Chicken Parmesan Bundles

This was such a good meal but my camera was set wrong and the main item is blurry but everything around it was focused. I did not catch it until we ate all of the food. I think the blurry picture still gives you the idea of how yummy this was!

It was so simple to make. I used to be intimated by the pictures of stuffed chicken but once I started to try more recipes I found how simple it is and can't believe I can actually make it look good and taste good.

The flavor of this chicken was incredible! The kids are not really crazy for chicken Parmesan but rolling up the chicken with cheeses and spinach did the trick. I would not have thought about using cream cheese but it made the spinach and mozzarella mixture extra creamy. They ate it up! I served it on a bed of spaghetti with a salad and garlic bread.

I got this recipe out of the Kraft Food and Family cookbook. Click here for recipe. They also have a video on making the bundles and a couple of pictures that people uploaded. If my picture was clear I would have uploaded it. I think it is better than the uploaded pictures. Oh well, next time!

This was a pretty quick meal to prep and cook. It took about an hour.

Enjoy!

Buckeye Cupcakes

If you need a really quick way to make a cupcake for a football tailgate, these are the ones. They are not a typical cupcake with just frosting on top. They have a surprise in the middle! We are from Columbus Ohio, so you can see how these are appropriate for football season.

We really enjoyed these cupcakes. They are rich with all of the peanut butter and fudge. I used ice cream fudge topping around the peanut butter ball but I think the next time I will use a ganache or a fudge frosting because it will hold up better inside the cake. The ice cream topping just soaked into the cake....which was not bad either.

Ingredients:
Chocolate cake mix
1 cup of peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Fudge ice cream topping or fudge frosting
Canned chocolate frosting
2 Tbsp peanut butter


Make the cupcakes according to package. Take a small knife and cut a plug out of the top of each cupcake.

Mix 1 cup peanut butter, 1/4 butter and 1 1/2 cups of powder sugar until you get a crumbly mixture. Form into a 1 1/4 inch ball (like the size of a small walnut or a buckeye). Insert a ball into each cupcake. The balls may be larger than the hole you cut, the cake gives as you shove the ball into the center.

If I were going to make a change, here is where I would make it.

To help make these feel more like a buckeye, I added hot fudge on top of the peanut butter ball. In retrospect, I think ganache or fudge frosting would have been better but I was going for quick and easy preparation. Place the plug back on top of the cupcake.

I used 1 1/2 containers of already prepared chocolate fudge frosting to save time. I mixed in about 2 Tbsp of peanut butter. I filled a decorating bag and used a 1M tip to swirl on the icing.

We added colorful jimmies to the top of one for decor and that did not work. It looked a little silly and since we were going after the buckeye feel, we used the crumbly left-over peanut butter filling as a perfect topping.

We cut one open to make sure we did not skimp on the peanut butter filling. I think we did a good job. The amount ended up being perfect and the cupcakes were delicious.

Enjoy!