Chocolate Peanut Butter Muffins (aka Heaven In Your Mouth)

"Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?"  

Warning: These muffins are highly addictive.  The batter tastes like melted Reese's cups, the aroma smells like heaven, and the taste.....beyond imaginable.  I found myself purposefully breaking some of these because "Opps!  Guess I'll have to eat it!"  And some lucky co-workers get to sample them tomorrow :)  It starts, as many good things do, with a cake mix.

Ingredients:

1 package devil's food cake mix

1 package french vanilla instant pudding mix

1.5 cups milk (you can use buttermilk if you have it, but regular will do too)

3/4 cups creamy peanut butter

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 Tsp Vanilla

4 eggs

2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  

Put all the ingredients (except for the eggs and chocolate chips) in a bowl ALL AT ONCE.  Yes!  You don't have to separate dry and wet ingredients!  This actually makes it a really good recipe to have a little guy help with.  They can open all the ingredients and dump them in at once.  They feel really involved.  But I digress....

Add mix it all together until thoroughly blended.  Add the eggs in.  Blend.  Add in the chocolate chips.  Blend.  Take a taste....tastes like Reese's Peanut Butter cups, yes? Yes.

Spoon the batter into muffin cups, filling about 3/4 full.  

Pop them in the oven for 23-25 minutes (or longer if you have one of those chunky muffin pans).

This should make around 24 muffins.

Enjoy! 

Halloween Tutu Wreath

I love Pinterest.  Like LOVE it.  I spend hours on it.  This is the first time that I've actually made anything inspired by things I've seen on there.  I saw this post:

http://lemontreecreations.blogspot.com/2010/10/wreath-bewitched.html

I really liked it, but thought I would make a few changes.

I started out by purchasing supplies.  And I made a MAJOR discovery.  Walmart has cheap craft supplies.  Like way cheaper than Hobby Lobby.  Seriously.  Selection is not as good, but the price is right.  Also, I hate it when blogs say, "I made this for less than $10!!!!"  but then they put together all kinds of stuff they had around the house.  But I don't necessarily have all that stuff around my house, so it would cost me WAY more than $10.  So on this project I only used one thing from home- white spray paint. I wanted to be able to tell YOU that YOU could do this for around $10!   The rest was purchased (I assume that you have a glue gun and glue sticks) for......*drum roll please*............
$10.43.  Seriously.

The first thing I bought was the wreath base.  At Hobby Lobby a styrofoam wreath base can be as much as $10.  Not good.  I went to the dollar store and bought a little wooden twig wreath they had to use as my wreath base.  $1 vs $10  = happy crafter!

Then I went to Walmart and got a few more supplies.  Here's my list and the total:

Wreath base from Dollar Store……………………….$1.08

3 yrds of Black Tulle………………………………………$2.91

Orange Ribbon………………………………………………..$1.97

1 yrd Green Ribbon………………………………………..$0.53

Black Paint…………………………………………………....$0.99

Silver Paint……………………………………………………$0.99

Black Felt……………………………………………………….$0.99

Wooden Plaque……………………………………………….$0.97

TOTAL                                                            $10.43

I started out with the Wooden plaque.  I sketched out my basic design, spiderwebs and our family name. After I had sketched it in pencil, I spray painted it white. 

I started off painting this first because I knew it would take the longest to dry.

Notice- no ribbon or spiderwebs on the right corner.  That came later.....

I started working on the tu tu.  If you don't know the tu tu technique, Google "Tu Tu Tutorial".  A good one is: http://plumtickled.typepad.com/plumtickled/2007/08/tutu-tutorial-t.html

It gives you the general idea.  Progress so far....

Find a good girly movie on and watch it.  It helps relieve the tediousness of this part.  I watched How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days on Oxygen.  It was fun.

Yay!!!! It's done!

Now for the legs.  I started working on the bottom of the legs first.  Orange Ribbon for the base of the legs, and the green polka dotted ribbon for the leg warmers.  Start by folding a side up, glue it, and then the next.  Basically, just use lots of glue gun glue.

And the end product:

Then I free handed little funny witchy shoes out of the black stiff felt.  I glued those to end of the ribbons.

Then I glued the two legs on to the Tu Tu wreath.

I was almost ready to add the sign.  But it looked too plain and boring for me.

Here it is again:

I added some ribbon....

Cute, but still not quite done.  So I added another spiderweb.

Done!

Then I glued that on to the wreath.  The finished product?

SPOOKTACULAR!!!

Carrot Cake Waffles and Cream Cheese Syrup

These turned out super yummy and weren't TOO much work for a quick breakfast.  I hate spending too much time cooking on Sunday morning.  I want to spend more time eating :)  Anyways, these turned out delicious and made the house smell really good.  I grated my carrot the night before to make it a little faster in the morning.

Carrot Cake Waffles

Yields: about 4 double waffles

Waffle Ingredients:


1 cups all-purpose flour


1/4 teaspoon salt


2 tablespoons sugar


¾ teaspoons baking soda


1/2 teaspoon cinnamon


1/2 teaspoon nutmeg


½ teaspoon allspice


½ cup sour cream

½ cup milk

1 egg

2 tablespoons butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract


1/2 cup raisins


1 cup grated carrots


Directions:
1. Combine the flour, salt, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. 

2. Mix together the sour cream, milk, egg, butter and vanilla extract. 

3. Stir the wet and dry ingredients together.  4. Add carrots and raisins. Stir gently to combine. 

5. Spread 1/3 cup or so of batter onto the waffle iron and bake until the waffle is done, usually 3 to 5 minutes, depending on your iron. Spray iron with cooking spray between waffles as needed.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Two big scoops of ready made cream cheese frosting

Milk to taste

A dab of syrup

Powdered sugar

Heat the cream cheese frosting over medium heat.  Add a little milk and stir until completely liquid.  Stir in syrup until completely combined.  Remove from heat and stir in powdered sugar till it reaches a consistency you like.  easy!