Chocolate Cupcakes (Cake Mix Doctor)

Congratulations to my younger sister on graduating middle school today!! In honor of her massive love of chocolate (even greater than mine!) I made these classic chocolate cupcakes. I hate to admit this, but here’s a secret: I baked these cupcakes using a cake mix! One of my favorite dessert bloggers Your Cup of Cake, who I love most for her beautiful cupcake decorations, also uses “doctored” mixes and claims that the mix is just the dry ingredients for the recipe, so I don’t feel that bad for using one myself.

Cinnamon Rolls (Guest Post)

I’m happy to introduce Arianna from The After School Chef, a fellow high school baker and blogger! Along with our love of baking, Arianna and I share many things like being vegetarian, loving exercise, and many other traits. Please visit her amazing blog for more recipes and beautiful pictures!

Salted Caramel Cupcakes

Joyeux anniversaire –Happy Birthday–(even though a very belated one) to my friend Gina! And, as of last week, Happy 1 Year Anniversary to my blog, At 350 Degrees! Although she was extremely thankful for a birthday surprise on a regular school morning, I was actually the lucky one because in planning her birthday treats, she connected me with a friend of her’s that is now one of my own. Along with sharing many interests and personality traits with this friend of hers, we found another area in common: a love of baking.

5-Layer Ferrero Rocher Nutella Dream Cake

Happy, happy birthday to my amazing sister! Because I bake for every holiday, birthday, or even just  Sunday night family dinners, my sister required that her birthday cake top them all. My first thought was an elaborate bright pink cake, but I had already covered that with my Pink Chocolate Ombre Cake, so I moved onto the next thought: a Ferrero Rocher layer cake! (Keep in mind that I had just tasted Nutella for the first time quite recently, so its decadent and addicting amazing-ness had just dug a special place in my heart! )

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Happy birthday, Paula Deen!! In honor of my most trusted and beloved recipe source, I made my favorite of her recipes–red velvet cupcakes. Surprisingly, out of all her buttery cakes and gooey chocolate bars, these cupcakes are her best dessert yet! (And as a very discriminating red velvet critic myself, that praise means a lot!) But although I am picky in finding the perfect red velvet cupcake, when the recipe is right, the flavor is fantastic because it gives you a touch of chocolate without the overly rich heaviness, and Paula’s deliciously moist cupcake recipe definitely passes the test!

Banana Crumb Muffins

If I’m talking about “a few of my favorite things”, I certainly cannot forget my fix of banana bread desserts! I’ve mentioned before that my favorite type of sweets are muffins and coffee cakes; they are always the tasters I take the most of at Trader Joe’s! Unfortunately this week marked the end of winter break, so I decided to bake some banana muffins for advisory to help ease back into the school routine.

Candy Corn Cupcakes

Holiday quotation: “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” –Shakespeare

For me, Halloween is not complete without decorative desserts like cute spider web cookies and oreo mud pie! Although definitely not a baker, my mom would always make rice crispy treats, wrapped in orange cellophane and packaged in a giant witch’s cauldron, to donate to my elementary school’s “Halloween Haunt” bake sale. I loved the treats so much, that half of them would “vanish” even before they arrived at school! I’ve recently discovered (or re-discovered!) how much I love the presentation/decoration side of baking, so enjoy the chills and thrills of this year’s Halloween with these amazing candy corn cupcakes! Of course, the cupcake is light, moist, and delicious, and the frosting is too sweet to resist! I loved experimenting with the design; if you look closely at the pictures, you can see the 4 different cupcake liners I used in the process! Have fun with sprinkles, candy corn, M&M‘s and colored frosting in your design undertaking! I “witch” all of you a Happy Halloween! Enjoy!!

Recipe: Candy Corn Cupcakes

Banana Split Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

Last Spring break, when my family visited Washington D.C. during our east coast college tour, we would see people on every single block carrying pink cupcake boxes embellished with black and white star designs. About 4 months later, I was browsing Netflix and, because of my recent history of watching Ace of Cakes, a new reality show called Georgetown Cupcakes was in my recommendations list, “A show about Georgetown Cupcakes, DC’s destination for designer cupcakes, and its owners”. In one of their cupcake challenges, this amazing ice cream cone cupcake was born! This cupcake, baked in the cone, is such a delicious combination of tasty crunch and moist cake, especially with my favorite funfetti cake recipe! It’s absolutely the cutest and most creative cupcake I’ve ever seen, and the super sweet toppings even taste as good as their mouth-watering appearance! For me, the decoration process is the best part; you can make your own personalized sundae using your favorite cupcake recipe and toppings of your choice! Enjoy!!!

Recipe: Ice cream cone cupcakes

Skinny Oreo Cookie Dough Cheesecakes (Guest Post)

(Photo by Brooke B.  Oreo Cookie Dough Cheesecake.)

I’d like to introduce Brooke, the Sweet Prima Donna, a healthy dessert blogger. Our collaboration to bake the world’s best cheesecakes produced fantastic results! I baked classic New York Cheesecake and Brooke created fabulous Skinny Oreo Cookie Dough Cheesecake Cups, the perfect fun-sized dessert for individual servings! Enjoy Brooke’s recipe below!

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Hello lovelies!

I’m Brooke B. from The Sweet Prima Donna.  The Sweet Prima Donna is a website dedicated to serving you up recipes for all your favorite desserts made skinny and or healthier.  I believe that everyone should be able to enjoy life to the fullest, and that includes being able to indulge in the foods we love!  I hope with my recipes you are able to do so without the guilt.  I always say, “Life is short, eat dessert first!”, and I’m an honest believer in this!

I want to thank Carissa so much for allowing me to take over her blog today!  We are both very excited about our baking collaboration and have been working hard to get ready to share with you all!  Carissa informed me that she was going to share a New York Style Cheesecake with my friends on the Sweet Prima Donna Blog, which got my wheels turning.  I hadn’t really thought much about making a cheesecake, but I’d seen some pretty delicious recipes floating around for cheesecake.  The one that caught my eye above all was an Oreo Cookie Dough Cheesecake, holy yum!  Right then and there I knew that was the recipe I was going to try to make skinny, I mean oreo, cookie dough, and cheesecake all in one place… there was no way that that wasn’t a scale tipper, ahah.

For the cheesecake base I used the recipe from Gina’s Skinny Recipes, which was a fabulous, easy to make cheesecake recipe.  I also like the fact that it used greek yogurt, which gave them some extra protein, plus cream cheese has quite a lot of protein, so these cheesecake cups have quite a good amount of protein for being a dessert food!   Her recipe called for a vanilla wafer as the crust, but I subbed the wafer for a reduced fat oreo.  I then used my recipe for skinny chocolate chip cookies for the dough, and made it egg free so it was safe to eat raw by subbing an egg white for vinegar and baking soda.

These babies are out of this world.  I’m not the biggest cheesecake fan to be honest.  I’m the type of person that has to be craving a good old fashioned slice of cheesecake, but these kept me coming back to the plate for more.  If the fact that I ate four the night I made these didn’t sell you on how good they are, or the fact that my sister and her friends pleaded for more, maybe this picture will do the job:

Skinny Oreo Cookie Dough Cheesecake!

(Photo by Brooke B.  Oreo Cookie Dough Cheesecake.)

Servings- 12

Calories- 170 per cheesecake cup

Fat- 7g

Protein- 4.6 g – pretty good for a treat, don’t you think? (:

Ingredients:

Cheesecake Base: Recipe adapted from Gina’s Skinnytaste

Cookie Dough Recipe: Recipe adapted from my recipe for skinny chocolate chip cookies

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350.

2. Line cupcake tin with liners.  Place an oreo in the bottom of each liner.

3.  Beat cream cheese, sugar, stevia, and vanilla until smooth in the bowl of an electric mixer.  Beat in yogurt, egg whites, and flour gradually.  Be sure NOT to overbeat.

4.  Pour an even amount of batter into each cupcake liner until halfway full.

5.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until center is set (Mine took exactly 20 minutes).  Cool to room temperature

6.  While the cheesecakes are cooling make cookie dough.  To begin combine flour, baking soda, and salt.

7. Combine sugar, stevia, and butter in a large bowl of an electric mixer, and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy.

8.  Add in vanilla and baking soda/vinegar mix and beat for another minute.

9.  Add in flour & chocolate chips, mix just until combined.  If the dough is dry add in fat free milk, rice milk, or soymilk by the tsp.  (I used 1 tbsp all together)

10.  Once the cheesecakes are cooled spoon the cookie dough on top of each cheesecake, about 1/2 tbsp a piece.  Place in fridge to let the cookie dough set, and the cheesecake to cool further.

11.  Open the fridge and gobble them all up!

My tummy is growling thinking about these… maybe another batch will be in order tonight.(;  Hopefully you are feeling the same as well!  Enjoy & thank you again for letting me join you all today!

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I. LOVE. Banana. Bread.

…Especially with chocolate chips! I’ve been baking for my summer school class in order to get through 4 hour lectures on physics every day– brownies, cookies, madeleines, etc… (I’ve been taking requests!). While I was talking to a friend during one of our breaks, she mentioned that banana bread is one of her favorite treats, and it just so happened that I had some overly-ripe bananas sitting in my kitchen at home! It was fate: the universe just wanted me to make this delicious banana bread! Even you banana-haters, I promise you will love it. It’s a moist and buttery loaf of sweet magnificence– the best banana bread you will ever eat!!! Grab a slice and nosh; but be warned: you might find yourself finishing the entire loaf! Enjoy!!

Recipe: Banana Bread

***NOTE: You can choose to add walnuts to the banana bread, but I prefer not to. Also try making this recipe as muffins or a cake. For a healthier version, cut the sugar in half and substitute some of the butter for apple sauce.  It’s still delicious!!