Chocolate and friends

I'm so blessed to have such wonderful, wonderful friends.  Over the weekend, I had some friends over that I used to work with.  We never seem to be able to get together so we had a girl's night. It was fun to cook for them...I made the chimichangas that I posted a few weeks ago, homemade guacamole and pico de gallo and for the first time ever, I made real deep fried ice cream!  It was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be and you can find the recipe HERE!  It was so much fun.  Being with them was a soft place to land after an emotional but wonderful day on Friday. 

So, I got a little cupcake crazy and made these last week too...Inspired by a blog I follow, "Inside BruCrew Life"...you can see it on my blog list...

...chocolate cupcakes with a REESE's cup baked in the batter and Peanut Butter Buttercream Frosting.  The recipe for the batter came from another blog,  and was taken from the Cake Mix Doctor. Here it is:

Darn Good Chocolate Cake

vegetable oil or spray for pan
flour for dusting pan

1 pkg. devils food cake mix
1 (3.9 oz) pkg. chocolate fudge instant pudding mix
1 C. sour cream (you can’t taste it I swear)
1/2 C. milk
1/2 C. vegetable oil
4 large eggs
1 1/2 C. semisweet chocolate chips (I actually used only 1/2 C., melted
them in the microwave first, and then added into the mixture and made sure
it was mixed in well)

Preheat the oven to 325 and prepare the cake pan or line your muffin pan
with paper liners. In a large bowl combine cake mix, pudding mix, sour
cream, milk, oil, eggs, and mix on low for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Scrape
the sides of the bowl and then increase mixer speed to medium for 2
minutes or until mixed well. Fold in chocolate chips and distribute evenly
throughout batter. Pour into the prepared pan and bake on the middle oven
rack for 28-35 minutes (cake) and about 20-25 minutes (cupcakes). For this
cake the longer the better or it may sink in the middle too easily, but
that is also dependent on your oven so just be careful not to overcook.
Remove from the oven and let cool 10 minutes in pan before removing to a
wire cooling rack.

Peanut Butter Dream Buttercream Frosting

1 C. butter, softened
1C. creamy peanut butter
3 C. powdered sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 TBSP heavy cream

Cream peanut butter and butter together. Add in powdered sugar and mix well on high speed for about 1 minute. Add in vanilla, mix again, then add in heavy cream and continue to mix on high for about 3 minutes.

ENJOY and have a great week!

Joy~~~~~~~