Lemon Blossoms {Recipe}

I am totally a broken record, but this week has been too crazy to have time to blog, let alone do much of anything besides school stuff. So today is one of those days where I'm just publishing a post I wrote over the summer, but it's a good one!

.............................

I am not usually a big lemon fan. I don't like lemonade, and I don't like lemons in my water. I pretty much try to bypass anything with lemon in it.

And then I tried these Lemon Blossoms.

They pretty much changed my outlook on lemon flavored sweets.

They are SO good and SO easy to make. Even if you're not usually a big lemon person, you have to try these.

The original recipe can be found here from Paula Deen, but I would change a few things if I made them again, so I'm posting my very slightly adapted recipe here!

Ingredients

For Muffins:

- 18.5 oz. box of yellow cake mix

- 3.5 oz. package instant lemon pudding mix

- 4 eggs

- 3/4 cup vegetable oil

For Glaze:

- 4 cups powdered sugar

- 1/3 cup lemon juice

- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

- 3 tablespoons water

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray mini muffin pan with cooking spray.

The spray with the flour in it is the best for baking!

Combine cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, and oil in the bowl of an electric mixer.

Sidenote: You can easily make this recipe gluten-free by using a gluten-free cake mix. My aunt made gluten-free ones the first time I tried them, but I'm not sure why I did too - ha! Just be careful that you have the right size cake mix and pudding mix though. I only had a 15 oz. cake mix and 1 oz. pudding mix, and the texture of the cake was a little off, so be careful about that!

Mix the batter about 2 minutes, until smooth.

Fill mini cupcake pan about half full with batter and bake for 12 minutes.

While they are cooking you can work on the glaze. Start off by sifting the powdered sugar into a large bowl.

Add the lemon juice (I would just use store bought - it's easier and not quite as strong as a lemon flavor), vegetable oil, and water. Mix until completely combined.

Sidenote: The original recipe called for the zest of a lemon as well. This is what I would cut out in the future - the glaze just seemed a little overpowering on the lemon. So unless you really like lemon, I would skip it.

Once the blossoms are done in the oven, let them sit a few minutes (you want them to be cool enough to touch, but still warm).

Then you can dip the top half of the blossoms (using your fingers) in the glaze. After dipping, set the blossoms on a cooling rack (with paper towels or wax paper underneath to catch drippings from the glaze). It takes about an hour for the glaze to completely harden and the blossoms to cool, but you know I didn't wait that long before trying one several.

Now you have about 4 dozen super delicious Lemon Blossoms!

So yummy - you really have to try these out!

3-2-1 Cake

My mom came across an incredibly easy (and delicious!) dessert recipe a little while ago that I thought I'd pass on to you today!

It's called a 3-2-1 Cake. It really couldn't be any easier to make. It's also only 2 Weight Watchers points (I think), and if you know anything about Weight Watchers, a decent sized 2 point dessert is hard to come by!

All you have to do is buy a box of angel food cake mix and any another boxed cake mix you want. It HAS to be angel food for the first box, but it doesn't matter what brand! And then I would suggest a chocolate cake mix for the second box, but vanilla would probably be good still too.

Then mix the 2 dry mixes together and store in a large plastic resealable bag. So easy, and so cheap! Then when you want a quick dessert, mix 3 tablespoons of the dry cake mixture with 2 tablespoons of water in a bowl. Then microwave for 1 minute. And that's it!

It comes out looking like your own mini cake :)

Now, I would suggest putting some kind of toppings on it too. I always put strawberries on top, which makes it extra delicious. You could add any fruit though. Or chocolate chips, chocolate syrup, or any other yummy toppings!

 Another thing I've started putting on top is a little bit of French Vanilla Cool Whip (my favorite!).

via

A few tips.....

1. The bowl comes out extremely hot, so you might want to pull it out with a towel :)

2. For some reason, the cake smells so weird when you heat it up in the microwave. Maybe it's just my microwave, but it smells kind of gross (just when it's heating up - not the cake itself!). If it smells weird to you, don't worry - it actually does taste good.

3. Since the cake does come out hot, if you add Cool Whip on top, the Cool Whip has a tendency to soak into the cake. I actually like this, since the French Vanilla Cool Whip gives it a lot of flavor, but if you don't like that you could always wait a few minutes until it cools down to add the Cool Whip.

I really suggest making it! You don't use a lot of the mix for each cake, so 2 cake mixes really last a long time too.

Books, Recipe, and Cupcakes!

Summer is already amazing! Not having to wake up and go to school today was just pure bliss! The only downside is that I had to turn my laptop into my school for a few weeks, so I'm stuck writing blog posts on our old computer :/

But I wanted to drop in and write about a few things - some good books, a really good recipe, and what I did tonight!

First off, yesterday I finished this book. It was SO good. It was a fiction story about 2 friends that open their own bakery. Right up my alley! The ending was my favorite though - it had a lot of twists at the end that I wasn't expecting. I'd definitely recommend this book!

Then I just bought this book yesterday and started it today. This one is nonfiction, and it's about a woman who lived in Paris. I'm not really far into it yet, but so far it's been all about Paris and the bakeries she discovered there! I can't wait to finish it.

This afternoon I made some really good rice krispie treats! I found the recipe here, but I thought I'd post it on here too in case you want to make it. It's a little different, but really good!

Cake Batter Rice Krispie Treats

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter

1 (10.5 oz.) bag mini-marshmallows

1/3 cup of yellow cake mix (not the batter - just the dry mix!)

6 cups Rice Krispies

1 (1.75 oz.) container rainbow sprinkles

Instructions

Spray a little bit of Pam in a large saucepan. Melt the butter in the saucepan. Add half the marshmallows. Stir. Add the rest of the marshmallows. Keep stirring! You pretty much have to stir the entire time so it doesn't stick to the pan :)

Once the marshmallows start to melt, add the cake mix, a little at a time, stirring in between. Add the Rice Krispies 2 cups at a time, stirring after each addition. Once all the cereal is all completely coated, add about half of the sprinkles and mix.

Press the Rice Krispies mixture into the bottom of a lightly greased baking dish. Sprinkle with remaining sprinkles. Cut after they've cooled for about 30 minutes. Yum!

..................................................

Tonight a few of my friends and I tried out a cute little cupcake place, called Yum! I'd had some of their cupcakes before, but I'd never actually been there. It was really good and cute!

I got their cookies and cream cupcake!

After that we had dinner at Five Guys and walked around Rookwood for a little bit. I'd say it was a pretty good first day of summer!

Friday

I'm just now getting around to posting about Friday because I got home late last night, I just went straight to bed! Friday was an awesome day :)

I started off the day by getting up early so my mom and I could drive to Dayton to go shopping at The Greene. This place is so much fun! We went there last year on the last day of summer, and we were going to do that again this year, but my dog has a grooming appointment on the last day. Oh well.

We shopped around for a little bit, and I got a new pair of jeans! That automatically made this a successful shopping trip because I have the worst time finding jeans. The only place I have found jeans that fit me is at Delia's. I love their jeans!

Then we ate lunch at That Crepe Place.

Oh my gosh. This place was unbelievable. They had a mixture of sweet and savory crepes, but I went for a sweet one. I ended up getting a strawberry and nutella crepe. It was so awesome!

The Greene is seriously so cute!

I spent way too much money between shopping on Thursday and Friday. Oh well.......

At Yankee Candle I decided to try out their vent sticks. I got the Sun & Sand scent, and I put it in my car last night, and it really makes my car smell good!

At Bath & Body Works I picked up one of their new Halloween lip glosses. I love their Liplicious brand!

I really wish we had a fun place like this in Cincinnati!

My goal for the trip was to find myself a giraffe print scarf. I ended up getting one that was pretty close at Chico's; it's a mix of a bunch of different animal prints. For as big as animal print is this year, no one has giraffe print scarves.

When we were done shopping we went to Rita's - my favorite place in the whole world. There is seriously nothing better. If you've never been to Rita's, you need to go. Now.

I got my favorite - strawberry gelati!

When I got home, I took a nap, which felt so good - I was exhausted for some reason. Then my family went out to dinner.

I had to run home and make some dessert for a party. My friend had a big end of summer party last night, and she asked some of us to bring food. I ended up trying out another Pinterest recipe. Have I mentioned how much I love Pinterest? I made safe-to-eat chocolate chip cookie dough and cake batter. It was to die for, and it really tasted just like cookie dough and cake batter, but minus the eggs!

I had so much fun at the party. There were a lot of people there, and a lot of them were people I hadn't seen all summer. I got to talk to some new people too!

I got home around midnight, went straight to bed, and didn't get up until 11. I was wore out!

After this week, I've come to this conclusion: I'm really going to miss summer.

Wednesday

I had another good day today!

I started the day off by running up to my school to pick my schedule for the year. I'm still in denial that school starts in a week......

Then my mom and I headed out to my dog's vet to pick up her medicine. Have I mentioned before that we take my dog to a dermatologist? Crazy!

We stopped for lunch at Chick-fil-a, which is one of my absolute favorite places.



I went and cleaned at my grandpa's condo after lunch. Then we stopped at Kroger's to pick up a few things.

When we finally got home, we started working on our vacation scrapbook. Can you tell we were in all-out scrapbook mode? :)

I know my pictures aren't the best, but here are some of the pages we worked on.

After dinner, I made another one of my Pinterest recipes. I've done this 3 days in a row, and they have all been so yummy so far! This time I tried out the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars. I'm going to my cousin's birthday pool party tomorrow, and this is what I decided to make. It sure looks yummy to me!

via

My cookie dough doesn't look the same - hopefully I made it right - ha! I guess I'll find out when I try one tomorrow :)

Tonight I also finished another book: Iced by Carol Higgins Clark. It was SO good - I would recommend it!

via

I've got a super busy and exciting day tomorrow, so I can't wait to share the details of that tomorrow. Have a great Thursday!

Tuesday

I still can't believe summer is almost over for me! It went by way to fast, but I am grateful I don't go back to school until next week - I think a lot of people have started back already.

I honestly didn't do a whole lot today. All summer I've been volunteering at Children's Hospital every Tuesday, and today was my last day. It seems like just yesterday I was starting! I have really enjoyed volunteering there, and I hope to do it next summer also!

I went home for a little bit after volunteering, and then I went out to Kroger's to get some ingredients to make another one of my Pinterest recipes. I invited my friends over, so I wanted to make something yummy, and I ended up getting the stuff to make S'mores Dip.

via

The recipe was super easy (there were only 3 ingredients!), and I thought it turned out really well. Here is my finished product:

I know it doesn't look really appetizing, but it was really yummy!

When my friends got here, we watched She's the Man, ordered pizza, watched The Proposal, and played Uno. And I finally got around to painting my nails - yay!

Hope you all had a great Tuesday!

Monday

I have only a little over a week left of summer, so I'm going to try to blog every day about what I've been up to. I've had a busy day today, and I can't wait to share it :)

My mom and I met my cousins at the zoo this morning. We walked around and saw a bunch of animals before we stopped for lunch. Then I rode the train with my cousins, Maddie and Sydney. I love this picture of them; it totally shows off their personalities!



Then we got some ice cream and played on the playground for a little while before seeing more animals!

On the way out, we saw my favorite animal: the giraffe.

My mom and I went grocery shopping on the way home from the zoo, and I finally got the ingredients to try a recipe I "pinned" a little while back. I made Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries. They are so delicious. I can't stop eating them! Go check out the recipe and make them!

I mean, strawberries stuffed with a cheesecake filling, and topped with graham cracker crumbs. What's not to love?

Tonight I went to a gelato shop with some of my friends. I decided to try one of their cupcakes this time instead of their gelato. I ordered the Death by Chocolate cupcake, which is so me, but I was actually disappointed. The flavor was very "off" to me, so I guess I'll have to stick with the gelato from now on!

Afterwards, we all went over my friend Abby's house to watch a movie.

I'd say it was a successful day :)

Favorite Fruit Dip Recipe

I'm taking a break today from my vacation posts. Are you tired of them yet? - ha ;)

As much as I don't want to admit it, summer is coming to an end really soon. So, I wanted to post a great summertime treat while there is at least a little bit of summer left. Today I'm posting my all time favorite fruit dip.

It's also the all time easiest fruit dip. It only has 2 ingredients!

Summer Fruit Dip

1 package cream cheese

1 jar marshmallow fluff

Microwave the cream cheese for 30 seconds (so it's easier to work with) in a medium-sized bowl. Add the entire jar of marshmallow fluff. Mix well. Refrigerate until cool.

That's it, and it is SO yummy!

My favorite fruit to dip in it are grapes.

via

Strawberries are also good!

via

You can dip whatever fruit you want in it - I bet blueberries would be good too!

via

Have a great Friday!