Cupcakes!

I am lucky enough to live in my hometown and have both my parents and my sister just a few miles away from us. We have dinner as an extended family quite often, and yesterday my sister invited us to her house for a pre-spring cookout.

It was so great to have grilled burgers and dogs in the middle of February! She also had yummy salads, chips and pickles! Yum!

I brought some bruschetta, which is not something I normally eat or make. I had the ingredients on hand due to a dinner party which was canceled two weeks ago, so I threw it together yesterday afternoon. Turns out, my Brother-In-Law LOVES bruschetta and actually orders the "Bruschetta Burger" when they go out! So he loved it (even though I thought it was a tad too garlicky!).

When we have these dinners, I nearly always offer to bring dessert. Since I am home during the day, I can usually manage to at least toss some brownies together. Yesterday, I opted for chocolate cupcakes. Cupcakes (or at least the icing on the cupcakes) are always a hit with the kids, but the adults are never thrilled with them. So I decided to add peanut butter to the vanilla icing. All the adults loved the chocolate-peanut butter cupcakes! However, they looked really ugly (I am glad these were for family rather than guests!)!

My daughter doesn't like peanut butter, so I kept a small bit of the icing plain and added some mini M&Ms (which the kids received on Valentine's Day). They looked adorable and the kids loved licking the icing off of them!