Chocolate Cake Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

This is for Moms Crazy Cooking Challenge for February and the challenge was "Chocolate Cake" where you use another bloggers recipe and try it out.

I chose Peanut Butter Cup Chocolate Cake Mix Cookies by Cookies and Cups although I was not able to find the mini Reece's peanut butter cups at my local grocery store and had to adapt using peanut butter chps.

Adapted from Cookies and Cups

1 box chocolate cake
2 eggs
1/3 cup canola oil
1 pkg. peanut butter chips
Parchment baking paper

1. Preheat oven to 350°
2. Hand mix cake mix, oil and eggs until combined.
3. Pour in entire bag of peanut butter chips (I used a 10 oz bag)
4. Mix chips. If necessary, add 1 TBSP of water until cookie doughish.
5. Roll with your hands the dough into tablespoon sized balls and place on a parchment lined baking sheet about 2" apart. Cookies will spread.
6. Bake for 9-10 minutes.

 Be sure to check out all of the entries at Mom's Crazy Cooking Challenge:)

Moms Crazy Cooking Challenge

Inspired by Starbucks - Chocolate Cake with Salted Carmel Icing

This is based on a recipe over at Salsa Pie made using a chocolate cake mix, canned frosting and carmel topping made from scratch.   It is super-rich - I was not able to eat this entire piece and a good serving size for this would be about 1/4 of the above piece and delicious accompaniment to serve with tea or coffee between meals.   I think this would also be good with smashed pretzels sprinkled on the top instead of the sea salt to give it added texture.

Over at  Salsa Pie she also has instructions on making everything from scratch.

Ingredients:

• 1 boxed chocolate cake mix (I used a Fudge Chocolate cake mix)
• Ingredients required to make the cake (mine was 1/4 vegetable oil, 3 eggs and 1 cup water)
• 1 can white frosting
• Carmel topping or Homemade Carmel topping

 Ingredients for Carmel Topping

•  1 1/2 cups brown sugar, 
• 1 Tbsp cornstarch
• 1 cup cream or milk
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 Tbsp sea salt

Bake cake according to instruction on the box and allow to cool..

 Once cake has cooled, frost with canned frosting.

Mix together brown sugar and cornstarch in saucepan.  Turn on heat to medium -high.

Slowly add milk to mixture a little at a time mixing the entire time then add butter and continue to stir until melted.

Bring to boiling then turn heat down to medium and cook for 8-10 minutes stirring regularly.  Allow to cool before putting on the cake.

Use a large spoon and drizzle the carmel topping on top of the cake.

I put 1 Tbsp of sea salt in a bowl and started to use the spoon to shake over the top, but it went on too heavy and I ended up using my thumb and forefinger and pinching a bit and the sprinkling on the top for better control.

RADIOACTIVE EASTER PEEPS

This was inspired by estherwaayenberg instructable at Instructable.com, http://www.instructables.com/id/Edible-Easter-Nests/

but with a twist after I saw the green peeps at the store, I decided to make mine radioactive.

Ingredients:

1 box of Green Easter Peeps

1 pkg - 11-12oz of Chocolate Chips (I used milk chocolate)

1 cup of Chow Mein Noodles

20-30 Jellybeans

Optional:

1 pkg ready to use green frosting (or you could just use any frosting)

Makes 10 nests

Boil water in the bottom double boiler (or the equivalent), reduce heat and pour the chocolate chips into the top of a double boiler (or the equivalent)

Stir the chocolate until it is completely melted.

Mix in the chow mein noodles throughly.

Spoon the mixture by large spoonful onto a plate or into a cointainer to make 10 nests. (I used the topper to a commercially prepared cake turned upside down.)

This is optional, but to secure the peep and and jellybeans to the nest, I put on a little bit of green frosting.

Put on 1 peep per nest and 2-3 jellybeans per nest. Then put in the fridge until you are ready to serve them.

Here they are in quarantine.