Outside In Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

May 23, 2017May 23, 2017 ~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

I think this may be my best cupcake yet…

Outside In Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes | Shake Bake and Party

I found this fabulous Pineapple Upside Down Cake Rum from Malibu a few weeks ago, and then over the weekend I decided I needed to bake something with it.

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I didn’t want to do a traditional style pineapple upside down cupcake. I LOVE the taste, but they are a sticky mess. 🙂 So I figured I’d stick the outsides back in, and top it off with a brown sugar buttercream.

Outside In Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes | Shake Bake and Party

Every now and then, I feel like I have a brief moment of foodie genius. This was definitely one of those moments. These are ABSOLUTELY delicious, and would be perfect for one of those upcoming summer gatherings. Luau party anyone??

Outside In Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes | Shake Bake and Party

Lately I have been noticing that a lot of the recipes on food blogs come with step by step pictures of the ENTIRE process. I have a few thoughts on this:

I don’t have time for all that. I want to bake, snap a few pics of my cupcakes and then sit on my couch and eat them.
I am pretty sure you know what it looks like to throw some eggs, oil and cake mix in a bowl and then mix it up.
If you’re anything like me, you might just want the damn recipe. So here you go:

Take your favorite yellow cake mix. Follow the directions on the box, except substitute the Pineapple Upside Down Cake Rum for the amount of water called for. If you want to make a booze-free version, you can sub pineapple juice for half of the amount of water called for. Bake the cupcakes according to the directions on your cake mix box.

After the cupcakes have completely cooled, core the centers. You can use a cupcake plunger, or take a sharp knife and cut out a cone shape from the middle of the cupcake (you don’t NEED to put these bits back on after you fill the cupcakes, so feel free to eat them as you go!). After your cupcakes have been cored, spoon a small amount of pineapple topping (you can find this with the ice cream toppings) into the center of each cupcake, and then insert a maraschino cherry into each hole.

After that, whip up a batch of this delicious Brown Sugar Buttercream Frosting from Two Sisters Crafting and have some fun decorating your cupcakes! I rolled mine in yellow sanding sugar, and then used some Wilton Christmas tree sprinkles as my “pineapple leaves”.

I will post a picture of the most important step… Take a bite and enjoy!!!

Outside In Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes | Shake Bake and Party

Christmas Cookies 2016

December 24, 2016December 23, 2016 ~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

Happy Christmas Eve Day everyone! I can’t believe this year is almost over! I haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to the blog lately (school, work, work, school) but I took a little time off last week and was able to get in some baking!

Here, in no particular order, are this year’s Christmas cookies! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and a Happy New Year! See you in 2017!

Gingerbread Man Decorated Cookie

Christmas Tree Decorated Cookie

Ugly Sweater Cookies - Shake Bake and Party

Holiday Spirits

December 4, 2016December 3, 2016 ~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

Yup, I said spirits. Cause who couldn’t use a little nip after climbing up and down a ladder putting up your Christmas lights for the second time in a week because after you put them up the first time one of the strings died and you didn’t have a replacement string that matched so you had to go out to buy all new lights and then take the first set down so you could put the new strings up… Ho ho ho.

So after I did all that I put together some simple gifts with a boozy twist. First up – some presents for my annual Christmas lunch with a group of friends. I found these adorable towels and glasses at The Christmas Tree Shops.

Inexpensive Christmas Gifts with a Boozy Twist from Shake Bake and Party #margarita #cocktails

Add a ready-to-drink mini margarita bottle and you have fun, festive gift for under $10!

Inexpensive Christmas Gifts with a Boozy Twist from Shake Bake and Party #margarita #christmas #cocktails

Next up – something that would make a perfect gift for a group of coworkers! I found a box set containing 12 different hot cocoa mixes at Big Lots for $10. Then I headed over to the liquor store and picked out an airplane bottle of liquor to go with each flavor of cocoa.

Inexpensive Coworker Gifts - Spiked Hot Cocoa Kits from Shake Bake and Party #hotcocoa #booze #gifts

It was so much fun coming up with different flavor combinations! Cinnamon cocoa meet honey whiskey; gingerbread makes a perfect pair with Baileys Irish Cream… There are a ton of possibilities! Play your cards right with the booze selections and you can knock out a dozen gifts for less than $5 per person! Your friends at work will thank you when they are sipping on a spiked hot cocoa after a long day of last minute Christmas shopping.

Do you give Christmas gifts to coworkers? I’d love to hear some of your ideas!

Caramel Apple Cider Cupcakes with RumChata Frosting

October 9, 2016October 9, 2016 ~ Angela ~ 6 Comments

Happy Fall Y’all!! I have turned my favorite fall cocktail into a cupcake and let me tell you – the result was delicious!

A group of my friends and I had a fall themed painting party at one of those wine and canvas places that have become so popular over the last few years (I highly recommend Canvas Mixers is you are in the South Jersey area!). I wanted to bring a pitcher of my Caramel Apple Pie Cocktail but you can only bring wine or beer to the venue, so I decided to bake my booze into some cupcakes!

These cupcakes contain all the ingredients from one of my most popular recipes on the blog: apple cider, Pinnacle Caramel Apple vodka, and RumChata. Everyone at the painting party loved them, and we all had a great time creating our masterpieces!

Now, on to the recipe. As I tend to do, I started off with a boxed cake mix, doctored it up a bit and topped the whole thing off with a made from scratch frosting.

Caramel Apple Cider Cupcakes with RumChata Frosting

Cupcake Ingredients and Directions:

1 box of white or yellow cake mix
Eggs and oil as called for in directions on box
Pinnacle Caramel Apple vodka, or Caramel vodka
Apple Cider

Combine mix, eggs and oil. Omit the water as called for on the box and substitute equal parts apple cider and caramel apple vodka. My mix called for one cup of water, so I substituted 1/2 cup apple cider and 1/2 cup vodka. Bake according to package directions and let cool.

RumChata Frosting Ingredients and Directions:
(adapted from Butter Cream Frosting II on allrecipes.com)

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups confectioners sugar
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon RumChata

Cream butter and shortening in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add all other ingredients and beat well.

Caramel Apple Cider Cupcakes with RumChata Frosting

I also added some orange gel color to some of the batter and decorated those one for Halloween. 🙂

Halloween Cupcakes

Michael’s Way

April 14, 2016April 14, 2016 ~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

Hey all! How has everyone been? I’m dropping in with a quick post about some cookies I just made! I didn’t get a chance to take any nice, professional looking photos before I sent these out the door (new work responsibilities, grad school and attempting to have a life in between have me feeling like everything is moving at warp speed these days, know what I mean?) but I wanted to do a little write up, mostly to spread the word about a great charity.

Michael’s Way is an organization in the Philadelphia area that provides assistance to the families of children battling pediatric cancer. According to their website, “Michael’s Way has raised more than $6 million to lessen the financial hardships of hundreds of families whose children are suffering from cancer. 100% of money raised, as well as private donations and grants received from foundations goes directly to the families, not to overhead.” I think that’s pretty amazing given the number of “charities” that spend more per dollar on salaries, marketing and who knows what else than they do on actually helping people.

For the third year in a row PMC Property Group is sponsoring a bowling party at Lucky Strike in Philadelphia to raise money for Michael’s Way (4/20/16 – details here if you are interested!) and I was more than happy to make some Michael’s Way logo cookies for the event!

So here’s my crappy picture of what turned out to be a pretty cool cookie!!

If you suck at bowling or aren’t in the area, but are interested in making a donation to this wonderful organization head over to their online donation form!

Valentine Cookies 2015

February 13, 2015February 12, 2015 ~ Angela ~ 6 Comments

Even if you hate Valentine’s Day you still love cookies, right? Here’s this year’s batch!

Devil’s Food Cupcakes with Strawberry Fluff Filling

February 10, 2015February 9, 2015 ~ Angela ~ 7 Comments

I’m back, and I brought more Strawberry Fluff! I think I might ask it to be my Valentine.

We could go for long walks on the beach, have picnics in the park, or snuggle up on the couch for a Netflix binge-fest. The only thing that would come between us would be a spoon… Or I could just fill some Devil’s Food cupcakes with it and then top them off with some Godiva Chocolate Liqueur spiked butter cream frosting.

Yup. Had to throw some booze in there. What says “Will you be my Valentine?” better than some Godiva chocolate? Ok, maybe some sparkly jewlery, but you can’t eat that with Strawberry Fluff.

To make these, bake a batch of your favorite Devil’s Food cupcakes. I used the Pillsbury box mix, which made 18 appropriately sized cupcakes (ahem, Pillsbury). After the cupcakes have cooled use a cupcake corer or a knife to remove a section from the center of each cupcake. Next comes the Strawberry Fluff Cream Filling.

Strawberry Fluff Cream Filling (adapted from I Heart Cuppycakes)

1-7.5 oz jar of Marshmallow Strawberry Fluff
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces, room temperature

In a large bowl, whisk the marshmallow cream and butter until smooth. Transfer into pastry bag and squeeze into the center of each cupcake. You can push the bits you removed back into the top or you can just eat them. : ) Now it’s time for the frosting!

Godiva Chocolate Liqueur Butter Cream (adapted from Butter Cream Frosting II on allrecipes.com)

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups confectioners sugar
1/4 Godiva Chocolate Liqueur
3 tablespoons cocoa powder

Cream butter and shortening in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add all other ingredients and beat until well combined. Luckily for Pillsbury this recipe makes just enough frosting for 18 cupcakes. I like a lot of icing on my cupcakes, so you may be able to stretch this to cover 24 cupcakes depending on your frosting technique.

I topped these off with a strawberry marshmallow heart but you can decorate them any way you wish!

What’s your favorite cupcake filling? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

Valentine’s Day Fluffernutter

February 9, 2015February 9, 2015 ~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

Did you know that STRAWBERRY Marshmallow Fluff existed? I had no idea until I saw it in the World Market section at Bed Bath and Beyond the other day. I immediately grabbed a jar off the shelf.

I wish I hadn’t.

I wish….

…that I had grabbed three or four! It’s SO GOOD!! You know the first thing I had to do was make a fluffernutter sandwich, right? Did you grow up on these things too? Gooey marshmallow and peanut butter slathered onto good old white bread. I could have eaten one every day for lunch and never gotten tired of it.

Of course, I had to take it up a notch. We are talking about STRAWBERRY Fluff, people. And what goes with strawberry?? That’s right – chocolate!

It’s Monday morning, and I’m pretty sure that you know how to make a sandwich so I am going to spare you the directions. Strawberry Fluff, your favorite chocolate nut spread (I used Peanut Butter & Co. Dark Chocolate Dreams but I am thinking Nutella would be AWESOME with this) and white bread are all you need to make this fun Valentine’s Day treat.

The kids will love this and so will you because strawberry and chocolate, that’s why. Now pardon me while I go continue eating this Strawberry Fluff straight out of the jar.

Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes

February 5, 2015February 4, 2015 ~ Angela ~ 3 Comments

‘Tis the season for all things red and pink so I’ve hopped onto the bandwagon and made you some strawberries and cream cupcakes!

Even if you don’t like Valentine’s Day you’ll be sure to fall in love with these cupcakes. Sweet strawberry cupcakes, frosting made with heavy cream AND a strawberries and cream truffle stuffed into the center? Good stuff.

These cupcakes are really easy to make! Bake up a batch of your favorite strawberry cupcakes (I used a boxed mix) and a minute or two after you take them out of the oven unwrap a truffle and just push it down through the top of the cupcake. I used Lindt Lindor Strawberries and Cream truffles but you could use white, milk or dark chocolate truffles too. Any kind of chocolate + strawberries = yum. Once the cupcakes have completely cooled, frost them with this: