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The holidays are coming and I am excited for all the baking ahead. When I was growing up I was surrounded by all sorts of baking: cookies, cakes and more. I would spend time at my grandmother’s homes and get to try some of the best desserts. The holidays were great times for desserts. Now, I get to make fun and delicious desserts for my family. We love making cookies and cakes and cupcakes. I always loved sugar cookies with frosting on them. My sister still makes them every Christmas. I’ve also done many cookie exchanges with friends and family and the ones I make a usually a pretty big hit.

This time around I was tasked with creating a fun recipe around some M&M’s® Hot Chocolate and Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Holiday Cake Mix. So, my idea was to take those ingredients and also add in another Pillsbury™ Baking cake mix to make some M&M’s® Hot Chocolate Cupcakes. The idea was to swirl the Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Holiday Cake Mix and some Pillsbury™ Dark Chocolate Cake Mix to make the cupcakes look like a swirled cup of Hot Chocolate. I also added the M&M’s® Hot Chocolate candies to the Dark chocolate cake mix and also on top of the frosted cupcake to look like a cup of hot chocolate. I also picked up a gallon of Great Value Milk to wash everything down and some M&M’s® Holiday Milk Chocolate and M&M’s® Holiday Peanut bags so that I could enjoy those later. I also happen to have a link to a coupon where you can Save $1.00 on ANY TWO (2) M&M’s® Chocolate Candies, 8 oz or larger. They are my favorite candy.

I went to Walmart to pick up the ingredients. The M&M’s® were easily found in an aisle dedicated to the Holidays. There was so much already out. I was excited to find the M&M’s® Hot Chocolate because I had never tried them and they seemed like they would be a flavor I could get behind. They are dark chocolate that tastes like a mug of hot chocolate. I also found the Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Holiday Cake Mix on a middle of the aisle display along with many Pillsbury™ Baking Frosting choices. I picked up some white vanilla because my first thought was to have the cupcake flavors look like hot chocolate and use the frosting to look like a dollop of whipped cream. But, when I opened the M&M’s® Hot Chocolate my thoughts changed to make sort of a mosaic of M&M’s® Hot Chocolate to look like the mug of hot chocolate.

The Recipe is pretty easy. It would be even easier if you were mixing everything together in a KitchenAid® Mixer that you could win through the MARS Holiday #BakeintheFun sweepstakes (entry form below, there are 8 mixers being given away)

1. Mix up both boxes of Pillsbury™ Baking cake mixes. Keep the Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Holiday Cake Mix separate from the other mix chosen. You will combine later.

2. You are going to add the M&M’s® Hot Chocolate to the dark chocolate cake mix. I think that if I do this again I add the M&M’s® Hot Chocolate right after I pour the batter into the cupcake tin, that way they do not settle to the bottom.

3. After you throughly spray the cupcake tins down with non-stick spray you add the cake mix. First, pour in a layer of the dark chocolate cake mix and then pour on a layer of Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Holiday Cake Mix. The green and red Funfetti® pieces give the whole mixture a festive look.

4. Once the cake mixes are layer onto each other you use a toothpick and swirl them together gently. You want a good separation between the mixes but you also want a nice swirl to look like hot chocolate swirled with either melted marshmallows or whipped cream.

5. Once the cupcakes are baked, taken out of the oven and cooled it is time to assemble the dessert. I used a couple different cupcake pans some the traditional round and also a square one. I overfilled the square ones so that they would have a big cake top. The round ones were used for filling the coffee mug and supporting the square cupcakes.

6. Take a small round cupcake and frost the top. Place this into the bottom of the mug.

7. Add a few of the M&M’s® Hot Chocolate on top of the initial round cupcake.

8. Next, Add the second cupcake. A larger fuller one with a big top to completely fill the top of the mug.

9. Then when you are done adding all the cupcakes you frost the top cupcake and then layer on the M&M’s® Hot Chocolate in a mosaic pattern to look like a mug of hot chocolate. The three colors in the bag of M&M’s® Hot Chocolate are brown, tan and white. So you can make it look like the hot chocolate, melted marshmallows or whipped cream and whipped cream.

If you think that my recipe was something you should check out some M&M’S® HOLIDAY SNOWFLAKE COOKIES that were made with Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Holiday Cake Mix and M&M’s® Holiday Peanut Butter. Those look delicious and would be great with a tall glass of milk to go with them. Did you know that milk is in high demand at local food banks? It is one of the least donated items because it is perishable. However, milk is full of essential nutrients for children and families.

Feeding America and The Great American Milk Drive will deliver a gallon of milk to a family in YOU local community for a small donation to pourmilklove.com. You can also hep donate by purchasing 2 bags of M&M’s® at Walmart (9.4 oz bags or larger) and up to a gallon of milk will be donated to the drive. I posted the coupon link up above. So you can buy those M&M’s® at Walmart, get a discount on them and help families in need. Look, milk is not just the very best thing to wash down desserts, milk is naturally-nutrient-rich. It has 9 essential nutrients, including 8 grams of high-quality protein per serving and is the top food source of three of the nutrients most likely to be missing in the American diet – calcium, vitamin D and potassium. We can do something to help those in need this holiday season and every day. Log onto milklife.com/give to learn about the need for more nutritious foods in America’s food banks and how your small donation can make a big impact.

How about you take a look at some more Holiday Recipes and think about what you might want to make in a brand new KitchenAid® Mixer! You can enter to win one in the MARS Holiday #BakeintheFun sweepstakes. Enter below.

Holiday #BakeInTheFun

So, what will you bake this holiday season. Please leave me a comment linking to your favorite recipe and maybe I’ll try to make it!