Tag: Easter

Happy Easter to You and Yours!

Happy Easter to You and Yours!

What a fun time of year to bake! Wonderful flavors, beautiful spring pastel colors and all kinds of cute candies to choose from to decorate your treats with! Little bundt cakes are so fun for Easter desserts! Top with a vanilla glaze and your choice…

Cadbury Egg Cookies Are Perfect for Easter

Cadbury Egg Cookies Are Perfect for Easter

Can you believe that Easter is almost here? What treats are you going to bake this year? You will want to add these to your list. These are the perfect cookies to bake for your Easter gathering. Cadbury Eggs are a favorite treat of mine!…

Have Fun Decorating Easter Egg Cupcakes

Have Fun Decorating Easter Egg Cupcakes

Easter is on the way! These cupcakes are so easy to decorate-kids would love to help you! Bake your favorite cupcakes, top with frosting and green sprinkles or shreds and add your favorite Easter eggs or candy.

We have been making these Chocolate Party Cupcakes for years – they are so good! They have a delicious cream cheese and chocolate chip filling-YUM! Great for holidays, birthdays and whenever you have a chocolate craving. Enjoy!!!!

Chocolate Party Cupcakes

Delicious chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese and chocolate chip filling.
Prep Time30 minutes
Cook Time15 minutes
Total Time25 minutes
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Cupcake
Servings: 24
Author: Mary Beth

Ingredients

Cupcake

  • 1 Chocolate Cake Mix

Cream Cheese Fillings

  • 8 oz cream cheese, softened
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup chocolate chips (plus a few more to add to filling layer, if desired)

Frosting

  • 1 1/3 cup butter, softened
  • 2 pounds powdered sugar
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 tablespoon vanillla
  • 1/4 cup sprinkles, optional

Instructions

Filling

  • Beat cream cheese, sugar, salt and egg together in a bowl.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Set aside.

Cupcakes

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  • Place 24 cupcake liners in cupcake pan.
  • Prepare cake mix according to directions.
  • Fill each cupcake liner approximately 1/4 full of chocolate cake batter.  Using a small pitcher to fill the cupcake liners makes it easier – and is less messy than using a spoon.
  • Put about 1 tablespoon of filling on top of chocolate layer in the center of each cupcake.  Can add a 2-3 chocolate chips  to center, if desired.
  • Add layer of chocolate over filling, so liner is filled about 2/3 full.
  • Bake according to cake mix directions,  about 12-15 minutes, or until cupcake top bounces back to touch.
  • Let cool in cupcake pan for a few minutes, then cool on a cooling rack.

Frosting

  • After cupcakes are completely cool, can frost with your favorite frosting or use the Buttercream Frosting above.
  • Cream butter with mixer.  Add powdered sugar, milk and vanilla.  Beat until smooth and creamy, scraping sides of bowl often, about 2 minutes.  Add a few drops of milk at a time, if too stiff and add a little bit of powdered sugar at a time if you want a stiffer frosting.  
  • Pipe or frost with a knife.  Add sprinkles and other decorations, if desired.

Notes

This is a version of a recipe Cathy Oesterling shared when we worked together for University Extension.
More Peeps – This Time Popping Out of a Cake!

More Peeps – This Time Popping Out of a Cake!

Happy Spring! It sounds like we have a few more cold and windy days – then hopefully warmer weather will arrive next week and put all of us in our Easter planning mode. Last year I made this Easter Basket Bundt Cake. It was a…

Have Fun Making Peep Cookies for Easter

Have Fun Making Peep Cookies for Easter

Easter season is almost here! Get out your spring cookie cutters and start having fun! Bake some sugar cookies, whip us some frosting and get out all your edible glitter, sparkling sugars, googly eyes, bows, and other fun Easter edibles. The sugar cookie recipe below…

Easter Clay Crafts – Fun for Big Kids & Little Kids

Easter Clay Crafts – Fun for Big Kids & Little Kids

Here is a fun project to do with little kids, big kids – or all by yourself! Grab some clay, cookie cutters and your rolling pin. Then look through your drawers and gather up ribbon, paint, markers, stickers and googly eyes.

Last Christmas I had made some ornaments out of this air dry clay and really liked using it. It is easy to work with and no baking is required. This package made about 3 dozen ornaments. To begin, remove the clay from the package and knead it a few times. Then roll out the clay on a smooth surface, using a regular rolling pin. You can use other kinds of clay, or make your own.

After you roll the dough, you are ready to get out your favorite cookie cutters and start creating! If you are using the embossed rolling pin, firmly roll it over your smoothed out clay.

Carefully place the ornaments on a baking sheet, lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat. You can gather up the leftover clay and make more designs. The great thing about this clay is that if you don’t like the way the design turns out, just re-roll it and try again.

Use a straw or skewer to make a hole in the top of each ornament. I used a small heart cutter to create a heart in some of the bunnies, then saved the hearts and used them for a cute little bunny tails on other bunnies.

Have fun experimenting with your cookie cutters and rolling pins. I rolled the embossed rolling pin one direction and then the other to make more texture on the “wool” on some of the sheep.

You can use a pie crust stamp to create designs on your dough. Look around and see what other textures you can create from things around the house. You could use glasses or bowls with a cut design on the bottom or press a doily or textured piece of fabric over the clay before you cut out the ornaments.

Let your ornaments dry for about 8-10 hours, then carefully turn and flatten (if necessary) and let dry for another 8-10 hours, then turn again. Repeat process, it will probably take about 1 1/2 – 2 days for these to dry completely. Make sure the ornaments are as flat as possible.

On these bunnies, I used alphabet stamps to stamp “HOPPY” into the clay right after I cut them out.

Once the ornaments are dry, you may want to smooth the edges and top a bit. You can do it with a small nail file, or I used a sanding block and sanding paper to make the process go faster. Then let the fun and creativity really begin.

After the ornaments were dry, I just used watercolors and applied a light coat over the smooth eggs. You can leave them with a matte finish or put a coat of satin or glossy Mod Podge. They also make Mod Podge with glitter which would be fun, I haven’t tried it. (Experiment with other paints – the watercolors were just what I had on hand.)

Little bunnies look cute when added to your Easter decorations. (Can see on the right side that I needed to flatten that bunny during the drying process?).

You can also use them to decorate packages. This bunny tail was made from the hole made by the straw.

Use a large egg cookie cutter for the outside, then use a small one to create a design on the inside. I glued a piece of yellow paper behind the ornament, but you could also just leave it open. Add stickers, little flowers or lace for decoration. I also coated the ornament with satin Mod Podge before adding the decorations. If you have animal cracker cookie cutters, it would be cute to make a set of ornaments from them for a little Easter tree.

I added the embossed hearts to these bunnies to make their little tails. I used watercolors to paint them pink. Spring raffia ribbon is so cute with these ornaments.

This bunny has a larger tail, painted with watercolor, then once that was dry, I added a layer of glue and sprinkled on some chunky glitter.

Little kids would have fun decorating these with stickers, googly eyes, washi tape, glitter and markers. You could also use these to decorate an Easter tree or just spring branches.

The little embossed sheep were my favorites! So easy and just adorable.

The embossing rolling pin makes these Easter ornaments look extra special. They look great without any extra decorations, but you can apply a layer of Mod Podge satin to give them a bit of a glow, add glitter tails, or even use paint to color them.

These bunnies have one coat of Mod Podge satin on them.

Another fun way to decorate the smooth bunnies is to use cut out small pieces of tissue paper and then use Mod Podge to attach them to the ornaments.

Have fun with the tissue paper you have on hand! Can use a planned or random design. Maybe a stained glass bunny?

These would be cute on an Easter tree or placed in vase with spring buds.

How cute would it be to add these to little packages or Easter baskets?

If you are a stamper, you can also use stamps to create designs in the clay. Slightly damped the stamp first. I used a damp paper towel and used it to blot the stamp right before stamping the clay. These could also be colored with watercolor or makers, or topped with satin Mod Podge.

Experiment with the markers you have on hand to decorate your ornaments.

I put a layer of satin Mod Podge on these to give them a finished look.

Hoppy Spring to you! Use some of your extra time at home to “play” and be creative! Have fun and Enjoy!!!!

You can get the clay, alphabet stamps and raffia from Amazon. You can find similar products at your local discount or craft stores. A Pinterest search will give you so many more ideas!

Here are ideas for Christmas ornaments.

Stitch Into Spring – Created Embroidered Towels

Stitch Into Spring – Created Embroidered Towels

I have been having so much fun with my embroidery machine! I found these cute Spring designs on the Parker on the Porch website. I remember doing cross stitch patterns by hand….this is so much faster, easier and more enjoyable! This is a relatively new…

Is It Too Early for Bunnies?

Is It Too Early for Bunnies?

My husband bought me an embroidery machine for my birthday, mainly so that I could add names and dates to quilts that our grandmothers had made. I am learning that there are so many more things that you can use embroidery machines for, other than…

Easter Treats to Make

Easter Treats to Make

Do you have your menus and treats planned for Easter? Here are some of our favorites. Have a wonderful Easter!

A new recipe for the Perfect Easter Cookies – They have Cadbury Eggs, Chocolate Chips and Coconut!

Spring M&M Cookies – our traditional holiday cookie. You can add white or dark chocolate chips and sprinkles!

Easy Sugar cookies are fun for kids! You roll the dough into balls, flatten and then add your favorite sprinkles.

Marbled Cookies are so pretty! Fun for all ages!

Are you having Easter Brunch? These Raspberry Almond Buttermilk Scones would be perfect! And you can never go wrong with Cinnamon Rolls!

Happy Easter !!!!!

Adorable Bunny Cupcakes  – A Delightful Easter Treat!

Adorable Bunny Cupcakes – A Delightful Easter Treat!

These little Bunny Cupcakes will definitely bring springtime cheer to your Easter celebrations! They are so delicious and adorable! These super cute bunny tales and toes are available from Fancy Flours, but there are versions you can make with frosting, fondant and marshmallows. You can…