Purely Simple Football-Inspired Sweets

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Every Fall, when football season rolls around, our family starts up their fantasy league, selecting teams and partnering up with another family member. This year, my nephew and I are kicking butt and taking names (if I do say so myself!) He’s also in a football league and loves that as well, so football is pretty big around here! In honor of his Fall birthday, I thought I would bake up some great football treats and sweets to enjoy at his family party this weekend.

To make these adorable treats, you need just a few ingredients. Start with Pillsbury Purely Simple chocolate cake mix. (In our family, there is no other flavor besides chocolate). Why Purely Simple? Because these Purely Simple mixes contain no colors, preservatives, or artificial flavors which means I can achieve that homemade taste without spending all day in the kitchen.

For your cupcakes, you’ll need 1 stick of softened butter, 1 cup of milk, three eggs and your Pillsbury Purely Simple mix of your choice. This cake is SO ridiculously moist at the end – YUM! Once mixed, you can dish them out into your cupcake tin. I opted for green liners since I was going to for a football “turf” type feel.

Another quick hint – if you’d like your cupcakes to be “flatter” to seem more like the ground as opposed to big and mushroom like, fill your tins about 2/3 of the way full. They will bake up nicely that way. Want them bigger? Add a bit more and watch them grow! Yields about 2 dozen cupcakes.

Once finished, your cupcakes will be ready for frosting. For the frosting here, I used plain Vanilla frosting from Pillsbury and added about 4 drops of food coloring to the entire jar of frosting to tint it a pale green. I used my cupcake decorator to make long thing lines like freshly cut grass.

I then topped with green sprinkles to finish the grass effect.

Now that the cupcakes are ready to be frosted, time for the garnishes! I jumped over to the Pillsbury Purely Simple Chocolate Chunk Brownie mix to make our footballs and brownie pops. Start with your mix, 1/3 cup of oil, 3 tbsp. water, and 1 egg.

The chocolate chunks create a depth of flavor that is SO delicious! Plus, they make for the perfect pockets of flavor in your brownie pops. Once finished, crumble the entire pan and mix with 1 8oz. package of softened cream cheese. The result will be a malleable dough that you can scoop into small balls. Once I formed them, I popped into the freezer to harden slightly. When finished, I molded them into footballs and used sticks to create brownie pops. I also formed a few smaller ones for the cupcakes.

I then coated each brownie pop in melted dark chocolate and refrigerated until hardened.

While those were setting, I moved over to my field goal posts (see above). I snapped stick pretzels in half and melted white chocolate as a base for the field goal posts. I then placed the half-pretzels into the shape I desired, let it harden in the freezer and removed for addition to my cupcakes.

Back to the brownie pops! I used the remaining white chocolate from the posts to add lines to the brownie pops creating footballs. Ready to share these sweet treats!

Using the little footballs I created (I did NOT cover these in chocolate since they were SO tiny and already delicious!) and hardened field goal posts, I put them on top of my green grass cupcakes as garnish.

TOUCHDOWN!

Ready to kick-off and make some of these treats yourself? Head to Kroger and find everything you need, including Pillsbury Purely Simple baking mixes.

What Purely Simple sweet treat will you whip up?