cupcake cake pops... with surprise ingredients!

These are, quite possible, some of the most adorable confections that have been produced in my humble kitchen. Last week, I bought a mini-peanut-butter-cup-shaped candy mold for the graduation cake pops that I'm working on (coming soon!), and thought i'd give these mini cupcakes a try. A few tries and some sprinkles later... ta-da! cuteness!

And they're so tiny! (they're sitting in mini muffin cups here) Calories don't count when they're bite-sized, right?

Oh, and I haven't forgot about telling you about the surprise ingredients...
I got crazy with the cake pop concept this time - I added marshmallows! If you have any brilliant ideas on how to turn a chocolate cake & marshmallow cake pop into a s'mores-flavored cake pop, let me know in the comments, k?

My other crazy cake pop idea was borrowed from the homemade peanut butter cups that I learned how to make last year from Every Day with Rachael Ray. Peanut butter cup filling replaces the cake entirely in this cute cupcake :)

p.s. thanks to George's Camera for helping me out with getting my camera charger fixed so I could take these photos! You're the best!

Valentine's Day!

Fortunately, being broke and being a baker are not mutually exclusive...

as long as you still live at home where your parents stock the

pantry. Anyway, This year, I told Steven that I would be baking a gift for Valentine's Day, and I just needed one flavor/ingredient to base my gift off of. He could choose anything, and I am very surprised that he did not choose bacon! Instead, he requested toffee. This was a challenge, since I had never even had toffee

before, much less made it. This was certainly my first little

adventure into candymaking - candy thermometer and all!

After

some hard work, a few burned batches of toffee, and a 7/11 run

for Heath Bars, I ended up with a beautiful batch of Pecan and Almond Chocolate Toffee, and some Espresso-Toffee Cupcakes with Mocha Buttercream Frosting. And I couldn't help but

add the heart garnish :)

I got to use so many new, fun ingredients this time around! I received a bottle of vanilla from

the Dominican Republic. It has a

wonderful, almost tropically sweet taste to it. Also, I finally found instant espresso! I've been looking for it for a while, and I think I'll be making a lot of "mocha" recipes that I've bookmarked for the last few months.

Cupcakes!

So when I was lazing around at home for a few weeks this summer and getting addicted to stumbleupon all over again, I started baking. And then I started taking pictures of things I was baking. And then, people started asking me to bake them stuff! Who knew?