Ingredients:

• For Graham Cracker Crust:
  • 9 graham crackers (full sheets)        1/4 cup sugar     1 stick cutter

   

• Your favorite brownie recipe.  (If you’re interested, I used this one by Alton Brown.)

•  1 bag of mini marshmallows

Directions:

1. Make graham cracker crust

• To make graham cracker crust:
  1.  Crush graham crackers
  2. Melt butter
  3. Combine graham crackers, butter and sugar
  4. Place in pan and spread so that it covers the bottom of the pan
  5. Refrigerate while mixing brownies

2. Mix your favorite brownie recipe batter

3. Pour batter on top of the graham cracker crust

4. Bake as directed by your brownie recipe of choice

5. After the brownies are done baking, throw some handful of marshmallows on top.

6. If you haven’t already, turn the oven off and place the brownies back into the warm oven until the marshmallows puff.

7. After taking the brownies out of the oven for the second time, use a knife to spread the marshmallows like frosting.

You can serve these warm, but they will be very messy! Yummy, but messy.  I suggest putting them in the refrigerator for a little while.  They’ll hold together better that way.

If you try this recipe, don’t hesitate to let us know!  Do you have a favorite brownie recipe?

Baking is in my blood! My grandfather was a baker, my dad was a baker and my mom is a cake decorator. One of the things I love to do most is bake yummy goodies from scratch, especially on rainy days. Unfortunately, this isn’t possible every time we need baked goods for an event like a bake sale or a meeting.

What do you do? You use a mix of course! And why not? They’re simple to use and taste great too. However, sometimes you want something more than a vanilla cupcake. Here’s three ways to get a little something more out of your vanilla cupcake mix without a lot of effort.

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1. Prepare mix as directed

2. Add 2 cups of chocolate chips

3. Mix together

4. Put mix in pans

5. Bake as directed

Frosting Pairing: I put chocolate frosting on mine, but any frosting that you could imagine would probably be great on these.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1. Prepare mix as directed

2. Measure out 1 cup of peanut butter

3. Warm peanut butter in microwave for 30 seconds

4. Add peanut butter to mix

5. Mix together

6. Place mix in pans

7. Bake as directed

Frosting Pairing: I used chocolate frosting for these

Tips:

• Spraying the measuring cups and mixing implements with cooking spray will help the peanut butter stick less

• After adding the peanut butter to the mix, I started off using the beater to mix it in but soon found that a spoon worked better

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1. Prepare mix as normal

2. Add 1 15oz can of pumpkin

3. Mix together

4. Add 2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice

5. Mix into batter

6. Scoop into pans

7. Bake as directed

Frosting Pairing:

I put vanilla frosting on some of these and on the rest I put caramel frosting that I made from a can of vanilla frosting.

Caramel Frosting

Ingredients:

1. Place unwrapped caramel squares in a microwave safe bowl

2. Add water

3. Microwave for 1 minute

4. Stir until caramels are melted

5. Let cool

6. Add ½ can (8 oz) of vanilla frosting

7. Mix together

Note: I only let the caramel cool for a minute before I added it to the frosting which led to more of a glaze like (rather than frosting like consistency). I had some left over so I put it in the fridge and the next time I took it out, it had more of a frosting like consistency. So in other words, if you would like a caramel glaze let cool for 1 minute. For a caramel frosting, let caramel cool longer.

As you can see, spicing up a simple cake batter and coming up with your own creations is very simple to do!

If you try any of these recipes, I’d love to hear how they turned out!

They’re delicious and super simple to make! Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

3 cups quick oatmeal  1/2 cup coconut

1. Mix sugar, cocoa powder, butter, vanilla and milk in a medium to large saucepan.

2. Place pan on top of stove and cook on medium high heat until the mixture comes to a boil.

3. Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter, oatmeal and coconut.

4. Let the mixture cool in the pan for a little while.

5. Spoon cookies onto wax paper.

6. Let cool.

Caramel Oatmeal Fudge Cookies

For fun, I decided to replace the peanut butter with a 14 oz bag of caramels. It was delicious! Follow the instructions above, omitting the peanut butter and using the caramels instead.

Just a note though. The caramel oatmeal fudge cookies took longer to cool. Although they were delicious, they sometimes could be a little sticky.

If you try either of these recipes, I’d love to hear how they turned out!

There are very few things that I love more than taking a basic cake mix and dressing it up to seem fancy! In this case, I took a simple vanilla cake mix and turned it into a delicious cookie and cream cupcake! Yum! Here’s how:

Ingredients

1 box vanilla or yellow cake mix

Any ingredients required by your cake mix (in my case it was 3 eggs, 1 cup water and 1/3 cup vegetable oil)

1 package chocolate sandwich cookies

1-2 tbsp flour

Directions:

1. Mix the ingredients for your batter as instructed on the box of your chosen mix

2. Place chocolate sandwich cookies in a sandwich bag.
The amount will vary depending on how much cookie you want running through your cupcakes. I like a lot, so I used about 20 cookies.

3. Smash cookies until you get the size pieces you want

4. Pour cookie pieces into a small bowl

5. Add 1 tbsp flour to the cookies and stir until the pieces are coated
The flour will help prevent your cookie pieces from sinking to the bottom of your batter. This trick also works well with other things like fruit and chocolate chips! It also works with other batters like pancake for example.

6. Add cookie pieces to cake batter. Mix them together.

7. Repeat steps 2-6 as desired
I started out using 10 cookies, but found that wasn’t enough for my taste. I repeated steps 2-6 a second time.

8. Put batter into cupcake tins.
I prefer not to line them with paper, but I do use cooking spray.

9. Bake as directed

Cookies and Cream Frosting

This frosting was super simple to make! I just took a can of vanilla frosting and stirred in some cookie piece. Voila! A delicious and simple frosting that seems fancy!

If you’re interested in more ways to dress up vanilla cake batter, check out my squidoo lens Vanilla Cupcake Batter – 3 Ways.

And a huge thanks to Mind Design Grafx for featuring items from my 5 Yellow Birds, Big Ben Glows and Monster Bear Lines on the blog (4/18), Zazzle Your Home! If your looking for home decor items, you should definitely check it out!

I’d love to hear what you thought about this recipe and if you tried it! Feel free to leave a comment!