Regular Chocolate Cupcakes


Pumpkin Cheesecake for last Thanksgiving


Cupcakes for a BBQ




Trying out the Sprinkles Mix


Coconut Cake for a Birthday


Christmas Cracker Candy


Sundried Tomato & Basil Pinwheels


Nana's Recipe Poundcake


Brownies


Haywood Corn Pudding


Cookies from a Take and Bake cookie class


Cupcake Cones


Eggplant Parmesan Bake


My Famous Deviled Eggs


Easter Cake


Spinach Dip


*Whew* That's a lot of food! Also, here's a quick pic of the 'Two Cats' of Two Cats and a Cupcake.

Mya (left) and Marley (right)


:)

O-R-E-O Cupcakes

I had been thinking about making Oreo cupcakes for days, and Saturday morning decided to grab the stuff and get to it. My boyfriend and his roommates are my taste testers, so we'll see how they like them. :)

The Cupcake Portion
1 box Chocolate Cake Mix
1 cup sour cream
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
Box of Oreos
1/2 cup Oreo crumbs, can use a few from the box

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Put an oreo in the bottom of each liner. Combine above ingredients, beat on high speed for 2 mins. If the batter is a little thick (like mine was) add 1/2 cup water. Bake for 18 mins at 350 or until firm to the touch.

The Frosting
1 1/4 cups whipping cream
2 tbsp powdered sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup Oreo Crumbs

Beat the cream, sugar and vanilla until stiff and frosting-like. Fold in the oreo crumbs.

I piped the frosting on the top of each cupcake and topped it with a mini Oreo. You can also top with 1/2 of a large Oreo. Also, a lot of recipes just used yellow or white cake, but I thought with Oreo you'd want chocolate... right?

Here's some pics:

Cute little mini Oreo on top!


The coolest part... the Oreo on the bottom. It gives the cupcakes a nice crunch. I'm putting cookies in my cupcakes more often!


You can see the crunch layer at the bottom.


Make sure you store these in the fridge b/c of the whipped cream icing. And give these away quickly, or you'll end up eating some for breakfast like I did! :)

First Test Post

I wonder if Two Cats and a Cupcake is a dumb name. I mean really, who wants to combine animals and baking? LOL. I've never done a blog before. Hopefully I'll be able to record some of my baking endeavors with words and pictures here and share them with my friends and family. Until then...