Ice Cream Cupcakes

Before you decide to make these (which you totally should) make sure you give yourself 1-1/2 to 2 days to make them. But these little guys are really good!

Here's what you do:

Start with cupcakes. Some of mine were mini cupcakes in a tiny muffin pan, and I also made regular sized ones.

Make any sort of cupcake batter you like. I used a chocolate cake mix. Spray the muffin tins with nonstick spray. Fill the muffin tins only half as full as you normally would. For the mini muffin tins, this means using a little less than a teaspoon of batter. For the regular muffin tins, this means using about 1 Tablespoon of batter.

Bake cupcakes at 350 degrees F and check them after 8 minutes.

Remove the cupcakes from the oven, let cool in their tins for 15 minutes. Loosen the cupcakes by running a knife along the edges of the muffin cups. Make sure that none of the cupcakes stick to the pan, but keep the cupcakes in the cupcake pan, cover with plastic wrap and put in the freezer for 3 hours, or overnight is best.

Remove the cupcakes from the freezer when you’re ready to use them. Ideally, you’d like to have 1/2-inch little cupcake bottoms.

Remove the ice cream from the freezer to let soften before filling cupcake tins. The picture shows chocolate mint, I used cookies and cream. Leave on the counter for 10 minutes or defrost in the microwave. When ice cream is softened, spoon and flatten ice cream on top of the cake while they are still in the muffin tins. It’s a little messy, but don’t worry about that. When all of the cakes are topped with ice cream, return to the freezer to harden. I left my ice cream cupcakes in the freezer over night, but give them at least 4 hours.

Be creative and top your cupcakes with anything you like. Whipped cream, chocolate ganache or caramel and then throw some sprinkles on top or some mini M&M's.

(by: Raenie)

Fruit Pizza

You can use any pizza crust you want, but for this one I used a simple sugar cookie recipe. For the spread, I used a cream cheese frosting. Then you simply top it with your favorite fruits.

Sugar Cookie/ Pizza crust:

3/4 cup soft butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla or lemon
3 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt (don't level)

Mix the first four ingredients together, then sift and stir in the remaining ingredients. Chill the dough for at least one hour. Roll out to 1/8 inch thick. Cut the dough into desired shape then place the dough on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake until slightly golden (for the pizza crust, you may want to reduce the temp. to 375 and bake for a little longer).

Temp. 400 Time 6-8 minutes Makes 4 dozen cookies or 1 large crust



Cream Cheese Frosting

1-8 oz. package of cream cheese (room temp.)
1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Blend the ingredients and spread on cooled pizza crust or cookies.

-Adrien Hintz

Fruit Pizza, Baking Bread, and Card Making

On June 28th we met at Lora's house and she taught us how to bake bread...which was so fun! We needed something for our sweet tooth though and so Adrien brought this fruit pizza and we all supplied a few of the fruit toppings.

Lora has been baking bread for a while now and with some help from a friend she has been able to master the art. She taught us some new tricks and processes that were so helpful. We all had a great time learning the "correct" way to bake bread.

While the bread was rising we made these super easy but really fun cards. Just print the stems and glue on the buttons...it's that easy. They turned out so adorable!

Apple Blossom 10K Race

6.2 miles...ahh yeah baby, we did it!

Snickerdoodles

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 3/4-3 cups flour

Cream shortening, butter, and sugar. Add eggs and mix. Add everything else and mix. It shouldn't be too crumbly or too sticky. Roll balls in mixture of 2 tbs. sugar and 2 tsp. cinnamon. Bake at 400 degrees for 7.5-8 minutes (depending on how soft you want them). Makes 3 dozen.

-Raenie Pratt

Welcome to girls night out!

For the past year Lora, Raenie, Katie and Adrien have been getting together once a month for girls night out. Everytime we talked about bringing recipes to share and it just never seemed to happen (at least not all of us). But now we can all share the recipes from the comfort of our own homes, without having to worry about remembering them for that special night. So start adding those recipes!