“Perfectly Chocolate” Cake

Good afternoon my beautiful followers! I hope everyone is enjoying their Thursday (as much as one can enjoy it knowing Friday is less than 24 hours away.) It’s been a slow day off and was able to find sometime to put together a post for Hershey’s “Perfectly Chocolate” Cake :)

As I had mentioned in my last post, while I was back in Pennsylvania last week I was able to get some baking and cooking down. Being back home wouldn’t be complete without making this chocolate cake for my dad. It’s the one request he makes EVERY time I come home, no matter how short the stay. 

This recipe is probably one of the first desserts I ever made by myself that didn’t come from a box. And I think it’s what started my love for baking; I was always up for helping my mom make cookies what I was little. Chocolate chip cookies, no bake oatmeal cookies, and raisin filled sugar cookies were always a staple in my house when I was younger and something we always made on cold, snowy days so we had an excuse to turn the oven on and warm up the house a bit more. 

As I’ve mentioned a few times, I start my new job in just over a week and I hope my new coworkers are up to being my new guinea pigs for new recipes.

You can find the recipe directly from Hershey here.

Oreo Cheesecake Truffles

I’m back!!!

Well I hope I can keep up with this; there’s some big changes be made in my life in the next couple weeks but these changes give me much more free time and I hope that will correlate to baking more and cooking more. Tomorrow marks the last week of work for me at the company I got hired at before even finishing college. After Friday, I’ll have another week off before starting my new job that is much closer to home. I never thought I’d find a job that lets me do what I love in the travel industry, working in retail air reservations, and be able to work 9-5:30, Monday-Friday; that’s almost unheard of in the travel/hospitality industry. But I guess that’s enough about what my life is looking like right about now, onto the those treats shown in the photo above.

I spent the last week back at my parents house just relaxing and not doing much, a great change of pace compared to the last couple months. It gave me a chance to cook for my parents and try some baking. Hence this post on my first attempt at making Oreo Cheesecake Truffles. I’m still not used to actually documenting my work via photograph so please bare with me while I work on that aspect of this blog. 

Follow the jump for the recipe and pictures :)

Currently Under Repairs

Sorry in the delay of any new posts. I'm currently working on revamping the look and layout of everything. With the holidays and how fast they seemed to have approached this year I haven't had much time to do any updating.

I also found out a few weeks back that my current job will no longer be available as of January 31, 2014. I've been scrambling around looking at jobs I may like and spending even longer trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. I'm only 24 but I still feel lost in the sense I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life. In an ideal world I'd love to stay home and bake all day, travel the world, and do volunteer work all over the world as well.

Give me a few more weeks and I'll be up and running as usual :)

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!!

Stephanie

Julep Zigzag Ultimate Mystery Box

Zigzag Ultimate Mystery Box

I purchased Julep’s Zigzag Ultimate Mystery Box from Julep last month. It was an early Christmas gift for myself :) Any day you can spend just $39.99 to get a box that’s worth $120 or more is a good day in my book! I haven’t gotten a chance to try everything that’s in the box but I thought I’d share what’s inside with all of you!

Beauty Army Box

On one of my days off a few weeks ago I had read an article regarding what seems to be the new phenomenon, monthly box subscriptions. When I first started to do further research into I didn’t realize they pretty much have box subscriptions for whatever interests you, literally whatever interests use. Some samples of the different categories I found are adult boxes, small business boxes, baby/mom boxes, beauty boxes, craft/hobby boxes, tea/coffee/cocoa/cocktail boxes, fashion boxes, fitness boxes, green living boxes, jewelry boxes, kid boxes, lifestyle boxes, pet boxes, and many more.

I used this bloggers list to narrow down some of my favorites, Ramblings of a Suburban Mom.

I subscribed to two boxes and am currently waitlisted on a third. The first box I received in the mail was from Beauty Army

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

In August I decided I was going to make it my goal to perfect making cupcakes. I decided to start this challenge off with a bang and not go the simple route. I’d been scouring through Pinterest looking for the perfect recipe, something that I’ve never baked before but also something I’d actually eat and could feed upon my coworkers who have graciously agreed to be my guinea pigs for this challenge.

There a few things I would do differently the second time I make them. The peanut butter center came out a bit dry for me as did the chocolate cake part (this could be from overworking the batter which I tend to do sometimes and am trying to learn from). The recipe says it yields 24 cupcakes but I got only about 16 or so cupcakes out of it which could also amount to why I had soo much icing left over.

I found this recipe here.

Spiced Pumpkin Cupcakes

It's been awhile since I've posted and I apologize for the delay. The summer and beginning of fall was just a mass of working extra hours at work and making the trek back to Pennsylvania for personal reasons and my childhood best friends wedding. I was back in PA about 5 times over a course of four months. This was the most I spent at home since the summer of 2009. (It's really been 4 years? Wow how time flies)

But now that I'm getting back into my regular work schedule and much more time on my hands and a bit lonely with having all of my college friends now not living in Providence. I gave myself a challenge of perfecting the perfect cupcake; which has really turned into trying new cupcakes and particularly fall inspired ones. This brings me to this post. I didn't get a chance to really take pictures of the process of putting the batter together but I do have the end result pictures :)

I brought about 20 cupcakes into work for my coworkers and they were gone within about 4 hours of me setting them out. I'm taking that as it was a huge hit and everyone loved them! I myself am not of a fan of pumpkin flavor things but thankfully with these the pumpkin was not overly powerful and was a burst of fall flavors in my mouth!

I found this recipe like most of my others from Pinterest and you find the original recipe here.