Summer Fun Beach Cupcakes

For Julia's End of the Year celebration we went with a beach theme.  Instead of making similar individual cupcakes, we decided to turn our four rows of cupcakes into a beach scene.  I started by icing one row with standard white vanilla icing covered with crushed graham cracker sand.  I then tinted a tablespoon or so yellow for our sun and the remaining icing two different shades of blue... one blue for the ocean and one blue for the sky.

Julia then went to town, adding candy corn for the sun's rays, red striped peppermint puff candy for beach balls, Fruit by the Foot beach towels,

gummi peach O's for life preservers, and Teddy Grahams to frolic in the sun and surf!

Nutter Butter Balls

After figuring out how easy it is to make no bake truffles or balls from crushed cookies and cream cheese, like these Mint Cookie Truffles, or this recipe from Bakerella.com, we just had to try making Nutter Butter Balls.

Just as easy... and still sinfully delicious...

Just one package of pulverized Nutter Butter cookies mixed with one 8 oz. package of cream cheese.  

Just throw them in a food processor or one Julia wielding a meat tenderizer works, too.

A drizzle of melted chocolate.... and peanut butter heaven!