More Baking...

Hi everyone,
Just a quick hello today... I host a small ladies group on Wednesday afternoons and today I decided to bake up some tasty treats for all of us.
It is gray, damp and cold out so I wanted to create something that would be cosy to eat while drinking a hot tea or coffee!


I found this great recipe for French Toast cupcakes and I thought is there anything more cosy than a nice warm breakfast on the weekend?
So I thought that I would try to capture some of that weekend brunch feeling right here in the middle of the week...lol

I found these really cute cupcake liners at Michael's

French Toast Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup All purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Unsalted butter melted and cooled
2 EGGS
2 teaspoons Maple extract
1/2 cup milk

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350'F and line baking pan with paper liners.
2. Mix together flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together butter, sugar and eggs until smooth. Make sure the butter is cool or you?ll have scrambled eggs.
4. Whisk in maple extract and then alternate between whisking in flour mixture and milk. Make three additions of flour mix and two of milk. Beat until smooth.
5. Scoop batter into prepared mini-muffin pan and bake 12-14 minutes until golden brown and tops spring back when lightly touched.
6. Cool the cupcakes on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting  - Makes 3 cups

1 package (8 ounces) reduced fat cream cheese, at room temperature
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, at room temperature
3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Place the cream cheese and butter in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed until combined, 30 seconds. Stop the machine. Add the conFectioners' sugar, a little at a time, blend?ing with the mixer on low speed until the sugar is well incorporated, 1 minute. Add the cinnamon, then increase the mixer speed to medium and blend the frost?ing until fluffy, 1 minute more.

They were really easy to bake and turned out beautifully :)

Thanks for stopping by,

Cheryl

Candy Cane Yummyness

We had a tone of left over candy canes this year. We have been eating them up over the past couple of weeks, but we were not getting through them! I was beginning to wonder what we could do with these little tasty treasures...lol

Here is a great little recipe that I found...

Candy Cane Snowballs

3 c. powdered sugar, divided
1 1/4 c butter, softened
2 t. vanilla (or if you’d prefer a stronger peppermint flavor, you can replace 1 t. of vanilla with a teaspoon of peppermint extract)
1 egg
3 c. flour
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
3/4 c. finely crushed candy canes, divided
1/2 c. granulated sugar
2-3 T. milk


1. In a mixing bowl, beat 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar and butter until fluffy. Add vanilla and egg and beat until combined.

2. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Stir to combine. Slowly add to mixing bowl, beating until combined, about 1 minute. Stir 1/2 cup finely crushed candy canes in by hand.

3. Roll dough into small balls using just under a teaspoon of dough. Rolls balls through granulated sugar to coat and place on baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Cool.

4. While cookies bake, stir together remaining 1 1/2 c. powdered sugar with 2-3 T. of milk. Add just enough milk to form a thick glaze. Drizzle over cooled cookies and top with remaining crushed candy canes immediately.


My 5 year old son was my helper yesterday. We put all the candy canes we could find  into a baggie to break them up...which my he had a blast doing!

They tuned out really nicely and have almost disappeared, which I will take as a good sign...lol!

Thanks for stopping by today,

Cheryl

Cute and Quick Boy Card

We have many birthdays coming up in our family, so I thought that I should get ahead start on making some birthday cards.

This card is for my Nephew whose birthday is coming up in March. He will be turning 10, so I hope that this card is not too little boy for him...lol

This cute little dog is cut from the Create a Critter Cricut cartridge as well as the little cloud label with the sentiment. I have added Glossy Accents to his nose and have popped him up!

The sentiment  and paw prints are from My Pink Stamper’s Even More Punny-licious stamp set.

The paper is all from Recollections. The blue paper has been embossed with the Seeing Spots Cuttlebug embossing folder. It has also been distressed and inked around the edge with Tim Holtz Faded Jens Distress Ink

I hope everyone is having a great day...

Thanks for stopping by,

Cheryl

This week I will be playing along with

Fantabulous Cricut  & My Craft Spot

Snowflake Card

I had made this card a while ago but with all the snow that we got here this week it made me think of this snowflake card... 

The middle circle has a snowflake on both sides and it twirls when opened, which I think gives it a magical feel ...lol ;D

To create this card I used the Winter Lace Cricut cartridge for the snowflake. The paper has been embossed with the Snowflakes Cuttlebug embossing folder.

The paper from DCWV's Shimmer stack and Recollections.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend, and if you are somewhere with snow I hope that you can get out and enjoy it!!

Thanks for stopping by,

Cheryl

This week I am playing along with:

Fantabulous Cricut -  "Snow Fun" and My CraftSpot - "Snow Much Fun"



An Altered Frame and Tag

A good friend of mine had her birthday just after Christmas but I did not get to see her until today.  I have been trying to make as many presents as I can, so I wanted to make something for her to decorate her kitchen.
I decided to make her an altered frame for under her cabinets. She has a keurig and is loving her coffee so that is the theme I went with!


I made a You Tube video describing it so I thought it would be easiest sharing my video with you...

Here are some additional pictures :

And the card I made for her:

I hope everyone is having a great Wednesday :)

Thanks or stopping by,

Cheryl

A Little Treat Bag

We had some family friends over last weekend to watch the movie Elf with Will Ferrell.  A few had not seen it before so we made a night out of it with build your own mini pizzas and candy cane ice cream for dessert  (in honour of Elf ... lol)

At the end of the night I wanted to have a little something for the kids to take home,  so my son and I made these treat bags for them...

The cute little penguin is from the Create A Critter Cricut cartridge, the white background that he is on is a cut from the Elegant Edges.  The sentiment is from Scrappy Moms “Winter Wishes” stamp set.  All the paper is from Recollections.

I am playing along at the Scrappy Moms challenge - "It's In the Bag" you can see more here

I hope every one has a very Merry Christmas,

Cheryl :)

Another Christmas Card and Tag!

I can’t believe how close to Christmas we are getting! The Christmas spirit is alive and well in our house. My boys have been singing Christmas carols every morning on our walk to school and we are all excited to open our daily door in our advent calendar :) Today I started with some decorating, and I think that we have decided to put up our tree this Sunday...I am so excited!!!

Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on a Christmas card and tag series, here is another card and tag;

All the paper is from Recollections and the patterned paper is from the Believe stack.  The sentiment is from Scrappy Moms and the twine is from Martha Stewart.  The faux stitching is done with a red glitter Jelly Roll pen. The Santa’s are from Simply Charmed Cricut cartridge.

This week I am entering the challage at Scrappy Moms, Click here to see more.

Thanks for stopping by,

Cheryl