The Best Cupcake I've Had In a Long Time

One of my son's friends came over to play today.  The thoughtful mom sent cupcakes.  Chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing.  They were devine.  She used a chocolate cake mix and this simple peanut butter frosting recipe. 

Peanut Butter Frosting
Ingredients 
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup peanut butter
3 tbsp milk, or as needed
2 cups confectioners' or icing sugar

Beat butter and peanut butter in an electric mixer. Slowly mix in the sugar, and when it thickens and gets dry, add the milk a little at a time until all of the sugar is mixed in and the frosting is thick and spreadable. Beat for at least 3 minutes for it to get good and fluffy.Spread or pipe lavishly over the cupcakes.

A Winning Menu

I rarely try four new recipes at one time, but I did today.  My family came over for lunch to celebrate my mom's birthday.  I always like to try new recipes when I have a group over so that I'm not stuck with something I don't like.  If there's a group, then odds are that someone will like it- or so I tell myself.  I was impressed with these recipes.  In order of impressiveness they are:

Asian BBQ Chicken
Sweet and Savory Coconut Rice
Quick Sunshine Cake
Grilled Corn on the Cob

The Chicken was amazing!  My husband who doesn't like BBQ or meat in general said it was the best chicken he'd ever had.  That says a lot. 

To be honest I didn't eat any corn because I don't like corn.  I did like the link though because it included a video. 

I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as we did.  Just click on the name of the recipe to go to the website where I found it. 

Angel Bites

Two girlfriends and I (plus small people) went to a bakery in Iowa Park today to have lunch and order my birthday cake. We discoved these sinful looking things called Angel Bites. I took mine home because I was too stuffed to eat them there- I had a giant baked potato and an equally giant brownie. Well, I gave in to temptation a few minutes ago and tried one. Pure perfection! And you know I have a feeling I've had these before. My friend Heather made them for a church event. She called them cake balls. I went to allrecipes.com and typed in cake balls, and wouldn't you know it. There was the recipe. So because it will enhance your life in so many ways, here is the recipe.

Ingredients

1 cake mix- any flavor

1 tub prepaired icing- any flavor

chocolate for melting

Directions

Make cake as directed. When done, and while still warm, crumble cake. Mix in icing. Shape cake mixture into balls (a mellon scoop would be helpful here). Melt chocolate in a microwave safe bowl- in microwave. Dip balls in melted chocolate using a toothpick. Put on wax paper until cooled.

That couldn't be any easier!

Because life is too short to eat carrot sticks while watching the news

I've been thinking about creating a blog for a while. While checking out a friend's blog this morning I decided to jump in. So with a name like Cake and Other Sins, are you wondering what it will be about? At this point the plan is to make it about fun decadent stuff. Life is serious enough without debating religion, politics, war, etc. I'll leave the heavy stuff for the really smart people. I will stick to cake, and all things delicious.

So for my first delicious post... I think it would only be fitting to give you my very favorite cake recipe. It's everything cake should be: chocolate, rich, dense, and it has gooey icing! I hope you love it too. It never lasts long in my house. Even my husband who doesn't like chocolate, loves it.

Coca-Cola Cake

1 cup Coca-Cola
1/2 cup butter milk
1 cup butter softened
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 large eggs lightly beaten
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 cups mini marshmallows


Icing
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup coca-cola
3 tbs. cocoa
1 16 oz. pkg. powdered sugar
1 tbs. vanilla


Combine coca-cola and buttermilk. Set aside. Beat butter at low speed with mixer. Gradually add sugar. Add eggs and vanilla. Combine flour, cocoa, and soda. Add to butter mixture alternately with cola mixture; begin and end with flour mixture. Beat at low speed until mixed. Stir in marshmallows. Pour into greased 13x9 pan. Bake at 350 for 35 min. Cool 10 min.

To make icing, bring first 3 ingredients to a boil. Remove from heat. Whisk in sugar and vanilla. Pour icing over warm cake. Garnish with nuts.