Its Independence Day!!!!

Happy 4th Folks!!!!

Hoping you and your family are celebrating this day of American independence and are having a GREAT time!!

In our house we have more than one reason to celebrate today...

It is J's BIRTHDAY!!! woohoo!!

I LOVE holidays- and i love decorating and cooking with Holiday themes.... now though we are proud of our American heritage and love to celebrate as much as the next guy... J refuses to let me decorate his birthday in all Red, White and Blue...

I can understand- he wants his birthday to be special for him :) Thats fine by me.
Well this year came around and money is a bit tight so i didnt get to really plan ahead as to what to do.

I have nothing to make a cake, I have no gift...what do i do?!!
 Well the Princess and I woke up this morning and made home made birthday cards... then i dug through the pantry to see what i could possibly throw together :)..

I had 1 box (partially used for truffles) of Dark Chocolate cake mix. So i decide to make 3 chocolate coke cupcakes (cake mix + can of coke) ...i didnt use a whole can because well i didnt have a full mix..i just mixed it until i felt it looked like the right consistency....

Then i needed frosting.. so i looked up and easy recipe using peanut butter, powdered sugar, milk and vanilla.... i measure out the peanut butter and go to dig again to find...oops! I have no powdered sugar.... TIME TO IMPROVISE!!! I used about a cup of peanut butter (crunchy is all we had), a 1/4 cup of plain white sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla and just poured in milk and mixed until i felt it was a nice consistency...It actually tastes pretty good!!..

And i actually found a lone candle stuck in the back of our "junk" drawer :) I am SO excited that i was actually able to throw this together and i can give him cake for his birthday!!

Here's some pics for ya'll!

 heres the frosting..its not the prettiest thing but it tastes pretty good :)

cakes in the oven on 350 for 15 minutes.....

and VOILA! here they are!!...

I will update later to let ya'll know how they taste all together!

**ETA** these tasted awesome!! the cupcakes themselves were super moist and the frosting was pretty great :) I will definitely have ingredients on hand for some buttercream next time though.

Thanks for stopping by~