Good Ole Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

Baking with my girl.  I measured all of the ingredients out and then let Lily be in charge of adding it gradually to the mixer and sizing out the portions.  She is a big fan of adding mint to the batch but this time we omitted the green "minty" food colouring. 
These turned out grrrreat!

To add Maltesers, or NOT add Maltesers....THAT is the Question.

Paul came home with a french vanilla cake mix and a large bag of maltesers.  His excitement was pretty high because he spent a while at work having the legendary "What dessert would you eat for the rest of your life, if you could only choose one dessert." epic conversation.  Somewhere along the way, a colleague mentioned that she adds maltesers to her cupcakes and it's WONDERFUL. 

So I got the kids cracking on whipping these up for Daddy.  If you ask me, I would have gone in a reeses peanut butter cup, hershey's kiss or even a Rolo kind of direction for the melty goodness...but who am I to judge? 

In the end, I found the contrast of a crunchy center to be a bit strange.  I would definitely repeat this with something softer in the future though.

Green Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies with my Little Helper

My kids spent the day at Wonderland with their Nonna & Zia.  I still had B scheduled to spend the day with me though, so without her playmates, I knew we had to schedule in some baking time!  Lily had been requesting Mint chocolate chip cookies inspired by her Irish friend Briare.  Apparently Braire's Dad makes a mean mint chocolate chip cookie, and they're GREEN.  So we got busy trying to replicate them as a surprise for Lily. 

So we used the typical Chippits recipe and added green food colouring and peppermint extract.  I was especially excited about taking one of my new portion scoops out for it's maiden voyage!

Happy 2nd Birthday to Remy & Violetta!

Iggle Piggle sits atop a lemon cake smothered in blue cream cheese frosting with rainbow non pariels on top.

Upsy Daisy sits on top of a lemon cake smothered in pink cream cheese frosting, sprinkled with rainbow jimmies!

Dora & Bat cupcakes for daycare Birthday Parties.

Too much celebration?  NEVER.  Besides, I wanted to test two colours of cake layered and see if it really works just poured into the baking cups.  My bucket list has a rainbow cake project on it, so this was a chance for me to get my feet wet.

Griff chose bat cupcake cups so we decorated with orange icing and chocolate chips

Clearly left over from halloween but my kid is a big Nightmare before Christmas fan, so these worked.

1st attempt at layering two shades of batter.  Not a bad result.

Griffin eagerly trying to eat up his macaroni and cheese so he can have a cupcake and fruit.

Claire was very excited to get her little hands on a Dora topper.  She finger painted icing all over the tabletop, but didn't eat a bite.

Have I mentioned how much I love this cupcake carrier?

Claire ran off with one of my mini Dora's, so I had to use a Royal icing Dora head on one of these.

Canada Day Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins for Sauble Beach Trip

For my sweeties to celebrate Canada Day. 
Have I mentioned how much I love this new use for all of my Gymboree and Crazy 8 clothing boxes?

This is what I made with my leftover mini chocolate chips.  Easy raisin, peanut and chocolate chip trail mix.

No Egg Cocoa Chocolate Buttercream Icing for Last Day of Grade 2

I found a tutorial on youtube for an easy no-egg, no-cook, chocolate icing.  I was really pleased with the flavour although I think that the fry's cocoa gives it more sophistication than a kid can handle.  Keep in mind that I omitted the Frangelico for obvious grade 2 type reasons.  Deeply delicious.  For these cupcakes, I used a mix.  This post is about my experiment in new icing recipes.