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!

Not to long ago, I made cookies for a bake sale. However, I didn’t want to make the same old, same old. I thought about it for a while and wondered what would happen if I made a cookie using chocolate hazelnut spread instead of peanut butter.

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 sticks of butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup chocolate hazelnut spread
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

2. Put butter and sugar into mixing bowl and beat until fluffy

3. Add eggs and hazelnut spread to bowl and combine with the other ingredients in bowl

Helpful Tip: It’s helpful to spray your measuring cup or spoon with cooking spray before placing something like hazelnut spray, peanut butter or honey in it. This helps more of the ingredient go in your batter and less stuck in the measuring cup or measuring spoon.

4. Add the flour and baking soda to the bowl and combine with the other ingredients in bowl

5. Chill mixture for about 10 minutes

6. Scoop onto greased baking sheet

Helpful Tip: I used an ice cream scoop to get the cookies to be a uniform shape and size

7. Press the center of the cookie down

8. Bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit

9. Let cool

10. Enjoy!