Frosty

So it's no secret that Minnesota has been getting a pretty brutal winter this year. So in hopes of making the snow more bearable we decided to make some Frosty Cake Pops. They turned out absolutely adorable and they might just be my favorite pops we have made over the past week.

Frosty the Snowman

Complete with Oreo top hat

Slew of Frosties

We have actually been doing a lot of selling of cake pops, which is excellent for the business. Everyone who bought festive cake pops, received them individually wrapped. Talk about an awesome Christmas present!

Holy Hannah's wishes everyone a safe and happy new year! Minnesota is gearing up for another bad snowstorm, bring on another weekend of baking!

Gingerbread Cookies

Ty went home for the Christmas holiday so of course holiday treats went with him. Special K bars, no surprise there, some peppermint bark ,and then I tried my hand at gingerbread cookies. And not to toot my own horn, but they were super yummy.


Minnesota has been getting a ton of snow lately and last Thursday night was no different. Tyler and I had gone out to celebrate Christmas early and then we met up with some family at a local watering hole in Woodbury. We got home much later than expected so I was up at 6:30 in the AM to finish off the gingerbread cookies. Let's just say my creative juices were not at their prime.

Here is the whole slew of Gingerbread Cookies

A Classic Gingerbread Man

Notice my piping skills are not the greatest

Probably one of my favorites

An adorable Christmas Tree

These are what I call Artistic Gingerbread Cookies

Christmas Tree, Snowman, Gingerbread Man

Sad story about these two...upon birth out of the oven they were conjoined twins

They went through an intense surgery of being separated

As you can tell...neither of them are happy.

Now these next few pictures don't do justice to how big the cookies actually were. There were HUGE! I brought the artistic ones over to the Duffey family Christmas and we all enjoyed a ligament.

Gingerbread Man and Woman

Artistic Gingerbread Man and Woman

Christmas

Ohhh Christmas Tree, Ohh Christmas Tree, you make amazing cake pops!

Christmas Trees

Christmas Tree Close-Up

Holy Hannah's wishes you all a very Merry Christmas!

Countdown to Christmas - 1 Day

Who doesn't love candy canes? I prefer the cherry flavored ones over the peppermint ones but they are so much fun to eat regardless what flavor they are!

I made some peppermint bark for a lady at work. Peppermint Bark might be one of the easiest things to make, so spoil your friends and family and whip some up today! I promise it doesn't take more than 15 minutes!

Step 1 - Crush up candy canes

Step 2- Melt white chocolate or milk chocolate or dark chocolate - whatever kind of chocolate your heart desires.

Step 3 - Mix the crushed candy canes with the melted chocolate

Step 4 - Spread onto parchment paper and freeze it for a few minutes

Step 5 - Break into chunks and enjoy!

Peppermint Bark

Countdown To Christmas - 2 Days

Cake balls in festive colors in festive boxes. What more could you ask for!!

This box holds something amazing

Our favorite Auntie Shannon blessed her friends with cake balls for Christmas - man those are some lucky people.

Holiday Cake Balls

Cake Balls Galore

The best part is the cake balls were red velvet cake - we really got into the Christmas colors!

Red Velvet Cake Balls

Countdown To Christmas - 3 Days

So Santa cant get around without his trusty reindeer so of course we had to try to make them.



And we all know who the most important reindeer of all....Rudolph (the red-nosed reindeer). You should all feel blessed you don't actually have to hear anyone in the Duffey family sing that song. We're brutal singers.

Rudolph

Here is the classic slew of reindeer, however, technically only one should have a red nose.

Slew

Countdown To Christmas - 4 Days

Next treat on the agenda...Santa Claus Hats!

They turned out really cute even though they were kinda a pain in our behinds. We thought these were going to be a piece of cake and low and behold they weren't. Darn! Isn't that how it always goes?

Slew

Hopefully Santa's head isn't too cold!

Ho Ho Ho

Countdown To Christmas - 5 Days

So we are getting to crunch time on the Christmas calendar. 5 days and we will all be celebrating with friends and family! We did some major baking this past weekend and we will showcase our creations in a countdown this week.

Chex Mix is a staple in the Duffey household for all holiday occasions. We made 3 batches for Thanksgiving and we hammered out another 2 batches for Christmas.

Our Grammy loves to follow the recipe to a T however when Krista and I go at it we add extra butter...actually its more like the right amount of butter, because lets face it your can never have enough butter....and extra Worcestershire sauce.

Bucket O Chex Mix

Our Chex Mix is better than any others you have ever had. We have a secret ingredient in our arsenal. Be very jealous!

Close-Up

Winter Wonderland

To say that Minnesota got some snow this weekend would be a downright understatement.

Exhibit A: These were the cars at the front of my apartment building on Saturday night.

Exhibit B: The metrodome roof collapsed.

In spite of the obvious pitfalls (see exhibit A and B) for the weekend, along with being stuck inside and getting zero Christmas shopping done, it was still a great weekend. We decided to do a little bit of baking! I went with the basic chocolate chip cookies:

There always seems to be a heart-shaped cookie!
And banana chocolate chip muffins:

Emilee made some festive M & M cookies and Breanna decided to pull out her brand new kitchen aid mixer to make some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Despite the snow, we all still managed to have a good time baking, reading, watching movies and cuddling. Cute, right?

Molasses

ROTM has been updated. Don't hate on the molasses even though it has a poor smell. It makes delicious cookies! Like Molasses Cookies or Gingerbread Cookies! YUM! I love the Christmas season.

Rolos

So I ventured out into a different filling for cupcakes this week. ROLOS! I personally love anything with caramel and chocolate. Milkyways, 100 Grand Bars, and especially ROLOS! They are just little delectable treats you can pop in your mouth and enjoy the smooth creamy caramel.

Currently I despise the word caramel because of the McDonald's commercial on the radio. Please tell me you have heard it. Its about the McCafe 'caramel' Frappes. And there is a guy and gal arguing about the pronunciation of the word caramel. Guess what peeps we are from the U S of A and you pronounce it without the french accent.

OK back to the cupcakes. I made these Rolo filled cupcakes for a guy a work. He wanted to bring in some birthday treats and found me for the job!

Rolos

I made the cupcakes before deciding what I was going to fill them with. So if I were to do this again I would put the Rolos in before baking. So with a little improvising I slightly melted the Rolos and put them in the center of the cupcakes. Topped them off with chocolate frosting and some chocolate jimmies. Talk about a perfect cupcake!

Rolo Filled Cupcake

Slew

Football

We had some extra chocolate candy melt and cake balls last week so we decided to try out some footballs. They turned out pretty cute and were really easy to make. Pictures aren't the best, they were an after-thought.

Are you ready for some football?

Tyler was my lucky candidate for pictures. Doesn't he look thrilled?


Best part, he happened to be wearing his Wisconsin football sweatshirt so it worked out perfectly for a photo op.

He thought I was taking a full body shot. So just imagine him smiling. =]

It wouldn't be a Holy Hannah's blog post without someone eating the cake pop. Yum!

I don't know how happy he is going to be that I posted this...

We are working on getting ready for the holidays. Can you believe Thanksgiving is only 4 days away! My mother will be doing the cooking and I will be doing the baking. I might try out our Grammy's beloved pumpkin dessert.

Broken

So I cried...well not really but I did get a little misty.

Our possessed microwave is out to get me...it killed my platter.

We were baking up a storm Monday night, preparing for a totally awesome opportunity (more on that later), and all the sudden, CRASH! The platter went sailing to the floor off the top of microwave and shattered and broke into a million pieces. OK maybe a million is an over-exaggeration but see for yourself...it wasn't salvageable.

Broken

A few good things came from the platter breaking. My mom got her floor vacuumed and lets face it, it definitely needed it. And two, since I know Ty and Mike don't read the blog unless we remind them, Krista and I have now decided we will have to go on a double date back to the pottery place. What lucky guys! =]

Butter

So one of the reasons the baking hasn't been in abundance has been from the lack of butter in the Duffey household. The only time my father will buy butter is when it goes on sale....which hasn't been for awhile...until this past weekend.

While he was driving out to the middle of nowhere during the blizzard last Saturday he heard a commercial for butter, available at Cub, for the low low price of 2 for $3! He was ECSTATIC! He called my mother and me right away to tell us to drop everything and head to Cub to pick up some butter. So my mother and father did (side note -I was studying).

How many pounds of butter do you think were purchased in the Duffey household this past weekend?

A single pound? Are you kidding it was 2 for $3

No, not just 3 pounds were purchased...keep guessing

Ok fine 6 pounds - you figured my padre, madre and I went only once and each got the deal.
Guess again!

Well here it is a whopping 10 pounds of butter!
Minus the other 4 pounds that were either already used or just didn't fit in the pyramid of butter!

Moral of the story? Butter goes on sale - my father buys the store out. Well he wishes he could have bought the store but they had a limit of 2. So you do the math, between Saturday at 2 pm when he called to let us know about the fantastic deal and Saturday at 10 pm the Duffey family had bought 14 pounds of butter! Just imagined how much butter we would have had if we had heard of the deal on Thursday when it started.

And how very sad, I made an entire post about butter. =]

Now that's the stuff!

Remember this commercial from the 90's? That one always made me laugh. We embraced the 90's this past weekend and made our own version of hostess cupcakes with our new cupcake corer. They are filled with a marshmallow cream frosting.

Aren't they fun? :)

Holiday Gift

So I sent my second package off to Tyler's Uncle Johnny. It included Banana Bread and a sampling of our cake balls! I packaged the cake balls in a box with some tin foil and thought this would be a great gift idea! When the holidays come around most people give out gingerbread cookies and chex mix but just think of how impressed your friends would be to receive a box of cake balls! So let us know if you are interested, we would love to make all of your friends and family very happy over the holidays.

Box of Cake Balls

Close-Up of Cake Ball aka Heaven

Banana Bread

So to put us in the fall mood I have updated the ROTM to Banana Bread. This is a favorite not only in our house but all of our friend's homes as well. So please enjoy, this recipe comes from our Grandma Rubbelke!

Cupcake Corer

So I put the cupcake corer to the test! And let me be the first to tell you, it was AMAZING! This thing worked like a charm and made delicious cupcakes! This post is going to be filled with an overload of pictures but I wanted to make sure you got the idea.

Currently the cupcake and the corer are in a state of bliss. The cupcake doesn't know whats coming...


Hello Mr. Cupcake meet the Cupcake Corer

The cupcake has now met his match. Notice the other cupcakes in the background are slightly frightened.

End result - A Holey Cupcake

The cupcake is thoroughly embarrassed. Its innards are showing

The cupcakes have gotten over the embarrassment, but only because they all have holes in them now.

The cupcakes are once again happy. The holes have been filled up with a very tasty marshmallow cream filling. YUM!

Happy Cupcakes!

The end results. Chocolate cupcakes, filled with marshmallow cream, topped with buttercream frosting and a DOT. Artistic photo? I think so!

A slew of DOT cupcakes.

I know you are all dying to see the inside of these babies. Well take a look.

Doesn't it just make you smile? I mean who wouldn't enjoy a nice little surprise inside a cupcake. I know I do!

My mind has been racing in a million different directions of all the possibilities we can do with this little gadget! I am thinking Rolo stuffed cupcakes. Heaven! Or how about a little raspberry filling? Trust me the possibilities are endless.

We want to hear from you! What ideas do you have for a cupcake filling?