Week 10 - OREO CheeseCAKE/CupCAKES

Seeing as my husband was returning from yet another trip to Afghanistan, I thought it would be nice to bake something for him.  His idea of a good home-baked cake is one from a box (preferably chocolate) with frosting from a can (preferably vanilla.) Seeing as I love to bake - his lack of cake-adventure truly drives me crazy!!

When I stumbled on this Oreo Cookie Cheesecake Cupcake (Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes) recipe I simply had to make them for him.  He likes Oreos, cheesecake and most "pop-able" foods. (READ: can POP into mouth in one bite!) How could I go wrong.  My son helped line the cupcake tin and ensured that all of the cupcake liners contained one Oreo.  He was very happy to help make cupcakes for his daddy!

This recipe was SO outrageously easy that I will be sure to make them again in the future.  I mean really...who can turn down individual sized cheesecakes?

Here's the recipe:

Martha Stewart's Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes Recipe
Makes 30

Ingredients:
42 cream-filled sandwich cookies, such as Oreos, 30 left whole, and 12 coarsely chopped
2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
Pinch of salt


1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each lined cup.

2. With an electric mixer on medium high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually add sugar, and beat until combined. Beat in vanilla.

3. Drizzle in eggs, a bit at a time, beating to combine and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies by hand.

4. Divide batter evenly among cookie-lined cups, filling each almost to the top. Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Refrigerate at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I made some Irish Soda Bread and some Shamrock cookies for my son's special helper day at Pre-School.  I wasn't going for works-of-art with these cookies... Just some yummy treats to share with his class.  They tasted YUMMY - but didn't look the way I would normally want them too.  I'm pretty sure that none of the kids noticed!!  Hope you have a great St. Patrick's Day! And...by the way - Chocolate Stout Cake is next...

Week 9 - Sports Cupcakes

 
Week 9 presented a new challenge for me...bake and decorate 40 cupcakes for a friend to take to a birthday party.  A little stressful - but TONS OF FUN!  My friend Natalie asked me to bake some sports themed cupcakes for her nephew's 2nd birthday party and I simply couldn't refuse! She even offered to watch one of my kids so that I could devote more time to cupcake decorating...how could I go wrong??!!  I had a blast putting these together for her.  Of course there was a little anxiety over whether people were going to like them...but it turns out that they were a hit.  (Even tasted good too!!)

 The request was for some Baseballs...

 

And for some Soccer Balls...

And for some Basketballs...

Natalie told me that her nephew really liked footballs the best, so I made this just for him...

So...Any more requests??

More from Week 8 - My Nephew's Birthday!

Well...I'm going to cheat a little and send you over to check out Two Cupcakes in my Kitchen because Emily already did a great job discussing our little baking get-together (disguised as a 2nd Birthday Party!) We had such great plans - some were successful and others we simply just didn't get around to.  All in all we had a lot of fun and enjoyed WAY TOO MANY cupcakes!  (We were even treated to some homemade ice cream - but I don't have any pictures of that!)

One of the things that we wanted to check out this past weekend was how to get the cupcake wrappers to look all pretty and fun once the cupcakes were baked.  I ran into this dilemma a few weeks ago when I baked my Valentine's Day cupcakes.  It seems that while the cupcakes are baking, the wrappers get all soaked up with cake and you can't see the pretty designs.  I had decided to just pop them into fresh wrappers so that they looked pretty.  This time around we doubled the cupcake wrappers and that seemed to do the trick.  I guess there's a professional answer out there somewhere - but in the meantime...we'll just keep trying!

*Cupcakes on the left have only one wrapper and look bleh.

*Cupcakes on the right look pretty with the double wrappers. Bingo!

Again - check out this link for more details on the fun Safari Cupcakes.  I actually did do some of the baking and decorating...it was fun messing up someone else's kitchen.  (Especially when that someone else has such a great husband who kept cleaning up after us!)