Chocolate Peanut Butter & Jelly Cupcakes + GIVEAWAY!

For some reason I've been on a sweet tooth kick lately. You might have saw my Snickerdoodle Peanut Butter Brownie Cookie recipe I made last week. If you missed it click HERE. Well today I'm super excited to introduce you to one of my blogging buddies who's bringing us a new must-try recipe. 

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I am absolutely over the moon to be here at Our Reflection.  My name is Jenny and I am the teacher mommy of The NY Melrose Family.  My spunky assistant is my two and half year old daughter, Riley.  She's usually my shadow and tries her best to "help" mommy with all of my diy, recipes, organization and party planning projects.  I'm here today to share a chocolate peanut butter and jelly cupcake recipe and a giveaway from one of my favorite sponsors Beryl's Cake Decorating & Party Supplies.  First, I want to share this recipe because it is A-mazing!

Before you start anything you need to pop 24 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups into the freezer.  I used Duncan Hines Devil Food Cake Mix so they are semi-homemade.  Once the cake mix is placed into the baking cups, place the frozen Peanut Butter Cups into the center of the cake mix.  My assistant did this for me and it was great because we worked on her directional vocabulary as she placed it into the mix.

As you can see we were pretty close to center.

Next take a teaspoon of strawberry jam and spoon it on top of the cupcake.  You'll want to fold it into the cake batter.

I know you've got to be thinking that these sound fabulous, but now we're only going to make it better because you'll need to frost on the Strawberry Jelly Frosting.  I used the 1M tip to get the rose look to the frosting.

I give you chocolate peanut butter and jelly cupcakes with strawberry jelly frosting!  I wish I had gotten a picture of Riley eating it.  It was as if each bite was a bite from heaven.  "It tastes like candy, mama," was her comment that made me smile from ear to ear.

Ingredients for Cupcake:

Devil Food Cake Mix

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup for each cupcake

1 teaspoon of strawberry jelly for each cupcake

Recipe for Strawberry Jelly Frosting, which I found at Best Friends for Frosting:

1 cup of butter (2 sticks)

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1/3 cup strawberry jam

2 cups of confectioner's sugar

Directions for Frosting:

Beat the butter at room temperature.  Then add in vanilla extract and mix this together.  Add in strawberry jelly and beat together.  Finally add the sugar one cup at a time until you end up with peaks in the frosting.

Now it's time for the giveaway.  As a special thank you to Laura's audience for having me visit, I'm giving away a $25 gift certificate to Beryl's Cake Decorating & Pastry Supplies.  Beryl has everything you could possibly want when it comes to cake decorating and the best part is that it's on me.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Snickerdoodle Peanut Butter Brownie Cookies

When I head about this recipe my mouth was drooling. Literally. How could a dessert combined with all this deliciousness not be amazing?

Here are the ingredients:

1 tub of pre-made cookie dough {any flavor, we choose snickerdoodle} 

1 box of brownie mix {plus the ingredients to make the brownies: mine called for only eggs, water, and oil}

12 Reeses Pieces Cups {or you can use Oreo cookies} 

Yield: 1 dozen brownies cookies

Directions:

1} In a medium bowl mix all your brownie ingredients and set aside.

2} Grab your cup cake tray. In the bottom of each of the cups press 1/4" of the pre-made cookie dough.

3} Choose your brownie centers.  We did half Reese Peanut Butter Cups, half Oreo cookies. Lay one of each onto of the cookie dough cups.

4} Take the brownie mix and softly pour it into each of the cups filling it to the brim.

5} Please them in a 325 degree oven for 15 minutes.

 This is one of those recipes you just must try. Plus it makes your house smell heavenly.

Tea Party & Conversation Cookies... I think YES!

You're never too old for a Tea Party, right?

I'm a coffee drinker {to say the least}, but all the talk lately has been about tea. I didn't know the first thing about tea so I invited my niece Kimberly, who blogs at Tea with Kimmy, to come over and school me on tea.

WOW did she come prepared! She had about 20 different types of tea's to try, hot and cold, flavored and not, real sugar and Stevia.... The list went on and on. She even told me what each tea was for {healthy wise}, which do drink day or night and where to buy each different brand for the best price. She's was a genius!

She even brought our family a goodie bag which had a "tea cup" for each of us! She's so sweet.

 Once tea consumption level was maxed out, we moved on to my specialty, baking! With Valentine's Day around the corner I thought it would be fun to bake conversation cookies. Here's our day in photos...

Ok so maybe we're not Martha Stewart, but we had a blast!

Linking up with the Valentine's Day DIY Link Up!