Dessert

Delicious Cookie Dip Trio

- Mama 8 Comments

What’s better than one dip or two dips? How about a trio of delicious sweet dips!

Seriously, I had been staring at Pinterest a few weeks ago, and stumbled on the very-popular cookie dough dip. I got the bright idea that one cookie wasn’t enough. Two cookies might have been enough, but I had this handy dip container that has space for three dips, and, well, why not serve three pretty dips?

I’m going to tell you right now… these are ridiculously easy recipes. I’m going to start with the hardest recipe, but it truly isn’t hard at all.

I love cookie dough. Seriously, love it. Half the time, when I go to make cookies, I don’t even get actual cookies. I get a dough-covered spoon. So if someone tells me that I can make a dip that tastes like that cookie dough, but is eggless and safe to eat, I’m on board! The problem is, a lot of recipes I had been finding tasted a lot like cream cheese with chocolate chips added. There was one key ingredient of cookies missing that really helped make a cookie taste like a cookie. After a lot of trial and error, I bring you…

Cookie Dough Dip that actually tastes like a Cookie!

Grab 1/2 a cup of butter (yup, that’s about 1 stick). Melt that in a saucepan, and add 1/3 cup brown sugar, whisking it in until it’s all blended together completely. When it starts to bubble over the heat, remove it from the heat and stir in 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.

In a separate dish, cream together an 8-ounce block of cream cheese and 3/4 cup powdered sugar. Add in the brown sugar mixture and stir until it’s thoroughly blended.

And here’s the part that makes it into a cookie-flavor. Add in 1/3 of a cup of flour. Mix it until it’s all smooth, and add in 3/4 of a cup of mini chocolate chips.

Refrigerate until you’re ready to serve, and top with a handful of mini chocolate chips.

You know those Keebler Frosted Animal Cookies? Those really addicting ones? Yeah, those. Well this dip is kind of like that, only a billion times better (and more addicting, of course).

And did I mention it’s only 3 ingredients? (Well, kind of, if you don’t count sprinkles and red food coloring, which are totally optional).

Take an entire bag of those animal cookies. Okay, the entire bag minus the five you eat during the crushing process. Crush those babies up. Mix that with one 8-ounce block of softened Philadelphia cream cheese. Refrigerate.

Right before serving, tint a tub of Cool Whip animal-cookie-pink. Yes, that is the technical term. Fold the Cool Whip and dip together, and sprinkle liberally with nonpareil rainbow sprinkles!

Then eat. Seriously, that’s it. So simple.

But wait! There’s more! This dip is made the same way as the Animal Cookie Dip, except… with Oreos! All you do is take an entire package of Oreos (hold back 5 so you can eat 2 and save 3 for a garnish) and crush them to bits. I like to use the rolling pin/ziploc bag method, but you can just shred them with your hands, or use a food processor or slap-chop or something.

Add in your block of softened Philadelphia cream cheese. Refrigerate until you’re ready to serve, then mix in a tub of Cool Whip. Top with your remaining 3 Oreos (of course, crumbled up, too).

Here are the perfect dippers. We loved pretzels, ruffly chips, graham crackers, and vanilla wafers.

So, what was the resounding favorite? It seemed like the Oreo and Cookie Dough were tied for first, but it varied day-to-day. Pretzels and graham crackers topped the list of best dippers for these. I was a huge fan of cookie dough dip one day, and the very next day, thought Oreo was the best. They’re all so good!

Try one, or all three, and comment below letting me know what you think!

 

Hungry for more cookie-inspired treats? Try my No-Bake Cookies and Cream Truffles, or my Cake Mix Brownies with Cookie Dough Frosting!

Crystal Light Sour Appletini Ice Cream

- Mama 11 Comments

It has been 110 degrees here every day for about a month. I am dying. Seriously, even a dip in the pool is almost like swimming in a hot tub at this point, providing little to no relief from the really high temperatures around here. They’ve even been peaking to 115 degrees.

This is not okay with me. I prefer temperatures around 70 and 80 degrees, so this is just downright ridiculous. However, it has given me more than a few opportunities to break out my ice cream maker and play with it a little bit. It has resulted in some yummy concoctions, but none was more a hit than this one… a nice, icy, Crystal Light Sour Appletini Ice Cream.

I’m going to start here by saying that this recipe involves zero alcohol, so it is kid-friendly (I’m including myself in the kiddo category!)

As soon as Crystal Light came out with their mocktails, I was hooked on them. They’re delicious to whip up on a warm day and serve iced. I have always been a Crystal Light fan, mind you, but the new drinks really take the cake. The other day, I went to the mailbox, and found a fun gift from Crystal Light—a mocktail glass!

I’m going to be the first to say that, as a non-drinker, I have no idea how to even hold one of these pretty things, so while I immediately poured a glass of the Crystal Light mojito in it (yes, I’m aware, it’s the wrong glass to serve that in or whatever…) I actually kept spilling it on myself. I’m not kidding. But I wanted to get some use out of this fun glass they sent me, and I thought back to all of the times I’ve served desserts in glasses like that.

It hit me. I had to make a Crystal Light ice cream, and I had to do it right away.

At first, I had trouble deciding which flavor to use. I am absolutely certain this ice cream would work with any type of Crystal Light, but I really wanted to see how an Appletini version would turn out.

This is, honestly, the easiest recipe you’ll ever find for ice cream, hands down. There are no eggs. There’s really no measuring involved. All you do is grab your ice cream maker and your three ingredients, and you’re good to go.

Start by pouring a 2 liter bottle of ginger ale into your ice cream maker cylinder thing. (I think that’s the technical term for it!)

Pour in your Crystal Light Appletini Mocktail packets, or the Crystal Light packets of your choosing. (Note: I’ve found kids really like the punch that three packets of Crystal Light adds—it is a VERY sour apple flavor. Adults seem to prefer a recipe involving only two packets of the Crystal Light for the appletini recipe. It’s up to your own discretion, but the flavor of whatever packet you use will be stronger with the additional packet).

Add in a can of Sweetened Condensed milk. My grandfather swears by Eagle brand, my grandmother is a fan of Carnation, but personally, I buy the cheapest I can find at the moment, which in this case, happened to be generic. It will look something like this.

That’s it. Put the dasher into your ice cream machine, put the lid on, and turn that puppy on! Use your ice and rock salt the way you typically would for an ice cream, and then wait. And wait. And try to avoid opening the machine to see what it’s doing (I am the most impatient person alive). I personally use a Rival 4-quart machine and it takes about an hour and a half, but you can use this recipe in any 4-quart ice cream machine.

When the machine is done with it, it is typically more of a “soft serve” texture. It’s yummy like this, but I like to freeze it a little harder, typically for several hours or overnight.

Then, you can serve it in your favorite martini glass, and enjoy poolside, spoon optional.

Nutrition and serving information: The dessert clocks in at about 92.5 calories for a half cup serving (closer to 95.5 if you use 3 Crystal Light packets in the recipe instead of 2), which is a good 35 calories less than plain vanilla ice cream at the store. This recipe for Crystal Light Ice Cream also contains 1.5g Fat and 17.5g Sugars. Not exactly diet, but not exactly tipping the scale, either. You’ll get roughly 28 servings from one recipe, or about 3.5 quarts total.

Dazzling Duncan Hines Red Velvet Pancakes

- Mama 8 Comments

When I was in elementary school, once each year, near Christmas time, we would get a single slice of Red Velvet cake as a part of our lunchtime meal. The tradition dated back even before my mother was in school, and it was one of my favorite lunchtime treats of the year from our cafeteria.

You see, there’s nothing about Red Velvet cake that I don’t love. It’s chocolatey, which, duh, is amazing. And it’s a bright, rich, red color, which is always a little more interesting than boring brown chocolate. And then, of course, there’s the delightful cream cheese frosting that just really compliments the chocolate flavor.

Fast-forward to the present. When I was at the Duncan Hines test kitchen in Parsippany, I was blessed enough to get a sneak preview at products coming soon from Duncan Hines, provided that I kept my pretty little mouth shut until the big reveal from Duncan Hines. It has been killing me not to tell my blog readers about it because I know you guys will love it, but today, Duncan Hines finally made the big product announcement about one of the absolutely delicious items that I got to taste! Below, you’ll see their big reveal!

This red velvet cupcake mix is special for many reasons. First off, the frosting mix is right in the box, so you can bake your cupcakes and whip up the frosting mix, and only have to buy one package. I love that– it’s so convenient. Plus, I’m one of those people who buys a mix and says “Oh, yeah, I totally have the frosting for this at home,” and then I get home and surprise! No frosting. This is incredibly handy because it’s all-in-one, basically. Plus, it comes with a pastry bag! That means you can fill and frost your cupcakes so easily.

While we were in the test kitchen, Chef Joe showed us how to fill them easily. You just stick the bag into the center of the cupcake, about halfway down. You apply pressure as you pull the bag up out of the cupcake, and swoosh it around to frost, all in one motion! Easy-peasy and it looks incredibly professional!

Each of the Duncan Hines winners received a box of the brand-new Red Velvet mix as part of our winning weekend prize package, so we were the first to try it before it hits stores.

When I got the box, I first considered making the cupcakes following the instructions on the box. Then, I thought about how I had already tasted that at the test kitchen. I considered making the brownie recipe found on the side of the box, but then I really got to thinking.

Duncan Hines chose me as a winner because I’m innovative. My recipe was something new and exciting using a fairly basic ingredient. And this, you see, it was no different. There are many, many great ways to enjoy this boxed mix (one of my favorite people from the winning weekend had a great recipe to turn it into ice cream! Um, yes, please!), and I thought it would be nice to shake things up.

I started thinking about my favorite red velvet creations. My mind wandered towards cakes and the ice cream fellow winner Sandra came up with, and landed on IHOP’s Red Velvet Pancakes.

If you haven’t tried them yet, I think you should honestly stop reading this post for a second and drive to your nearest IHOP. It’s open 24 hours a day. If you live in America, you really have no excuse not to taste them, seriously. Or, you could just keep reading because…

…I totally have the best Red Velvet Pancake recipe here, like… ever. I promise. It’s IHOP’s pancakes on steroids. These are light and fluffy and drizzled with delicious cream cheese glaze and the best part is, it’s from a BOX. Because, you know, I use Duncan Hines religiously and if you can make pancakes from a boxed cake mix, why the heck wouldn’t you?

Start by making the glaze first. You want to soften a stick of butter and then whip it up using an electric mixer. Once it’s whipped, slowly add in the powdered cream cheese frosting mix from the Duncan Hines Decadent Red Velvet Cupcake box while continuing to mix on low.

Can you see my awesome vintage Hamilton Beach stand mixer? I recently inherited it- it belonged to one of my great aunts who enjoyed baking probably as much as I do. I am in love with this thing.

Anyway, you’ll notice it’s still pretty powdery when you just have the butter added. Instead of doing what the box mix instructions say, you’re not going to add just the four teaspoons of water… that would give you a thicker frosting for cupcakes. Instead, you’re wanting a glaze, so you’re going to slowly add in two TABLESPOONS of water. It’ll give you a much thinner glaze.

This top photo shows you a little more of a thicker glaze, with just the one added tablespoon. The picture below shows how it gets much thinner with the second added tablespoon. See how that is more “drizzle-on-pancakes-worthy”?

Now, set your glaze aside and get to work on those yummy pancakes! You’re going to take a bowl and dump in the cake mix that came in the Duncan Hines Decadent Red Velvet Cupcake box. Add between 1 and 1 1/2 cups of flour (I could be really specific here and say 1 1/4 cup, but really, it’s personal preference on whether you prefer thinner cakes or thicker ones), a tablespoon of sugar, 3/4 teaspoons of baking powder, a little salt, 2 eggs, a little vanilla (a teaspoon is plenty!), and 2 cups of cold milk. Whisk those puppies up and get all of the lumps out.

Grease your pan or griddle really well, warm it up to around 300 degrees (you’ll know it’s done if you drip a little dab of water on and it sizzles up), and then pour some batter on. I make BIG pancakes, around two heaping spoonfuls of batter, but you can easily make whatever size you want, obviously. My son and brother are big fans of silver dollar pancakes.

From here on out, it’s pretty much like your standard pancaking… you’ll want to wait until bubbles appear, flip it, and then wait a bit and take it off of the pan. Seriously, it’s not rocket surgery or brain science, just pancakes. I’ve always been intimidated by making pancakes, and when I finally made them, boom! It’s actually easy. I swear. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t make them (I’m writing this with the hope that there is some poor soul out there, like me, who hasn’t yet attempted to make pancakes and just needs that extra little nudge).

Aaaaanndddd…. FLIP!

So, I’m not exactly the best flipper in the world, but I promise you, they taste yummy. In the end, you’ll get a towering stack of delightful rich red pancakes with an intensely perfect chocolate flavor. The stack is actually a little taller than this, but a few of the hotcakes had already been stolen by little pancake thieves… I got around 15 pancakes from it.

Now, grab a couple of those and drizzle (or drown!) them with cream cheese glaze! I liked mine with just a tiny drizzle, as shown in the picture, but my family loved pouring the cream cheese frosting over them until they were more white velvet than red. Either way, these are a true hit, even with the youngest eaters (my son devoured one, minus the glaze!)

Seriously, look at how thick and fluffy those puppies are! They’re huge!

And all of this just goes to show you, once again, that with Duncan Hines, there really aren’t any limits to your creativity. You may be using a box of cake mix, but that doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself to that box. Stretch yourself, be creative, and you will absolutely love what comes out of it. I’m going to be honest… I can’t remember the last time I used a boxed cake mix to actually make a cake.

Duncan Hines will be releasing the new Decadent Red Velvet Cupcakes, complete with frosting mix and pastry bags, in stores now!

Do you love Duncan Hines Decadent Mixes? Try my great Rustic Carrot Cake Cookies featuring the Decadent Carrot Cake Mix, or these Pumpkin Spice Truffles using the Pumpkin Spice Decadent Cupcake Mix! Hungry? You can view all of my recipes in the Food section of DigitalEraMom.com!

Disclaimer: As a Duncan Hines Frosting Creations winner, I was given a box of this mix to try for free. All opinions of those are from my family and myself, not from Duncan Hines or Pinnacle Foods.

Happy Birthday, Grandma! (With German Chocolate Filled Cupcake recipe)

- Mama 4 Comments

Today is my grandmother’s birthday! I’m so blessed to be visiting her today to celebrate with her! Growing up, my grandmother was a huge fixture in my life. I have many memories of spending time with her when I was younger.

Grandma holding me the day I was born. 

At one point when I was younger, I would spend the night at my grandparents’ house every Friday. Sometimes, my mother would drop me off at grandma’s workplace at the time. I would sit in her office and file paperwork, or at least, pretend I was. After grandma would get off of work, we’d go home and spend time together. I had two nightgowns at my grandmother’s house… one was brown flannel, and one was satin and pink. Each Saturday morning, we would clean up the house, just the basic tasks like washing windows and dusting. I would wear my brown flannel gown and pretend to be Cinderella, and then when the cleaning was finished, I’d change into the pink gown because, to me, it looked more like a ball gown or pretty gown, and it meant my Cinderella transformation was complete.

Visiting Grandma one day.

Grandma and I would also often play restaurant. She would get a notepad of paper and pen, and write down my “order” for breakfast. As I grew up, when my grandmother moved to an apartment, much closer to our favorite bookstore, it was not unusual for me to spend a weekend with her, and wake up in the morning, head to the bookstore when it opened at 10, sit around reading and drinking coffee drinks, and stay there until 10 at night when they would close up and ask us to leave. At the bookstore, I would often get a huge stack of books and read a chapter of each, pruning it down from about 20 to 5 or 6. It was nothing for us to spend a full day there, and as I ran around the store reading chapters of various books to decide which ones I wanted, she would instead sit there with one book, typically a Sue Grafton novel, and read the entire thing.

In addition to helping foster my love of reading by taking me to bookstores for long hours (Borders was our favorite, and we were both so sad to see it go), my grandmother also inspired a great love for theatre by taking me to many, many theatre productions. I can’t even count the number of productions of West Side Story I’ve seen anymore.

On the way to a theatre production.

One of my favorite anecdotes about my grandmother is the time we went on a cruise when I was younger. My parents shared one cabin, and my grandmother and I shared the other. Our cabin had a window, and one day when we were docking in the Bahamas, we woke early to watch out our window. Because the cruise had free room service, we ordered breakfast, and sat and ate breakfast as we watched our boat come into port. After enjoying our breakfast by the window, we started to get tired, and decided to go back to bed for a few hours. We woke up, we ordered breakfast like we did every morning, and halfway through, we realized that we were eating breakfast for the second time. On many occasions, we have thought back on that day fondly, talking about the day we ate breakfast twice.

A couple of years ago, we had the good fortune to travel on a bus tour to New York City. It was my second visit to the city, but her first. It was incredible traveling with her, my aunt Carol, and Uncle Freeman. We were able to explore the city and really have a lot of fun seeing everything New York City had to offer. Our hotel was within walking distance of both Central Park and Times Square. It was about five blocks from Times Square, and five in the opposite direction to Central Park. It was just incredible to get to see the city, and the travel there was a lot of fun. I took so many photographs on that trip!

On the bus to New York City.

My grandmother was the fifth child born into her family of all girls. She had four older sisters, Faye, Carol, Glenda, and Carlene, with her being the fifth. Each time, her parents came up with a name for a male child, and each time, it was a female and they had to adjust it. Faye was Norma Faye, her male counterpart name being Norman. Carol Dean, naturally, was supposed to be a Dean had she been a boy. Glenda Maye was a Glen. Carlene’s male counterpart name was Carl, and Myria Francis, well, was to be Francis. They grew up in a small town in Missouri, called Seymour.

Clockwise from top left: Carol, Glenda, Carlene, my Grandmother Myria, Faye

Recently, I began interviewing my grandparents about their lives and their childhoods, curating stories to document for the future. I got to hear some incredible stories about my grandmother’s childhood, and I want to share them with you, in her own words.

My grandmother, seated on her mother’s lap, with her parents and sisters.

Faye once made me get a spanking, but it wasn’t my fault. Mother had gone in to take a nap, and told Faye to watch us, since she was the oldest. So, with the mean old sisters I had, I asked if I could go down to Grandma Davis’ house, since she lived just over a block away. Faye said I could go, so I did. When mother woke up, she asked where I had gone, and Faye said “I don’t know. She was here, and then she just left. She didn’t say anything to me. She just left.” So, other came looking for me, and found me at Grandma Davis’ and spanked me all the way home.

I must take this point to share that, many times, Grandma mentions having “mean old sisters.” Grandma and her sisters are incredibly close. Faye passed away as a result of complications from ALS, and Carlene passed away of cancer. Both of those losses still weigh very heavily on our family’s hearts, and especially my grandmother’s. But her sisters, oh, her sisters. She loves them more than anything, and so when she says things like that, it’s always very tongue-in-cheek.

Grandma also told me a story once about her walk to school, which provides some insight into those “Uphill Both Ways” tales.

I always walked to school. All of us girls did, and we had to cross the railroad track. There was even an incline up to the railroad track. When we were growing up and would have to cross that, it seemed like it was so high. When it was icy, it would be impossible to get up the incline! Then, 20 to 30 years later, we went back there, to walk up the incline, and it was barely an incline at all.

My grandmother, the entire time I’ve known her, has had some very precocious qualities to her. The story below, I think, really features that in her.

I skipped school one time, I was in grade school. Well, it was before we moved to Springfield, so I guess it was grade school. I was so smart, that when I skipped school, where do you think I went? To my granma and granddad Sims, which was across town. I don’t know how they did it, because they didn’t have a phone, but soon, Daddy showed up at their house. The principal had a paddle that was about two feet long, and had little holes drilled into it, so when I came back to school the next day, I was called into the principal’s office. What was really bad about that is the principal and his wife were close friends with my parents and would come over to my parents’ house. When I got called into the office, he handed me a pen, because whenever you were paddled at school, you had to write your name on the paddle. I knew, just knew, I was going to get paddled. I wrote my name on it, and he said “This is just a warning. Don’t do it again.” So, luckily I didn’t get a spanking. But, yeah, I just had to go to my grandparents’ house when I was skipping school, didn’t I.

My grandmother, a precocious little girl.

I’ll leave you with just one more anecdote about her today. I also got the opportunity to hear a little bit about each of my grandmother’s parents, so she could tell me some special things she remembered about them.

My dad was a very smart, learned, educated man. Not formally educated, but self-educated, especially on the Bible. He was a very kind man, loved music. He sang bass in several different quartets and performed and sang solos in church. He was a very good singer. He loved his family very much and always made sure he provided for them. He worked for a milk company, worked several years for Carnation, then Cloverleaf for a little while, and retired working at Highland. He taught five daughters how to drive. He raised his five daughters to fear God and have a personal relationship with Him. My mother was very quiet, a very quiet person. She had a fantastic sense of humor. She loved life, loved her family, and just enjoyed life, truly enjoyed it. She was a great cook. I probably resemble my mother the most, except I’m not nearly the cook that she was. But I’m probably most like my mother.

My grandmother’s “mother and daddy.”

My grandmother is a huge part of my life, and someone I love quite a bit. She truly is a wonderful person and a great influence on my life. It’s harder now that she has moved three hours away, because I grew up spending a lot of time with her when I was younger, but she and I still enjoy spending time together and I love the great memories I’ve had with her.

Here are a few other fun photographs I was able to find of my grandmother.

(I’m always making fun of her curtains in the image above).

Happy birthday to you, Grandma! I cannot thank you enough for the support and love that you’ve given me through the years. I appreciate your comments on my blog and all of the support you’ve given me with my blogging and my goals for the future. I love you, Grandma!

For my grandmother’s birthday, I decided to make some very special cupcakes. My grandmother loves German Chocolate Cake. Fun fact, it’s actually not from Germany, but instead is named after Sam German, the man who created the chocolate that was once used in the recipe. I decided to do a pseudo-German chocolate filled cake. My cake recipe is modified off of one from Hershey’s website. It’s based off of their recipe to their “Perfectly Chocolate” cake.

The recipe kind of sounded a little odd to me, but it is truly a very soft, moist, and incredibly chocolate cake. Bear with me, as odd as the recipe sounds, it produces one of the best sets of cupcakes I’ve ever made.

2 Cups Sugar
1 ¾ Cups All-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 Cup cocoa powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 small box instant chocolate pudding
1 Cup milk
2 eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 C boiling water

Start by heating your oven to 350 degrees F. Fill your cupcake tin with liners, or grease it. I prefer using liners because it’s easier for batter to crawl up the paper than it is for it to cling to a metal pan, so cupcakes baked with a liner rise higher.

Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, pudding, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add your eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla, then beat for a couple of minutes. Stir in the vinegar quickly to activate the baking soda. Now pour in your boiling water. It will make for a very thin batter. At first, it kind of made me nervous how thin it was, but it ended up making some great cupcakes, so don’t get too worried about it! Plus, the batter smells incredible after you pour that water in!

Fill your cups between 2/3 and ¾ of the way full with the batter. Bake them for 25 minutes, and cool completely.

For the filling, I decided to use a modified version of the Coconut Pecan Frosting from Back To Her Roots. Her frosting recipe tasted delicious, but it was sort of soupy, which is why I provided for the modification below. However, if her recipe comes out perfectly for you, you may not end up having to use my modified technique and may be able to use the frosting perfectly like she did. Her recipe was positively incredible, though, even soupy, which is why I decided to use it instead of switching to a different recipe.

3 Egg Yolks
1 Cup packed brown sugar
12 tablespoons butter (1 ½ sticks), cut into pats
1 (12 oz) can Evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of Salt
1 ½ cups pecans, chopped
2 cups toasted flake coconut (I used sweetened, but her recipe calls for unsweetened. I would say it’s up to your personal preference).

Combine your yolks, evaporated milk, butter, and brown sugar in your medium saucepan, keeping the heat low. Cook and stir constantly until the butter is melted, and all ingredients combine completely. Remove from heat.

Stir in your vanilla and salt, and then add coconut and pecans. Stir until it’s well-combined. Transfer this to a bowl and refrigerate until it’s cool throughout. Make sure you allow for a lot of time for this to stay in the refrigerator. I refrigerated mine for 10 hours. If you can get it to go overnight, that would be best.

If, after refrigerating it for a very long time, it’s still soupy, grab a strainer and strain off all of the excess liquid. I’m going to tell you right now, you should save it, because the liquid is incredible for coffee, ice cream, everything. It is a truly delicious liquid.

To fill the cupcakes, you need to grab a sharp knife, cut into the cupcake at an angle (about 45 degree angle) and cut a cone shape out of the middle of the cupcake. If you cut it too deep, you might puncture the bottom of the cupcake, and that would be bad news, so make sure you’re careful to cut into the cupcake deep enough to give you a lot of filling, but not so deep that there’s no cupcake to go with it.

Once you’ve got the cone out of the cupcake, fill ‘er up with that delicious coconut pecan filling.

Grab the part of the cupcake you cut out, and cut the cone shape off so you’re left with a flat piece. Put that on top of the filling, and viola, you’re back to an easy-to-frost surface.

Back to her roots also has an incredible ganache recipe on her website that you could choose to frost your cupcakes with. I tried to make it, twice, and it was pure liquid, even after letting it stay in the fridge for about 7 hours (her recipe suggests two). If you can get the ganache to work (and I’m sure it does… I’m just ganache-challenged). Worst-case scenario, if her ganache doesn’t work, then you can put about 5 spoonfuls into a cup, and add your coffee… instant mocha!

Because the ganache didn’t work, I have a confession… I used some store-bought icing to use on the top. I grabbed my star tip, my decorating bag (it’s fancy. I take a quart-sized Ziploc, cut a corner off, nest my star tip in it, and spoon the frosting in), and my favorite Duncan Hines chocolate icing. I’m pretty brand-loyal when it comes to store-bought frostings, and Duncan Hines is where it’s at. I whipped up the icing so it would be nice and fluffy, and I piped it onto my cupcakes. Then, I took it that extra step and sprinkled each cupcake with a little touch of coconut (the coconut also helped so I could tell the filled and un-filled cupcakes apart… my little brother isn’t a fan of coconut and pecans, so I left several cupcakes unfilled for him).

And that, my friends, is my perfect kind-of German chocolate filled cupcakes. I hope some of you will be able to use this recipe in order to make a birthday special for someone as special to me as my grandmother!