I haven’t done a Sunday Afternoon Baking post in a looooong time! But I have been baking like whoa! I’ve recently found a love for making delicious, chocolatey, baked goods, especially cupcakes and cake pops. And Whenever I get the opportunity to make something, I jump on it! Someone graduated from college? I’ll make cupcakes for that! You’re baby turned 1? Cute cake pops coming right up! It’s Saturday afternoon and you’re bored? Don’t worry, I’ve got some cupcakes to cheer you right up.
No occasion is too big or small. In fact, I tend to bake cake pops lately whenever my family comes to visit. Maybe I’m trying to entice them to visit me more often 
Here’s a whole bunch of recipes I’ve recently tried out. Some were major flops, but some turned out to be fantastically delicious! Everyone’s tastes are different, and what I absolutely love, you might not but if you love to bake, and try new recipes, I encourage you to try out some of these, because its so fun to experiment, and to eat delicious delicious cake (in any form!).
So on this particular visit we decided to make not only brownies, and not only cookies, but a brownie-cookie hybrid. This was just as I was starting to get into baking seriously (now I have a whole slew of recipes with crazy combinations of baked goods I’m just itching to try), so whereas this isn’t my most favorite recipe, it was still fun to make! I’ve also found other [better??] cookie and brownie recipes since making these, but I’ve included the recipes I used here, since they were still really really good!
For these recipes, I didn’t bake the brownies in an 8×8 dish, as it calls for… as you can see, we made little pumpkin brownie-cookies, as it was fall and we were in the pumpkin mood! We tried two different ways to make these brownie-cookies; half with the brownie batter and cookie dough baked at the same time, and half with the brownie batter cooked half way through, and then adding the raw cookie dough on top. As you can see, adding the cookie dough half way through yielded a better result, although both were equally as delicious. If you want clear definition when making a brownie-cookie, definitely wait for the brownies to be half way baked before adding the raw cookie dough on top!
I topped these with a pretty good vanilla buttercream frosting. Now, the thing about buttercream frosting and me is… well… we don’t get along. I just don’t like it. Well, not buttercream I’ve made before, anyway. But this recipe from Our Best Bites intrigued me because I (for the most part) don’t love buttercream frosting made with powdered sugar, either. I’m very picky. So when I saw that this recipe called for granulated sugar, I was really interested! Its realllllly good. It’s also reallllly sweet, so if you don’t like sweet, you might not like it. But I think the sweetness over-flavors the butter flavor, which for me is ideal because I do not like tasting butter. ICK.
There wasn’t any chocolate, so in my opinion, I could have taken them or left them, and it really wouldn’t have made a difference to me. But everyone else who tried them seemed to like them, especially my dad who likes butterscotch, so I consider them a hit! 
The chocolate frosting I used here was a generic buttercream frosting recipe I found online somewhere (can’t remember where). Since making these cupcakes, I’ve found the ULTIMATE most AMAZING chocolate frosting recipe on the planet. I’m talking heaven in a piping bag! Now here’s the thing. I don’t like butter. I know I know, how can I not like butter? Who doesn’t like butter?? I don’t. I hate it. It’s gross. I hate tasting butter and so, its no reason I didn’t like the buttercream frosting I found online because well, it tasted like butter. So, I’m going to give you the ULTIMATE most AMAZING frosting recipe instead, because it’s to die for good. If you like the taste of butter, and you like buttercream frostings, you might not agree that this is the best recipe, but if you like rich chocolate flavor, with just a hint of creaminess, then this is the recipe for you!! Chocolate frosting lightly adapted from this Annie’s Eats recipe.
After baking the cupcakes, and making the frosting and PB mousse, I cut out little triangles from the tops of each cupcake and piped in some PB mousse inside the cupcake, then I cut off the pointy part of the triangle (it was more of a cone really), and put it back on top of the cupcake before frosting them with the chocolate frosting. Finally, I roughly chopped up some Reese’s PB cups and sprinkled them on top. That right there really made the cupcake! I think next time though, I’m going to make these with my favorite chocolate cake recipe (I’ll be blogging about that later, when i show off my sexy cake pops!!)
I topped them with a crumb topping, though it kind of melted, so I think I used too much sugar and not enough flour… but they were still pretty good!
We DID try it tonight with the last bits of cake that were left over from this weekend, and I have to say, it really *does* make the cake!
