Gooey Butter CUPcakes!

Ok I'm jumping onto the gooey-butter-cake bandwagon and
I'm kind of obsessed. Since the last gooey butter cake I made was such a success, I decided to try Paula Deen's famous recipe. There are hundreds of different variations that can be done to the basic backbone recipe. The recipe uses a box cake as a "crust" that turns out being a soft cake layer, and then is covered in gooey topping that consists of cream cheese, powdered sugar and of course, butter.

This version was a chocolate peanut butter combo gooey butter cake. It's best to bake the cake in a 9x12 glass pyrex dish but since I only had an 8x8 pyrex, I put dollops of the extra crust and extra gooey topping into cupcake liners and made mini cakes. I baked the cupcakes for about 18 minutes (until edges are set and middle is still jiggly and gooey looking) and the 8x8 cake for 40 minutes.

I absolutely LOVE the gooey butter cupcakes because it makes this recipe so much easier to share with friends and family! No more cutting up messy squares of cake when everyone can have their own individual cake with their own individual crunchy, sweet edges and warm gooey center. And they are cuter. These cupcakes can be made with any combo of cake mix and gooey butter topping...any at all....ooohh the calorific possibilities!!!

Paula Deen's Gooey Butter Cake (Chocolate Peanut Butter variation!)

Ingredients:

Cake:
1 18 1/4-ounce chocolate cake mix
1 egg
1/2 c (1 stick) butter, melted

Filling:
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 c (1 stick) butter, melted

1 16-ounce box powdered sugar

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine the cake mix, egg, and butter and mix well with an electric mixer. Pat the 3/4 mixture into the bottom of an 8x8 inch pan. Divide the rest of the mixture among 6 cupcake liners and pat down into mini crusts.

In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla, peanut butter, butter and beat together.

Next, add the powdered sugar and mix well. Spread 3/4 of the mixture over cake batter in 8x8 inch pan and divide the rest among the 6 cupcake liners. Bake cupcakes for 15-18 minutes and 8x8 inch cake for 40-45 minutes. Make sure not to over bake as the center should be a little gooey.

Graduation Cake and Ice Cream

A friend and fellow dancer in Hawai'i Club asked me to make dessert for his graduation BBQ. He is going back to Hawai'i in a few days and since he's from Hawai'i and does Hawaiian dancing...why not a Hawaiian themed cake. I was done with finals really early so I decided to make a fairly elaborate cake and some goodie goodie for his birthday. Goodie goodie is a strawberry ice cream that [I think] can only be found in Hawai'i. It's super delicious and if you have an ice cream machine, ridiculously easy and tasty. Anyway I google'd Hawaiian Cakes and found a bunch of waterfall cakes so I thought that might be cool.

The 09 and palm trees are made out of sugar cookies, flood frosted with thinned royal icing. The flowers are made out of royal icing and the cake is covered with marshmallow fondant. Underneath that is buttercream frosting and chocolate cake. I feel like it's a bit more elaborate that it looks. And I totally had to borrow a saw and hammer from the neighbors to put in those dowel rods...they thought i was crazy.

Everyone really liked the cake though, it came pretty close to getting attacked by seagulls but it was saved. I think this is the first 3 tierd cake I've made on my own for 'fun' plus our apartment fridge can only hold so much cake. I majorly cheated and used a tweaked version of a box cake but noooo oneee could tell. I swear.

Too Much Chocolate Cake
Allrecipes.com

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package devil's food cake mix
• 1 (5.9 ounce) package instant chocolate pudding mix
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup warm coffee
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips [optional]
  

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, mix together the cake and pudding mixes, sour cream, oil, beaten eggs and coffee. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour batter into a well greased 12 cup bundt pan.
3. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until top is springy to the touch and a wooden toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool cake thoroughly in pan at least an hour and a half before inverting onto a plate If desired, dust the cake with powdered sugar.

* This cake rises a lot. If you are using a different pan, fill till the batter is halfway up the sides of the pan and bake. It will rise to the top.

Goodie Goodie

- 1 can evaporated milk
- 6 cups strawberry soda
- 1 can sweetened condensed milk

1. Mix all three ingredients together. Taste and if it is too sweet you may want to add more evaporated milk.
2. Freeze in ice cream maker according to directions.