Pumpkin Cake Balls for Halloween

Happy Halloween Everyone! I hope you all have a fun and safe day today!

I wanted to make a treat for my husband to take into work with him for his co-workers. I debated the merits of spiderweb cupcakes, tombstone brownies and other fun stuff but then decided to go with something fun and easy to sneak and eat quickly. Cake balls were a perfect fit. I made a pumpkin cake and paired it with some vanilla frosting and dipped them in white chocolate colored orange.

If you have checked out my previous post about what I've been up to lately you'll understand my next rationale; I decided to take the easy way on the cake because of timing and also because I wanted to give you all a ridiculously simple recipe that can be made in a pinch and really tastes amazing (I also cheated and used store bought icing). The best part - it only requires two ingredients and can be eaten as a cake, cupcake or even a muffin. So few ingredients and yet so versatile.

2nd Birthday Elmo Cake & Marshmallow Fondant Recipe

My nieces birthday was actually last month but I never thought to put it up on here. Like most 2 year olds my niece is in love with Elmo and honestly, kid or adult who doesn't love Elmo? He's cute and fuzzy and so lovable. I made a vanilla cake with vanilla icing, nothing too crazy but decorated the cake with white and colored fondant. I don't have pictures of me making or rolling out the fondant because it is such a messy job there was no place for a camera in the kitchen, but I will walk you through each step on how to make this cake or just about any other cake with fondant on top.

Making homemade fondant is actually pretty easy, just very, very messy. It doesn't take too much skill or artistic talent, all you need is a little creativity and some cookie cutters, food dye and you're good to go!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge

I've said it before and I'm sure I will say it again...chocolate and peanut butter are one of the greatest pairings to ever exist. My mother has been making fudge for years, since she was in high school to be exact. It's a recipe that she has kept a secret all those years and I am about to tell all of you....so let's just hope she doesn't find out I blew her best kept secret. You see it's a big secret because of how easy it is to make this fudge.

Exactly how easy is it you ask? Two ingredients and no candy thermometer easy.

I wanted to spice up the fudge a bit in honor of this post and to make it my own a little bit. So I decided I wanted to pair the chocolate fudge with peanut butter fudge. I found a bunch of recipes but they all had quite a few ingredients and steps and considered my chocolate fudge is just two ingredients in felt just wrong. I needed something just as simple and easy.

And then I found it. A small posting on a thread that was so deep and buried in my online search that I can't even remember where I found it... Two ingredient peanut butter fudge.

Sound the alarm, I have a chocolate peanut butter fudge recipe with only four ingredients and still no candy thermometer. Hallelujah, sound the alarms. You must make this now.

Low-Fat Lemon Loaf

Whenever summertime rolls around I find myself craving fresh, summery ingredients and lemons are by far one my favorite summertime ingredients. I love lemons as they are in all of their mouth puckering glory, but I also love them in dessert and the sweet little tang they give off. Lemons make even the heaviest of desserts seem light and guilt free and to me that's a beautiful thing.

This cake is dense and rich but actually very low in calories since I omitted butter and multiple eggs and replaced them with part-skim ricotta. I have found that using ricotta, yogurt or applesauce in baking is a great way to cut down on fat and calories but not skimp on taste. I choose to use ricotta in this recipe because of how well ricotta pairs with lemon and the rich texture ricotta provides.

It's a easy to make, one bowl recipe that is perfect for a light, summer dessert.

Sweet Potato Cake

Ever buy something and then as time goes by you forget to use it, or just don't want to do the same old thing again? I bought sweet potatoes about a week ago, they're one of my favorite veggies, my husband - not so much. He prefers the run of the mill Idaho, Yukon and Red New potatoes. So after hemming and hawing about what to make with the sweet potatoes I decided I wanted to make a dessert, but I couldn't find the kind of recipe I was looking for. I wanted to make a cake or a bread and nothing was quite what I wanted.  The solution? I made one up, worked on the fly and if I do say so myself, it came out quite delicious.

The recipe was simple and if you happen to have boiled sweet potatoes on hand, can be made in less than 10 minutes.