Red Velvet cheater cupcakes

okay so we clearly made these last week.  Very valentiney.  But I am thinking that you may still see some valentine-esq things here.  It is still February after all! 

These are red velvet cupcakes made from a mix and photographed with some bad lighting!  If you are looking for a good substitute for homemade red velvet then I suggest the Duncan Hines red velvet mix.  It is surprisingly good.  You can obviously still tell it is a cake mix but it is denser than a regular cake mix and pretty tasty.

On to the next treat!  OH and tomorrow will be more hearts around here.  So sue me!

Two bite cheater brownies

I have started making at least one treat a week.  Really I should keep it to one treat a week.  But some weeks just call for a second treat!  Doing a treat a week has been fun because it is easy to have the kids help with baking.  They can do everything but get them in and out of the oven.  These two bite brownies were our first one.  

I would post a recipe except for the fact that they were a box brownie mix.  Oh and I did add half a bag of peanut butter chips.  Ritzy!  They are cheater cheater baking.  Sometimes that is my favorite.  I really enjoy baking from scratch.  I love the super sensory experience of measuring out all the ingredients.  That being said there is something great about tossing the ingredients in and throwing it in the oven.  The fact that there is no sifting or forgetting ingredients involved is nice.

They don't list on the box the bake time for mini muffin size brownies.  I baked them for 20 minutes and they came out great!  I will also spray the cups with Pam the next time since they stuck real bad to the cups.

They were surprisingly good.  I am starting to dream up all the different things you can add to mix it up. How about chopped Andes mints?  Or nuts and carmel pieces?  Yum!