A Saturday Night Treat!

Happy Sunday Afternoon! We hope everyone is having a superb weekend. We are having a gorgeous fall weekend here. Not to brag or anything, but our last few weekends have given us amazing weather! And we have some leaves changing colors, which is always a nice little reminder of a New England fall. The only thing missing is some pumpkins. We wanted to carve some last night, but couldn't find any at the store. It was a sad night.
So, what do we do instead? Watch Harry Potter and make these delicious drinks:

These are pumpkin pie milkshakes based off the recipe found at Our Best Bites for their Pumpkin Pie Milkshakes. (These two ladies are awesome! We'd try all of their recipes if there was enough time in the day!) This drink has a base of vanilla ice cream and pumpkin puree. I kind of went off track from there. I added some vanilla and a few shakes of pumpkin pie spice. Unfortunately, or fortunately I guess, we didn't have any milk left in the fridge. We did have some apple juice, so we improvised a little. It was probably close to a quarter of a cup of juice. It definitely adds a bit more "fall" to the drink!! We decided to rim the glasses with some crushed graham crackers and chocolate syrup, and then dripped some chocolate down the sides of the glasses. (You could also use caramel syrup, which would also be pretty delish! And last, but not least, we added some whipped cream on top, with a garnish of a grahammie square!
Thanks so much for stopping by! Hopefully we'll have a few new projects to share, and at least one more of Our Best Bites delicious recipes!!

A New (Delicious) Fall Drink

We hope everyone is having a wonderful, working Wednesday! On the bright side, it's downhill after today. Anyway, today's post isn't something we usually do. We're pretty sure the last time we did this was last fall. We are sharing our recipe for a *drum roll* Apple Pie Latte:

This drink is absolutely delish! Just looking at the picture makes me smile. There is a story behind this recipe, though. The other day, I was so excited to go the store and get the pumpkin spice coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. How can you go wrong? And especially when it's on sale?! When I got there, I was disappointed because it wasn't there. But they had this apple pie-flavored coffee. I was kind of weary about getting it, but went for it, mostly because we're deprived of it out here. (Washington's downfall). I also picked up some caramel creamer and whipped cream with the idea of making a latte (yum!)
I hurried (safely) home because I was just so excited! Now, we kind of cheat when it comes to making lattes. We used a gift card to make the most-awesome purchase: a Mr. Coffee latte maker. Unless you have a boat-load of money to spend on the machine, I wouldn't recommend it. Then again, if you're someone who goes out and gets a coffee every day, it might be worth it. We've definitely gotten our money's worth :)
So, here's how to make your own, without any fancy equipment. This recipe makes two drinks (or, just one really large one!) 

Apple Pie Spice:
In a small container, mix 1/4 cup cinnamon, 1 tablespoon allspice, and 2 teaspoons both nutmeg and ginger. Mix well and store in an air-tight container.
This is one of those mornings that this drink would be perfect. Needless to say, this drink was absolutely delicious! I was surprised at how "apple-y" this coffee was. There are only a few flavored coffees that have such flavor to them. After we finished the coffee (in like a week...), we had our first (and only) pumpkin spice latte from the "other" place, and it was so disappointing. It tasted like a regular ol' latte. Good thing we can make our own now!!
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!!

Cupcake Saturday!

Good morning on this absolutely gorgeous Saturday morning! We hope everyone is having a great day so far! Ours is looking to be busy, but hopefully we'll be able to relax a little tomorrow. Anyway, the cupcakes we are sharing with you today are the ones we made for our birthday last weekend. At the beginning of May, as we were watching the Harry Potter Weekend on ABC Family for the umpteenth time, we decided that we really wanted to have a Harry Potter themed birthday this year. Honestly, who wouldn't want to live in a world full of magic and mystery?! (And who says 27 is too old for a birthday party?!) We had a whole bunch of ideas to work with , but unfortunately, life got in the way and we didn't get around to it. But, we did make cupcakes to celebrate! These are our butterbeer cupcakes, in honor of Harry Potter:

We took a shortcut with these, and used a butter cake mix. Instead of adding water, we added cream soda to the batter (it was kind of difficult to find the cream soda. Not too many stores out here sell it. Who knew??) Once the cupcakes were cooled, we took white buttercream frosting and added a package of butterscotch pudding to it. We mixed it to make a butterscotch buttercream. (This would probably have been better looking if it was a homemade frosting, but it tastes delicious!) These were exactly what I would imagine a mug of butterbeer to taste like.
If the cupcake form isn't quite your thing, there are a ton of other recipes out there for drink versions. We've tried the one from this website, which was surprisingly good. It's not the heathiest drink out there, and drinking a tablespoon of butter may not be on your top list of things to do, but it is tasty in small portions. (That's in the mug.) We also found a butterbeer frappuccino 'recipe' here for the coffee drinker who frequents the corner Starbucks. I wonder if the one at Safeway would make this for us. There are also cream soda-based recipes, too.
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a magical day!!