I’m sharing some cute chocolate chip cubcakes today. That’s right … these adorable little bears come complete with chocolate chip cookie ears for you to nibble on.

They are pretty easy to decorate, too. Of course, you’ll need some tiny chocolate chip cookies.

I can help with that.

Recipes are below. Mix up the cookie dough, but don’t mix the mini chocolate chips into the dough.

I used a 1-1/2 inch scoop to start with. You know trying to get teeny-tiny cookies. To get them small enough I then divided the dough into roughly six equal sections and then rolled those sections into tiny balls of dough.

For the cub’s mouths, you can just bake the cookies without chips, but for the ears, simply dip the ball into a bowl filled with mini morsels. They’ll stick to the dough and then you can just press them in slightly to stay in place.

Place the cookie dough balls on a cookie sheet about two inches apart to bake. They only take about 5 minutes at 375 degrees F. Remove them from the oven and they are ready to enjoy as baby cookies.

But if you want them perfectly round for cubcakes, you can use a #808 Ateco decorating tip to cut them out. Easy peasy.

And pretty cute.

Now to assemble.

* Frost cupcakes with brown sugar frosting and then cut some regular sized chocolate morsels in half to use for noses. I used Ghiradelli morsels for these because they have a slightly flatter shape than Nestle. * Insert two chocolate chip cookies in position for ears. Press in far enough so they don’t fall down. You can also take a little dollop of frosting to place behind the ears to help prop them up. * For mouths, press one of the chipless cookies on the bottom part of the frosted cubcake. * For the noses, melt a few chocolate morsels in the microwave and use the melted chocolate to attach a cut regular size morsel upside down on top of the cookie for the nose. When the chocolate dries, it will act like glue. * For the eyes, press two miniature chocolate morsels into the frosting with the flat slide facing up. * Then with a toothpick and some more of the melted chocolate, draw on a sweet little smile.

So cute, I can hardly bear it.

Enjoy!

This blueberry coffee cake is great for breakfast or snacking or both. It’s a definite keeper! And that’s coming from my my neighbors, my mom and me.

The cake. The crumb. It’s all incredibly good.

The recipe is from my blogging friend, Marla Meredith’s new book High Alpine Cuisine … all about comfort food inspired by her love of the outdoors and her mountain travels from the Colorado Rockies all the way to the Swiss Alps. There’s something to tempt you for every meal and a section on Alpine Desserts including Funnel Cakes, Apple Strudel, Base Camp Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Skillet S’mores Dip and more. But after flipping through the pages it was this Wild Blueberry Buckle Coffee Cake in the Belly-Filing Breakfast section that caught my eye first.

Get started by making the crumb topping. Whisk together sugar, flour, salt and cinnamon in a bowl. Then use your fingers to press the cubed butter into the flour mixture until you form a crumble. It takes a few minutes but stick with it.

Once you have the crumble ready, add the finely chopped walnuts and mix together.

Set that goodness aside and start whipping up the blueberry cake batter.

Spread it in all its gloriousness into a 9 X 9 inch pan. Then cover completely with the crumble and bake away for 40-45 minutes at 375 degrees F.

Enjoy every last blueberry bite.

Hey guys! I’m sad to say summer’s over, but it was a pretty great one. I’ve been traveling more than I usually do from Miami to San Francisco to Canada to Las Vegas. You probably noticed there’s been less baking lately. It’s been busy. But, I’m glad to have taken time to do some fun stuff along the way. Like riding jumbo animal crackers and swimming in sprinkles.

Here are a few pics from my visit to the Museum of Ice Cream in San Francisco. Since it started in 2016, it’s been a traveling exhibit of the sweetest kind. You may have seen or heard about one popping up in Los Angeles, Miami or New York over the past two years with all kind of unique ice cream exhibits.

Now, keep in mind, this is more of an experience than it is educational. But that’s perfectly fine with me because it was so much fun!

The Museum of Ice Cream in San Fran is in this cool old bank building and as of last week, it’s now going to be a permanent exhibit in the city. So if you’re into sweets and planning a trip to San Francisco, think about swinging by, but make sure to order tickets in advance because they don’t sell them at the door.

There are a bunch of instagram-worthy installations throughout the museum.

So much eye candy! And as you make your way through all the rooms, you’ll be treated along the way with cotton candy, popsicles and of course you get to taste some ice cream, too.

I really liked the gummy bear room with what I’ll call cake pops sprinkled throughout… Definitely not suckers. ;)

There’s even a sprinkle pool that you can play in.

And swings and such. I may have taken a few boomerangs on these. There’s more pics on my instagram stories and feed if you want to see.

Be prepared to feel like a kid again.

_P.S. Yep, those are braces on my teeth, but I finally got them off about a week ago. YAYAYAY! _

These cookies are colossal and studded with dark chocolate chips and stuffed with a melted dark chocolate truffle inside. So melty. So mega good.

I used Lindt Lindor dark chocolate truffles but you could also make them with milk chocolate morsels and truffles if you prefer.

Now gather all the players to get going on the dough. Flour, butter, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Glorious! If only I could eat it all just like this.

Once the dough comes together, mix in 2/3 of the chocolate morsels. Scoop 12 even mounds of cookie dough onto wax paper. Wrap each truffle with a mound of cookie dough and seal together. Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and then use the remaining morsels to stud the tops of the cookie dough balls. Place them four at a time on a baking sheet because these beauties bake up big.

Bake those babies into big beautiful cookies. Like 5 inches big.

Break into them when they are still warm for a melty mouthful.

Enjoy!

Oh Shih Tzu! How cute are these puppies?! I made these for my mom's birthday this week. She's been wanting me to turn her little puppy pie into a cake pop and I finally attempted them this past weekend. Surprisingly, they ended up being way easier than I thought they would be.

But first I needed reference so I made a quick pencil sketch of the sweet little baby face in question.

And because I wanted to get as close to her likeness as possible, I worked the sizing out on the computer starting with different size circles. I took a picture of my sketch and emailed to myself to lay over the circles in a graphics program called Indesign. The faces are slightly larger than the circles to allow for the size increase when the round cake balls are dipped in candy coating. Once I had all the sizes, I picked the one that would work best with the sprinkles I had on hand.

In this case, black sugar pearls for eyes, brown rainbow chip sprinkles for noses and pink confetti sprinkles for tongues.

Now to make the cake pops. First mix crumbled cake and frosting together and then roll into balls based on the size you need.

Here are my basic cake pop instructions if you need them.

Once I had the starting size, I used the puppy drawing as a guide to hand shape the puppy heads. Just lay a sheet of wax paper over your reference and shape the cake ball to fit. I also used a lollipop stick to press holes into the shaped cake balls where the eyes would be. I did this for reference after they are dipped.

The slight impression helps me know where to quickly place the sugar pearls for eyes because you want to do this while the candy coating is still wet.

Then place the rainbow chip sprinkle in position for the nose and the confetti sprinkle in position for the tongue. (You could do these two steps after the candy coating sets by attaching them with a dot of melted coating, but the eyes look better if they are inset into the coating slightly as opposed to sitting on top of the surface if that makes sense.)

Holy Shih Tzu. The before and after. Now let me show you how easy it is to go from one to the other.

This is all done with toothpicks and a little time. Start with the mustache and eyebrows area and dip your toothpick in coating and draw on the pop to build up dimension. Do all your pops and let them dry before layering on more as needed. Fill in around the nose and overlap the top of the confetti sprinkle. Then just keep drawing on lines of coating with the toothpick. Once you've built the face up to look like your pup, then apply more coating with a toothpick on the sides for floppy ears. Let dry.

And if you have a little Maltese, you could stop right here. : )

But my mom's Shih Tzu has black markings like a little mask. This is the fun part.

All you need is a black edible ink pen. Maybe two if you are making a bunch. Just use the pen to draw on top of the pop mimicking your dog's markings as much as possible.

(These are Americolor Gourmet Writers and you can get them in brown if you need them, too.)

Usually when I use these pens I recommend drawing on the surface very lightly like use a paint brush, because when you press down too hard, the candy coating can start to clog the pen.

But for these pups, I like how it looks when the pen is not solid black. It helps give the illusion of different shades of black hair. So I wasn't as worried about the pen clogging up.

And if draw too much on, you can use a toothpick to gently scrape some of it away.

Look at these little baby boos. To finish the look, just dot the eyes with more of the melted white candy coating.

I'm so happy with how cute they turned out.

And … they're puppy approved! Sweet little Sugar Pie loved them. And my mom did, too!

Enjoy!