The Ruly Blog

Another 6 inches of snow fell last night! We still cannot find a snow shovel anywhere to replace our broken one. Necessity being the mother of invention, we repurposed a large push broom as our snow clearing device, sweeping away the snowflakes as they came down last night. It was quite fun, actually. You have to stay on top of the accumulation to make this strategy work. There we were out in the dark brooming the driveway. At the beginning of the storm, the flakes were falling so quickly, by the time we got to the end of the driveway it was time to broom the top again. We worried that if another 17 inches fell we would not be able to keep up the effort. Fortunately, the snow started to taper.

We ventured out yesterday before the storm to have a good Thai lunch and go to the grocery store. I had to laugh when we went down the baking aisle and found the brownie mixes decimated! Apparently chocolate is fueling the Fredericksburg storm recovery.

The brownie mix shelf at our local grocery store before another blizzard.

My four year old was helping with the “essential” grocery shopping and grabbed (in order): a bottle of sprinkles, a box of devils food cake mix and two bags of chocolate chips! She has been a good sport during the storm so I gave in to her impulses and added a bag of marshmallows. We went home to make “cakes.”

This was an impromptu project and is intended to be more of a children’s cooking experiment than a gourmet recipe but it turned out kind of cute so I thought I would share as a bonus post today.

2010 BLIZZARD CUPCAKES

Ingredients:

1 Devil’s Food cake mix (or flavor of your choice)
Eggs, oil and water (or whatever the package directs)
chocolate chips
marshmallows
sprinkles
paper cupcake liners

Directions:

1. Prepare cake mix according to package directions.
2. Line cupcake trays with paper baking cups (or if you forgot to buy them, like we did, grease and flour the pans). Pour mix into cupcake trays.
3. Bake according to package guidelines.
4. When done, take cupcakes out, put a few chocolate chips on top and return cupcakes to the oven for about 2 minutes to melt the chocolate.
5. Spread the chocolate “frosting” and add marshmallows. (The marshmallows have a hard time staying put.) Put the cupcakes back in the oven for another two minutes to melt the marshmallows just a bit and make them stick.
6. Add sprinkles and enjoy!