Christmas Gift Cake! Just use your favorite vanilla cake recipe and divide the batter amongst three square pans and ice with your favorite vanilla butter-cream! Use fruit by the foot and little chocolate sixlets to decorate. Merry Christmas!

chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting!
i used the barefoot contessa recipe to make these delicious cupcakes. using the sour cream in the batter really creates an amazing texture, and of course the peanut butter frosting is just perfect (who doesn’t love pb & chocolate!?  i also made egg-less chocolate chip cookie dough and placed it on top of the cupcakes before putting them in the oven (make sure to push them down a bit, too). i hope yours turn out just as delicious as mine! enjoy (:

triple chunk chocolate ice cream: this was a great recipe and my first time making homemade ice cream. my only recommendation would be to make the chocolate chunks super small or excluding them because it was quite difficult to get a good scoop with the large chunks! besides the annoying chunks, the flavor of this ice cream was very rich and delicious. i would definitely make it again :)

pink lemonade cupcakes ♥

peanut butter chocolate chip cookies: yum. i can’t think of a better combination than peanut butter aaaaand chocolate chips. this was a great and easy recipe which i highly recommend. you will definitely see as the end of the 10-12 bakes minutes is up, the outsides will be nice and brown- even though the center may still look a little doughy, the cookies will continue to cook on the baking sheet once you pull them out of the oven. move them over to the cooling racks after 5 minutes. enjoy!

cinnamon sugar cookies. normally i’m a fan of just original chocolate chip but these were amazing. probably one of the best cookie recipes i’ve come across in awhile. my only advice would be to refrigerate the dough for about 30 minutes before cooking them.

rolo cookies: i followed the this recipe and was delighted at the result! my only recommendation would be to use at least a tablespoon of dough per cookie and then proceed to make a small pocket/hole with your finger for the rolo. once you insert the rolo into the dough, simply smooth extra dough around the bottom and roll in sugar!

green tea white chocolate chip brownies with coconut and almond.
my roommate and i adapted the recipe from Bake Something by using 2 tbs of unsweetened matcha powder*, 2 tbs honey, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 cup of shredded coconut in addition to the original recipe. after baking them for only 20 minutes, we were left with delicious, cakey green tea brownies! they weren’t too sweet which was nice, but if you have a serious sweet tooth i would recommend adding 1/4 of white sugar to sweeten it up.

*instead of the 1/4 sweetened matcha powder

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM:
I spent all night putting this together and I cannot wait to try it! I used a vanilla cake recipe from Canadian Living, my Gramma’s chocolate buttercream frosting (the best part…I think!), and candy melts to create the butterflies. If you would like any of the recipes feel free to ask :)

frozen chocolate dipped banana pops