I’ve been baking a ton lately and loving every second of it! It’s one of my passions in life and a great way to express creativity. Plus the finished product is edible. Can’t get much better than that!

I figured all the details and pictures warranted their own post, so here we are. Let’s talk about baking!

Let’s start with the above pictured pineapple upside down cupcakes. I had so. much. fun. making them. My father-in-law’s favorite cake is pineapple upside down, and his birthday was this past Sunday so I decided to make his favorite cake in cupcake form.

I can post a full recipe, but I added pineapple juice to vanilla cake batter, finely chopped pineapple and put it on top of the cupcakes before baking.

Once the cupcakes were baked and cooled, I put together a basic vanilla buttercream. My favorite recipe is really simple: butter, powdered sugar, salt, vanilla, and a splash of half and half!

I frosted the cupcakes and decorated them with just a little bit of chopped pineapple and a maraschino cherry on top. I love the way they turned out, and of course we had to taste test them before giving them to my father-in-law. They were wonderful!

Sadie and I have been busy baking together, too. Our little projects haven’t really involved the oven, but they’re close enough to actual baking. First, we made acorn cookies to celebrate fall!

They were made by adding a touch of frosting to a mini Nilla wafer, putting a Hershey kiss on it, and then topping the Nilla wafer with a tiny dab of buttercream and making the “stem” out of a butterscotch chip.

Sadie has also been asking to make puppy chow or muddy buddies (what do you call it?!) for the past few weeks because she sees the picture on the back of the Chex cereal box, so we finally did that!

I had a local cupcake order for a birthday recently, too. This one was chocolate cupcakes with raspberry filling. They were decorate with swirled sage green and while buttercream icing and black sprinkles.

I think the hardest part was getting the right shade of green for the buttercream. Oh and doing the swirl icing was a learning process! I initially put two small bags of each color within a large piping bag, but decided adding each color (sans individual bag) on one side of a pastry bag worked best.

I got a random urge to make fudge recently, too. I’ve never made it before and I found it to be fun and simple! That’s what I did on a recent wild Friday night… I made fudge.

I just did a classic chocolate fudge and topped it with chocolate chips. I’d love to do a peanut butter flavor next. I feel like fudge is a touchy subject… people either love it or are meh about it. Do you like fudge?

Since we’re on the topic of baking, I have to share a screenshot of a text from Jimmy about my apple pie recipe.

He brought some into work and I guess it was a hit because one of his employees had to pull over and enjoy his piece on the drive home, lol!

Chocolate cherry biscotti has also graced our oven! The recipe I use features cocoa powder, chocolate chips, dried cherries, and melted chocolate.

Perfect with a cup of coffee… or on its own. Even Sadie (our picky eater) enjoys a piece of biscotti. She wasn’t super into the acorn cookies or muddy buddies, but she tried swiping a few pieces of biscotti before I reminded her it was for an order!

Along with all the baking mentioned above, it has also been business as usual for my Etsy shop! Lots of granola, brownies, cookies, and brownie mixes happening around these parts!

Ever since my random cannoli craving, I’ve been thinking that I need to make it homemade! Now that I know what it actually tastes like, I feel like it’s time to recreate it at home.

But alas, I have a granola order to work on first! This one includes a bag of cinnamon raisin, cranberry orange, and coconut almond.

Have you baked anything fun lately?

How do you feel about fudge?