Chocolate Ganache Peanut Butter Cupcakes

I made these for my family and they were AMAZING!! The next time I make them, I might make mini cupcakes instead of full sized ones because they are kind of rich, but they're still some of the best cupcakes I've ever had.

Ingredients:
CUPCAKE:
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup baing cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup strong brewed coffee, room temperature (if you're not a big fan of coffee flavored things, like myself, don't let this scare you off, you can barely taste it.)
1/2 cup canola oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
FILLING:
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 to 4 tablespoons 2% milk
GANACHE:
2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
PEANUT BUTTER FROSTING:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup creamy peanut butter
3 tablespoons milk, or as needed
2 cups confectioners' sugar

1. In a large bowl, combine the first six ingredients. Whisk the buttermilk, coffee, oil, eggs and vanilla until blended; add to the dry ingredients until combined. (Batter will be very thing.) Fill paper-lined muffin cups 2/3 full.

2. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. (If you make mini cupcakes, cook those for 10 minutes.) Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely.
3. In a small bowl, cream the peanut butter, butter, confectioners' sugar and enough milk to achieve piping consistency. Cut a small hole in the corner of a pastry or plastic bag; insert a small round tip. Fill with peanut butter filling. Insert tip into the top center of each cupcake; pipe about 1 tablespoon filling into each.

4. For the frosting, place chocolate chips in a small bowl. In a small saucepan, bring cream just to a bowl. Pour over chocolate; whisk until smooth. Dip the top of each cupcake into ganache; place on wire racks to set.

5. Place the butter and peanut butter into a medium bowl, a beat with an electric mixer. Gradually mix in sugar, and when it starts to get thick, incorporate milk 1 tablespoon at a time until all of the sugar is mixed in and the frosting is thick and spreadable. Beat for at least 3 minutes for it to get good and fluffy.
6. Place frosting in a pastry or plastic bag with large star tip; pipe onto each cupcake. Top with leftover ganache (if you have any).

"Days Until" chalkboard

You will need:
a 4x4 piece of wood that is about 2 ft long. I bought mine from Menards. It was sold as an 8 ft long piece and I brought it to the lumberyard and had them cut it into 4 pieces for me.
chalkboard paint
black paint
paintbrush
letter stickers
mod podge

First, paint the piece of wood black. Let dry.

Second, tape off where you want your chalkboards to go. Paint. Let dry. Remove tape.

Third, place stickers in the middle to spell out "days until" (I put "days 'til"). <--I got mine from Dollar Tree. They're pretty bright colors so I had thought about making four of them since I have four pieces of wood. They could be one for each season. Cover with Mod Podge to make sure the stickers don't come off.

When you do a birthday bar crawl...

So one of my best friends just turned 21. She wanted to go on a Taylorville Barcrawl (our hometown). One idea that we had was to take a picture in front of every bar so that you can remember where you went!

As you can probably tell, we tried to take the pictures in front of the signs, but in small towns, they don't all have them.

Map and Picture Life Moments

I made this for our wedding. It's a map of where we were married and a picture from that day.

You will need:
Mod Podge
2 pieces of wood (I got mine from Michael's)
map (I actually just copied a map online and printed it off at Walmart when I printed off my picture for this project.)
picture
hinge (I couldn't find any small hinges so I bought a small wooden box for $1 and used the hinges off of that.)
paint
paintbrush

I painted the pieces of wood black on one side and blue on the other side. I did this because the colors matched the picture I chose. I know any colors would look good. You just need to use your own judgement on this.

After the paint is dry, attach the hinge. At first, I tried to glue it, but either the glue was taking too long to dry or just wasn't working so I ended up screwing the hinge on. I didn't screw them in all the way because the piece of wood I used was really thin. From the front, it looks great! This turned out for me exactly how I wanted it to. If you end up taking what I've told you and change it up to work better for you, then my goal with this blog has been accomplished.

I then put the map and picture onto the wood. You first put down a layer of mod podge. Then place the picture where you would like it and finally put another layer of mod podge on top.

Now you're done and ready to put these in your house!

Pizza Crescent Rolls

I made these for my husband and 2 year old son. They loved them! That's really my goal after all.

You will need:
crescent rolls
pizza sauce
pepperoni
string cheese
(I suppose you can put whatever toppings you like on there, but pepperonis seem to be the best because they're large so they won't fall out while cooking.)

Step 1. Preheat the oven.

Step 2. Get ready. (I always put down foil to avoid a mess and then spray with nonstick cooking spray.)

Step 3. Seperate the crescent rolls onto your pan.

Step 4. Spread pizza sauce onto the crescent rolls. Feel free to be generous with this. I wasn't, but I don't like a lot of pizza sauce. It might be messy if you use a lot, but that's what the foil is for! (If I were to make these again, I might spread the sauce all the way down the crescent roll to make sure the taste is all the way through.)

Step 5. Place pepperonis at the thick end.

Step 6. Cut the string cheese and place on top of pepperonis. I cut each piece into quarters, but I think it would be better to cut them into thirds.

Step 7. Roll up the crescent rolls and put them in the oven.