Chocolate Cheesecake Cupcake Bites

Oh my goodness I have an obsession with cupcake bites. Like, a serious obsession. Easily my favorite dessert now, and I just love making them. There are so many options when it comes to flavors and decorations. Not to mention their adorable size... who wouldn't want to eat one is the real question... 

I've put together several different combinations for cupcake bites and here's another one. I made some cupcakes with this batter also and used a milk chocolate frosting. I threw in some Twix candies to the batter and they were quite good. Unfortunately because of all the sugar in the candy, some of the pieces got stuck to the wrapper after baking... Clearly the cupcake bites were better. The chocolate cheesecake comes from a chocolate cupcake and a cream cheese frosting, covered in both milk and white chocolate. Yummmm

Chocolate Cupcakes
1 stick butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup minus 2 Tbsp cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla


Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time followed by the vanilla. In a separate bowl, combined the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder. Mix in half of the dry ingredients into the butter and sugar mixture followed by half of the milk. Repeat until all of the ingredients are fully incorporated. Pour into a greased 13x9 inch pan and bake for 20-22 minutes.


You can find my favorite cream cheese frosting here.


Now you have your two flavors and can follow Martha Stewart's method for cupcake pops! I've said this before, but I'll say it again, one day I'm going to dedicate a blog post for making cupcake bites my way. Hopefully I can find the time while working full-time!

Enjoy :)

Mint Chocolate Cupcake Bites

So when I made the mint chocolate cupcakes last weekend, I had some leftovers. I mean, who would have thought that 30 mint cupcakes wouldn't all be eaten? Anyway, knowing I had a lot of family coming over, and a boyfriend who was pretty upset to not be able to try the cupcakes, I wanted to be able to save them without them getting too stale. The solution as always was a cake pop, or what I like to call cupcake bites. There was the perfect amount of frosting on each of the cupcakes to make it the perfect consistency. I had some extra mint Oreo's so I decided to crush them up and throw them in also. Extra mint? Whyyyy not. The good news is that they lasted and tasted delicious!

I wanted to do more than just dip the balls in chocolate. Something decorative needed to be added obviously... I just didn't know what. I had some extra white chocolate and figured I could decorate with that, until I got this fantastic idea to make the chocolate minty and green. Sometimes in your local party or craft store, you can find the melting chocolates in mint flavoring. If not, get some white chocolate and follow these rules :)


Mint White Chocolate
2.5 ounces white melting chocolate
1/4 tsp mint extract
2 drops green gel food coloring


*For the balls: After combining the cupcakes and frosting, place the batter in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to a half hour. Remove and form into 1-inch balls. Place on a plate or tray with parchment paper and put them in the freezer for about 5 minutes. While in the freezer, melt the milk chocolate. Remove balls from freezer and using a small spoon, dip each into the chocolate and remove while letting the excess drip off. Place back on the parchment paper and back in the freezer once all are completed for about 5 minutes - until hard.


*For the Mint White Chocolate Drizzle: Melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring after each one until all chocolate is melted. For each 2.5 ounces of chocolate used, you want to use 1/4 tsp mint extract and about 2 drops green gel food coloring. Mix until the the chocolate is uniform in color. I then used a rubber spatula to remove all of the chocolate from the bowl and placed it in a sandwich bag. I cut off the end and drizzled it across each already-cooled chocolate ball. Yum yum yumm

So simple, yet the perfect touch to the rather plain looking cupcake bites. With it cut open, you can see the larger bites of Oreo's as well as the mixed in mint chocolate that was sprinkled into the frosting. 

These are probably my second favorite Cupcake bites that I've made. The first one being the S'more Cupcake Bites. Definitely worth a try.

Second dessert for my graduation party completed... 2 more to go?!

Extra Cupcakes? No Problem!

Have you ever had a barbecue where someone brought those not-so-great store bought cupcakes? Or maybe the cupcakes were in the backseat of a car when the driver stopped short, sending the cupcakes on their side and the frosting all over the container...

(Proof that peanut butter and chocolate solve everything)

If you have either peanut butter, Nutella, or some extra frosting in your house (and of course melting chocolate), there's an easy solution. Cupcake bites, obviously. The new story of my life and obsession. 

Andrew had half a box of cupcakes at his apartment. These poor cupcakes were a week old and yes, they were victim to a car stopping short. Looking at them made me sad. I unwrapped each of the cupcakes, threw them into a bowl and had at them with a fork. The great part is that you can literally just combine everything since both the cake and icing is needed. Since the frosting was smeared along the inside of the container seen above, the consistency wasn't quite right. I added about a tablespoon of peanut butter and yup, it was perfect. Oh how I wish he kept nutella at his apartment, they would have been even more heavenly. 

I combined everything in a large bowl and placed it in the refrigerator for about a half hour. Afterward, I removed them from the refrigerator, rolled them into little balls (from 3 cupcakes I was able to make 14 little bites!) and then placed them in the freezer for 5 minutes while I melted the chocolate.

Some of the frosting had sprinkles on it, so you can see in the picture above that there are sprinkles in some of the balls. I dropped each ball in the melted chocolate with a spoon, coated evenly, and dropped onto saran wrap since he had no parchment paper. There was some more chocolate so I went back over and drizzled the extra, as if it didn't have enough on it before.

These went from old, store-bought, car wrecked cupcakes to a perfectly delicious dessert. You're welcome boyfriend :)

Go save some cupcakes... 

S'mores Cupcake Bites

I've been meaning to try a new cupcake bite recipe for several weeks. I ask the opinion of many on a daily basis whether or not they think some flavors would work well together. In my online galavanting and recipe searching, I knew exactly what I wanted to make. S'mores. S'mores cupcakes looked delicious, but I then thought of how amazing S'mores Cupcake Bites would be. Already being covered in chocolate takes care of that aspect, so only two flavors left, graham crack, which was used as the batter and for garnish, and of course a marshmallow frosting. It seemed like the BEST idea ever. I found a fantastic graham cracker cake recipe and made some slight adjustments to a marshmallow frosting recipe to get the perfect ratio of graham to mallow. If you haven't already made cupcake bites or cake pops, I suggest referring to Bakerella's website where she gives step by step directions including a video from Martha Stewart. This is by no means a step-by-step recipe, but more a basis for experimenting if you're already familiar with the sweet treats. And away we go:

Graham Cracker Cake (Nabisco)
1 ½ cups of graham cracker crumbs
½ cup of flour
2 ½ teaspoons of baking powder
½ cup of butter, softened
¾ cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla
¾ cup of milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl combine the crumbs, flour and baking powder. In a separate bowl beat the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla.
Alternately add flour mixture with milk, beating well after each addition. Pour batter into a greased 9x9 cake pan or equivalent.
Bake for about 20 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean from the center. Use this cake to crumble for the base of the cake pops

And for the frosting:
Marshmallow Frosting (adapted from Rachael Ray)
1 cup (2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup confectioners sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
One jar (7.5 oz) Marshmallow fluff

Beat the butter on medium-high until pale and fluffy. Mix 1/4 cup sugar and beat well. Incorporate the rest of the sugar in two batches to the butter. Add the vanilla and beat. Use a rubber spatula to fold in the marshmallow fluff until the frosting is uniform. Start with using HALF of the frosting to incorporate into the cake crumble. Slowly add more until desired consistency is reached. There will be leftover frosting! (Perfect excuse to make more cupcakes)

So now this mixture can be used to transform into cake balls, cake pops, cupcake bites, or whatever else you can think of that's covered in chocolate. My favorite is the cupcake bite (equipment used can be found in a previous post). Since I wanted to maintain the milk chocolate frosting, but wanted to do a little more than just cake balls, I melted white chocolate and "painted" the inside of the chocolate molds with a pastry brush. I let them sit for a few minutes before filling each bottom with chocolate and placing one graham/marshmallow ball in the center. After, they were placed in the freezer, dipped in milk chocolate and garnished with graham cracker crumbs. If you're feeling daring, these are a must-try. I personally love s'mores and they were a huge hit.

Enjoy :)

Cupcake Bite Update!

As I said in my post yesterday, I set aside the extra rose colored mini cupcakes and frosting. Today I mixed them together with some crushed M&Ms and formed them into balls in order to make cupcake bites. I used the same peanut butter cup mold as I used a couple of weeks ago for the base, then dipped them in white chocolate for the top. I call these "Very Vanilla" Cupcake bites


Take a look!

Photo by Emi Niesi :)

You can sorta see some of the pink M&M's I put in. Either way, they are delicious. Perfect for the vanilla lover! I used some "Springtime Sprinkles" that my mom sent me for easter. 

Starbucks just started selling these guys too, they are definitely spreading! 

I love Emi's pictures!

Enjoy :)

Cupcake Bites

This must be one of my all-time favorite "discoveries" in terms of creative baking. I found a recipe for cupcake pops originally on Martha Stuart's website. I immediately had to make them. My first batch was for Christmas, decorated with white chocolate and red and green sprinkles. My most recent batch, which I made for my roommate Emi's birthday has been my best yet. Using Martha's recipe for Devil's food cake and chocolate frosting, it was a perfect combination. I halved the recipe and it still yields about 50 cupcake bites. If you love chocolate, this is the recipe for you. This recipe can also be made MUCH easier by using a box of any flavor cake mix and store-bought frosting!

Photo by Emi Niesi

Martha Stuart's Devil's Food Cake:
3/8 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/8 cup hot water
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp coarse salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 1/8 cup sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 tbsp plus 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream, room temperature


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9"x13" pan. Whisk together hot water and cocoa until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.


Melt butter with sugar in a saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring to combine. Remove from heat and pour into a mixing bowl. With an electric mixer on medium-low speed, beat until the mixture is cooled, approx. 4-5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time. Add vanilla, then cocoa mixture and beat until combined. Reduce speed to low and add the flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the sour cream. Beat until just combined.


Pour the mixture into the 9"x13" pan. Unfortunately my oven at school is absolutely terrible and bakes everything in about half the time, try starting with 20 minutes. Bake until a tooth pick comes out clean.


Once the cake is cooled, you're ready to start the fun part! (Or at least what I consider the fun part, decorating!)


Things you'll need to finish the cupcake bites:
14-16oz of frosting (store bought or homemade)
1 bag Milk or dark chocolates
1 bag other color (here: lavender colored white chocolates)
A mold such as these
Decorating items (Shaved chocolate, sprinkles, M&M's...)


Line a baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside. Trim about 1/2 inch from the perimeter of the cake. Working in batches, crumble cake into the bowl of a food processor; process until fine crumbs form. Transfer to a large bowl and add frosting. For my frosting, I did half vanilla half chocolate. Using store bought frosting like Duncan Hines works perfect (I used just about 6-7oz. of each) Blend together using the back of a spoon or fork until well combined, 5 to 10 minutes.

Roll mixture into balls slightly smaller in diameter than these molds; transfer to prepared baking sheet. Cover with parchment-paper-lined aluminum foil or plastic wrap. Transfer to refrigerator until chilled, about 2 hours or to a freezer for about 10 minutes.

Rolled into balls

To see Martha's version, visit here!


For the ones you see above (much simpler, I must say):
After melting milk or dark chocolates, fill each mold about 3/4 full. Place one ball in the center and push slightly so the chocolate rises to the top of the mold. Place the mold in the freezer for about 5 minutes, they are ready when they easily pop out of the mold. While cooling, melt your other chocolate. Hold the cupcake bite by the base and dip into the other chocolate, decorate, and repeat! If you're using chocolate shavings, wait about a minute to garnish, otherwise they will melt with the warm chocolate! Place right side up on a baking sheet and place back in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve.


I suggest referring to other websites full of cupcake pop tips if you've never made them before. I'm new to this blog-thing and some steps may not seem as clear


Enjoy :)