Holiday Sugar Rush: Vanilla Butterfinger Cupcakes

This is the very last sugar rush recipe I'm going to post. I don't know about you, but that is probably enough sugar for me!

I've saved something pretty fantastic for the last sugar rush recipe, though. These cupcakes are deliciously  good. Seriously. Amazingly. Wonderfully. Yummy. They are also pretty easy. I made them up after a whirlwind all-day-long baking day. We were supposed to take a dessert to my husband's work Christmas party and we had to be there in two hours, plus still make sure our little one got dinner and put to bed before we left. I was able to pull it off because these cupcakes were so easy. And I believe they earned four stars from the reviews everyone sitting at our table gave me. Easy and delicious. That's good enough in my book.

Vanilla Butterfinger Cupcakes
Recipe from Your Cup of Cake
Makes: 24 cupcakes

1 box vanilla cake mix with pudding in the mix
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp oil
2 egg whites + 1 whole egg
1 cup buttermilk {see note below}
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and line two cupcake pans with liners.
In a small bowl, sift the cake mix to remove any lumps. Add cinnamon and stir. Set aside.
In a large bowl, combine egg whites, whole egg, and oil together. Mix just until combined - you don't want to over beat it.
Add buttermilk, sour cream and vanilla to egg mixture and stir to combine.
Slowly add cake mix to egg mixture and stir just until cake mix is entirely moistened.
Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full and bake for 15-17 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan. 

Vanilla Butterfinger Buttercream:
3/4 cup {1 1/2 sticks} of salted butter, softened {you can use unsalted but I prefer the flavor of salted}
1/3 cup smooth peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
3-4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
2 crushed Butterfinger bars

Directions:
Beat butter and peanut butter on high for 3 minutes, scraping bowl as necessary. Add vanilla and add powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time, beating after each addition,  until it reaches desired consistency. Add sour cream and mix well. Add more powdered sugar if needed then stir in the crushed Butterfinger pieces.
Pipe onto cooled cupcakes and top with additional crushed Butterfinger pieces. Ta-da! Some delicious cake.

Holiday Sugar Rush: Caramel & Heath Bar Cupcakes

These cupcakes are deliciously moist and caramel-y. If you have an event you want to take cupcakes to, you can't go wrong with these. Yum!

Note: All cupcake flags and toppers were made using Stampin' Up stamping sets and ink colors.

Caramel and Heath Bar Cupcakes


Chocolate Cupcakes:
Recipe from Your Cup of Cake
¾ cup buttermilk
½ cup oil
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream
1 box Devil’s Food Cake Mix
2 Heath Bars, crushed 

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line 2 muffin tins with 24 cupcake liners.
Combine buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla.
Sift in (for easy mixing) cake mix and add sour cream. Stir in the heath bars.
Fill liners ¾ full and bake for 18-22 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Cool in the pan.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Caramel Sauce

You'll also need Heath Bars, broken into bits or a bag of broken toffee bits


Once cupcakes have cooled and frosting and caramel sauce have been prepared, put the caramel sauce into a squeeze bottle. Poke the tip of the squeeze bottle into the cupcakes and squeeze in caramel sauce until the cupcake begins to expand. Go ahead and poke and fill each cupcake a couple times until all the caramel sauce has been used.
Once you've filled all the cupcakes with caramel sauce, pipe the buttercream frosting onto them. Top with crushed Heath bars.

Holiday Sugar Rush: Homemade Oreos

Since we're already on a cake mix cookie kick, we'll just keep up the trend, at least for another recipe. Everyone probably has a recipe for these. Or at least everyone has tasted them before. Nothing can compare to a soft, homemade Oreo cookie. This is the way I've been making these for years. They always turn out so chewy and delicious. I love making them small to get some tasty little bites of Oreo. It's the way to do it. :)

Soft Homemade Oreos

1 chocolate cake mix {I like German chocolate, but devil's food is pretty good, too}
3/4 cup {1 1/2 sticks} melted butter
2 large eggs

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.
Mix all ingredients together until cake mix is completely moistened. Refrigerate for 10-15 minutes or until firm. Form the dough into walnut size {or smaller if you are like me and like small little Oreos} balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet two inches apart and bake for 6-8 minutes. They may not look quite done when you take them out - they'll still be just a little raw. Leave them on the sheet for a couple of minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. This helps make sure you get soft, chewy cookies.

Oreo Frosting:

4 oz cream cheese {half 8oz package}, softened
1/4 cup {1/2 stick} butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1 lb {between 3-4 cups} powdered sugar

Directions:
Place the cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and two cups powdered sugar in a bowl. Mix together until smooth. Continue adding powdered sugar 1/2 at a time until you get the consistency you want.

And then comes the tricky part:
Assemble Oreos by spreading frosting on one cookie and topping with another. Delicious!

If you want to make these even more festive, you could add some peppermint or mint extract to the frosting. Add it with the vanilla - put between 1/2 and 1 tsp, depending on your preference.
You could also add some finely crushed peppermint before spreading onto the cookies.
Another yummy option would be adding a few teaspoons of orange zest & freshly squeezed juice to the frosting before spreading. Yum!

Holiday Sugar Rush: Three Ingredient Pumpkin Cookies

The holidays always need a little spice with all the sugar, right? These three ingredient pumpkin are a big hit. I made this for my sister's baby shower and everyone loved them. My cousin even said they were just as good as her mom's more involved and difficult-to-make pumpkin cookies. 

Three Ingredient Pumpkin Cookies
Recipe from Nina Wilkins

1 spice cake mix, sifted
1 14 oz can pumpkin pie filling
1 12 oz bag chocolate or cinnamon chips

Mix pumpkin filling and cake mix together until cake mix is completely mixed in. Add the chocolate chips. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 6-9 minutes, or until set and slightly browned. Cool for a couple of minutes on the cookie sheet before transferring to wire racks.

Holiday Sugar Rush: Fudge Crinkle Cookies

Fudge Crinkle Cookies
Recipe from Betty Crocker Cookies

Makes: approx 2 1/2 dozen cookies

1 box devil's food cake mix {a mix with pudding is the best}
1/2 cup butter, melted
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup powdered sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, mix cake mix, oil, eggs and vanilla with a spoon until a dough forms.
This next step is easier if you refrigerate your dough for about 15 minutes, but it isn't absolutely necessary.
Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll balls in the powdered sugar. Place balls about 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 10-12 minutes, or until set. Allow to finish setting up on the cookie sheet for one minute, then remove to a cooling rack. Cool completely, about 30 minutes. Store tightly covered.

Lemon Cookies with White Chocolate

Here is another super-duper easy cookie recipe that you will love - especially if you like lemon! I really loved these cookies. This is the first recipe I'm going to be sharing from one of my favorite cooking blogs, Jamie Cooks it Up!, and I've made them a couple times. I did slightly adapt the recipe for my own purposes so I'll share here the way I did it but know that you can go to Jamie's site {see link to the recipe below} to find the original recipe and proportions to make more cookies. My sister thought these cookies tasted a bit like lemon bars in cookie form, which is a good way to describe them!

Lemon Cookies with White Chocolate

Slightly adapted from: Jamie Cooks it Up!

Time: 1 hour

Makes: approx. 2 1/2 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

1 box Lemon cake mix
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 egg
2 tsp. lemon juice {fresh or from the baking section}
1/2 cup white chocolate chips + additional 1/2 chips for melting

Directions:

Melt butter and add to the cake mix. Mix around for a little bit then add the egg.
Squeeze a fresh lemon and add to the mix.
Mix with a spoon or in a mixer until just combined.
Add 1/2 cup white chocolate chips and mix until incorporated evenly. Note: at this point the dough can be refrigerated for up to 48 hours. Just cover well and put in the fridge, then pull out and allow to sit for about 5 minutes before finishing.
Roll into 1 1/2 inch balls and place on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes or until bottoms are begin to turn golden brown. Do not over bake. Take the cookies out of the oven when they have cracked on top. Then let them finish baking on the sheets for about 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack or tea towel to finish cooling.
Melt the remaining 1/2 cup white chocolate chips in the microwave for 30-second intervals. You can add 1/2 tsp. shortening to help with this. Don't over-melt your chips because they will just harden and make drizzling pretty much impossible. Melt just until you see some of the shapes of the original chips left and then stir it around until it's all melted.
Drizzle the white chocolate over the tops of the cookies. Or do like me and put the chocolate into a plastic baggie, snip off the corner and squeeze it onto the cookies. I like this method better because I can control where and how much chocolate ends up on each cookie. I also put my chocolate on while the cookies were sitting on wax paper.

Sprinkle the cookies with a bit of powdered sugar. Let the cookies rest of a wire rack until the white chocolate has set up. Mmmm . . . delicious Lemon Cookies!

Apple Butterscotch Cookies

These cookies were so yummy! I'll admit I'm not really a cookie person {I know, I know - not liking chocolate and cookies just makes me super weird!} but I really liked how these turned out. This is another recipe I created and I really liked how "cake-y" they were. We also took these to our nieces and nephew and they loved them as well. In fact, a couple of them said they were some of the best cookies they'd ever had!

Apple Butterscotch Cookies

Created by: Cucina di Harwood

Time: 45 minutes

Makes: 2 1/2 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

1 white cake mix

1 egg

6 Tbsp. applesauce {1/4 + 1/8 cup}

1/4 cup {be super generous with it!} grated apple

3/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/2-1 cup butterscotch chips

Directions:

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a well-greased baking sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees on the middle for 8 minutes. Then move to the top rack and bake for an additional 2 minutes. Take the cookie sheet out of the oven and leave the cookies on the sheet to finish baking for 2 more minutes.

Transfer cookies to a wire rack or tea towel to complete cooling. Or enjoy warm! Either way, they are good!

Note: The cinnamon in these cookies provides a rather subtle spice flavor. I prefer it this way. But if you want a little more spice, add 1 tsp. cinnamon and 1/4 tsp. nutmeg to the dough.

Cherry Cookies

I'm going to be doing a mini-series of posts of some recipes that could be deemed appropriate to grace your holiday tables this year! Yes, I know, it's kind of late. But I really wanted to share a few recipes anyway so I'm gonna. I hope you enjoy them!

This is a recipe I recently created {don't applaud yet - you'll soon see that this is so easy anyone could have created it!}. My husband really enjoyed them and I liked them quite a lot. If you like cherries, you'll probably really like these cookies!

Cherry Cookies

Recipe created by Cucina di Harwood
Time: 45 minutes

Makes: 2 1/2 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

1 box Cherry Chip cake mix {see, I told ya!}

1/2 cup chopped maraschino cherries

1 egg

4 Tbsp. melted butter

3 Tbsp. water or cherry juice

1  tsp. almond extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Chop your maraschino cherries. I used most of a jar of cherries to get 1/2 cup. I saved a few to put on top of some of my cookies but you don't have to do that. If you want, you could chop up all the cherries and put all of 'em in the cookies. It just depends on how many cherries you want. I found the perfect size was to chop the cherry in half, then each half into four pieces. You can do it however you'd like, I just found that to be the perfect size. Warning: cherry juice stains clothing and counter tops. Just be aware!

Put the cake mix, egg, water/juice and almond extract in a medium sized bowl. Stir just until the cake mix is all mixed in. You don't want to over-mix as the cherry chips in the cake mix will disintigrate if you mix it too much and you'll lose some of the flavor - you don't wanna do that! Note: if you want a little more cherry flavor, use the cherry juice from the bottle of maraschino cherries instead of water. I just used water and it turned out great - a nice cherry flavor without being too much; it just depends on what you're going for. 

Add the chopped cherries and fold in. Your dough will be very stiff and sticky. This is okay.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes or until the bottom edges are slightly golden. Don't over-bake. Take the cookies out of the oven and leave them on the cookie sheet for another 2-3 minutes to finish baking - and because if you try immediately to take them off the sheet, your cookies will be in nice little pieces when you're done. Trust me

At this point, if you want to add a cherry to the top, you can put half a cherry in the center of the cookie and press lightly until slightly depressed into the cookie. Doing this while they are still warm will make the cherries stay put when they are cool. You don't have to do this. It does make them a little prettier and gives an extra cherry flavor, which I really liked, but it isn't necessary. 

Transfer the cookies to a rack or tea towel and allow to finish cooling.

Note: for an added measure of pretty and sweet, drizzle melted milk-chocolate over the cookies before serving.