Portfolio: Yellow Baby Shower Cake and Carriage Cookies

Another weekend, another baby shower!

Babies are so exciting...and even more so when you don't know what you're having!  My friend Kristen is throwing a shower for her little sister who is having a baby soon.  Megan has opted to leave it a surprise, and to celebrate, her friends were throwing her a delightfully elegant and girly shower.   Kristen asked me to make carriage cookies again, but this time, we chose yellow since it's ambiguous.  I also did a cake for the shower, vanilla with strawberry filling, and I got a little adventurous with it this time.

Kristen wanted to know if I could try and match the shower invite, which was a really cute sort of henna/mendhi/floral design in pink, yellow, and gray.  Since baby's gender is a question mark, I chose yellow as the overall theme and accented with gray and pink icing.  Does anyone else her that scene from Steel Magnolias play in their head when they hear the words "gray icing"?  No?  Ah, well, I digress.

The cake gave me lots of trouble (probably because I didn't sleep well and the house was hot, etc), but I think it came out beautifully.  It totally made my day when my husband and my daughter walked in and both of them immediately said, almost in stereo, how much they liked the design I'd chosen.  Kristen loved it too, and I think it was fancy enough without being over the top and not too overtly pink...just in case Megan ends up with a boy!

I love the technique I used on the side and plan on doing it some more.  I have to admit, I didn't ever think I would love using buttercream so much, but it really is so much easier to work with, even if it does create lots of dishes!

Happy baking,
Kelly

Portfolio: Carriage and Onesie Cookies

Everywhere I go, I hear of yet another mama that's expecting or just delivered.  It's that time of year!

My buddy Kristen asked me to whip up some cookies for a baby shower and specifically requested baby carriages and onesies.  The mama to be is having a little man, so we did everything up in a blue and white and brown theme.  They came out so cute that I'm doing carriages again soon!

Congrats Mama to be...may you have an easy labor and a healthy baby boy!

Happy baking,
Kelly

Portfolio: Nest Cupcakes and Bird Cookies

Ah, spring.  Time for flowers, birds, and babies!

A friend of mine is having her first baby in the next couple weeks and we threw her a shower this weekend.  Because I had other things going on, I wasn't able to make the cake for the shower, but I did promise to do some cookies for the favors.  I ended up with extra cupcakes from the car party, so I did a quick decorating job on those and they looked super cute with everything else.

The "nests" were easy to do; just swirl and dollop using a large star tip on the top, then set your eggs in the middle and voila!  Bird's nest cupcakes!

Originally, the theme was a Parisian spring baby shower, based on the baby bedding.  But we found out later that mama to be had changed the fabric on her baby bedding!  It actually worked out, because my design for little Eiffel tower cookies was a total bust.  I didn't have a cutter and so I thought I'd use a Christmas tree cutter and then pipe small Eiffel towers on them.  Good idea in theory, terrible idea in execution.  The cookies were too short to get a decent looking Eiffel tower on them, sadly.  But they were just perfect for birdies!

All wrapped up and ready to go!

My artsy fartsy cookie photo

I love these little birds.  It's a good thing there were so few cookies left after the party, because otherwise, I'd have eaten them all they were so dang cute!  I tried a new recipe for the royal icing too, which was a bit of an adventure, but I have to say, I'm sold on it.  I still use my trademark lemon juice in the frosting, but the consistency is much nicer.  I may try adding some corn syrup or something else in the future to get a glossier finish.

Since I wasn't able to commit to the cake, one of the cohost's had her stepdaughter do the cake.  It turned out really cute, and apparently is a very popular design this season–I immediately recognized it as the same design for another cake I'm doing at the end of this month!

The cupcakes were super easy to decorate and are perfect for Easter!  I whipped up a milk chocolate ganache and piped it on top of the cupcakes to look like nests, then nestled Robin's Eggs candies into the centers.  Super tasty and cute!

Congrats on the new baby Amy...we can't wait to meet her!

Happy baking,
Kelly

Portfolio: Car Cookies and Cupcakes

It was bumper to bumper traffic in my kitchen this weekend!

A gal I went to high school with asked me to do some car themed cupcakes and cookies for her son's 3rd birthday party.  We kept things simple with chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with blue and orange swirled icing on them.  For favors, I decorated car cookies to match.  Everything came out bright and beautiful and fun!

Happy birthday, Caden!  May you have many more to come!

Happy baking,
Kelly

Third Place!

Hi everyone!  I think these pictures sum it all up:

One proud mama!

Third place, baby!  Woot!

Once I've uploaded photos and organized them, I'll be sure to post a recap.  You can also check out the contest website for more info.  They should be posting pix soon!

Happy baking,
Kelly

That Takes the Cake 2011!

It's that time of year again!  The Capital Confectioner's Club is hosting the 7th Annual That Takes the Cake Contest!  My friend Brianna over at Sugar Plum Pastries and I have decided to compete again.  Brianna took home 1st place in Adult Beginner's Buttercream last year and she's entering the same category again this year, but as an intermediate.  I've been on a cookie kick lately, so I entered the Confections category for Adult Intermediate.  Wish me luck!

I added the flower cookie as a last minute addition.  I thought it might be nice to break up the monotony of the skulls a bit.

Here's a preview of what I'm entering.  I wanted to do something really colorful and a bit complicated. It's kinda funny how I finally decided on my design.  I spent hours Googling random things and getting ideas from my husband.  I thought a deck of cards or some Dia de los Muertos skulls would be cool, but then my friend Becky posted a picture of her wedding hairpiece, which had peacock feathers.  I really liked the colors on a peacock feather and chose to do that.  But I started having second thoughts about it.  Then, I was flipping through SugarBelle's Flickr stream the other weekend and I stumbled across some Dia de los Muertos cookies she'd made!  Considering they were part of my original idea, I decide to chalk it up to the Big Man Upstairs as divine intervention and ran with it.

The one on the left is my favorite.  I was really happy with how he came out!

I have to say, I am so thrilled with these guys.  I really took my time in picking colors and trying to get everything just so.  There were a few little kinks, but it adds character.  I'm really hoping to at least get some good feedback, even if I don't win.  But winning would be nice :o)

I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and post a recap of the show at the end of the weekend.

Happy Baking,
Kelly

Happy 3rd Birthday Billa!

My daughter celebrated her third birthday on Monday.  Cue the sniffling and crying...she's getting to be so big!

Sybilla enjoying one of her fave foods, "cheese pops" while watching Busytown on Netflix.  They're actually Cheetos Brand Natural White Cheddar Puffs (those things are like crack...super addictive!)

We've decided to hold her birthday party about two weeks later than her birthday, but we wanted her friends at school to celebrate anyway.  I whipped up some cookies for goodie bags and some homemade green and blue oreos for the kiddos to munch on after lunch for a mini party.

Here are the cookies I made for the goodie bags.  The kids love these things so much!

The goodie bag cookies were simply sugar cookies that I decorated in Scooby colors: aquamarine, lime green, and orange.  I had thought about getting crazy and making some Mystery Machines or trying to recreate Scooby's head, but I ended up not doing it.  To be honest, it was way too much work for a small of three and two year olds.  I think the shapes I chose ended up being much more kid-friendly.

These were the cookies I made for the kids to eat at the mini party. The flower one I made special for Sybilla.  I dyed them to coordinate with the goodie bags and the Scooby color theme!

I fell in love with a recipe for homemade oreos at my friend Anna's cookie party that uses cake mix, oil and eggs.  It's super easy and pretty darn tasty too!  The original recipe is here at The Sister's Cafe, where Anna snagged it, but instead of using the devil's food cake recipe, I used white cake mix and then dyed the batter in different colors.  It was easy and as you can see above, it made quite the impact!  Did I mention that it was easy? [wink]

The dots were really a test to see how the doughs would bake together.  They actually looked kinda cute!

Like, what is it Scoob!?  Tie dye and flowers, oh my!

The pictures above show you the different things you can do with the batter.  It's pretty thick once it's all mixed up, which made me think that I could maybe roll it out like cookie dough.  Yeah, not so much.  It's a little too oily for my taste when rolling (probably because it was white cake mix instead of chocolate...I bet the cocoa powder has something to do with it) and it stuck like crazy to the counter.  It also didn't hold the shape very well when I tried to peel it up off my floured surface.  Grrr.  Either way, the cookies came out alright in the end and there were none left when I picked up Billa from school.

Homemade Oreos

1 package cake mix, white or devil's food
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil (reduce this amount just slightly for white cake mix)

food coloring as needed

1. Heat oven to 300-350F degrees and line baking sheets with parchment.
2. Add oil, eggs and coloring (if using) to cake mix and blend together. 
3. Roll dough into balls (a little larger than a quarter). Place on greased cookie sheet and press down gently. 
4. Bake for 8 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on sheet for a few minutes before moving them to a cooling rack. 
5. To assemble the cookies, add a small dollop of filling into the center of one cookie.  Place another cookie similar in size on top of the filling.  Lightly press them together, working the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream.

Cream Cheese Filling
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 block of cream cheese (8 oz)
3 - 4 cups powdered sugar (depending on desired consistency)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream butter and add cream cheese and mix well. Add powdered sugar slowly until you reach your desired consistency.

Some food for thought...

• If you use a white cake mix and color it, use a bit more color than you think you might need.  As the cookies baked, the colors seemed to fade a bit.  Boo :o(
• I didn't realize this until it was too late, but you need to watch these like hawks to prevent too much browning on the edges.  The sugar in the batter caramelizes as it cooks, giving the brown color.  I think the best way to combat this is to bake them low and slow: cook at 300F for about 12 minutes and go from there.  I baked mine at 325 for 10 minutes and I think that was too much.
• Chilling the dough will work wonders if you're going to attempt shapes like the flower.  Try to handle it as little as possible too, so that it doesn't 'melt' in your hands.
• If you wanted to jazz these puppies up even more, try adding sprinkles!  You can also (gently) swirl the doughs together to create tie dye, or place small balls together like the flower to create other shapes.  The possibilities are endless!
• A recipe note: in order to make sure that the batters were evenly divided, I measured the bag of mix before splitting it, then split the eggs and oil down the middle.  You could just mix the entire batch together and then separate and color, but due to the thickness of the dough, that may actually be harder.

I hope this gives you some ideas for your own homemade Oreo versions!  And of course, a big happy birthday to my little munchkin...I love you, Sugary!

Happy Baking,
Kelly

Cookie Tip: Making Your Own Shapes

Remember these little guys from Valentine's Day?  I've been getting questions from some of my friends asking me where I'd gotten the cute little cutter. 

[smug smile]  Sadly, I don't have a cute little cutter, although if I did, you can betcher buns I'd be making a mint off of it!  So how DID I get the little lovebirds to come out so cute?

Sweet Valentine's Day!

Nothing says I love you like a baked representation of someone’s sweetness! While I personally loathe Valentine’s Day as a bunch of commercialized crock, I take full advantage of it as yet another excuse to blow up my kitchen and my kidneys with an excess of sugary love. This year was no exception.

Billa is obsessed with Scooby Doo and I found cute Scooby valentine cards and pencils. I’m saving the pencils for goodie bags for her birthday party (which will be Scooby Doo themed, natch), but the cards were perfect to slip on a cookie pop!   I mixed up some turquoise and apple green icing to coordinate the cookie pops (because I’m a freak like that) and they came out super cute. I had grand plans for these, but I saved myself a whole lotta trouble at the last minute when I remembered that they were for toddlers. No point in gilding the lily for an unappreciative crowd! I added little pink hearts on them to girly them up just a tad, which unfortunately ended up looking more like blobs, but whatever. The kids liked them and that’s all that matters!

The remaining icing and cookie dough became Valentine themed sugar cookies for an impromptu dinner party we had Sunday night with my little brother and his girlfriend. I’ve wanted to try new designs and I am in love with these little lovebirds. They were so easy to create too. I may have to use these for my sister-in-law’s wedding shower later this year…they’re so adorable! And I really like the color scheme of the turquoise, apple green, and pink for Valentine’s day; it reminds me of the current Valentine’s products at Target this year which are super adorable.

Lastly, I sugared up my coworkers with some homemade Valentine-themed Hostess cupcakes that I saw over at Bake at 350. I LOVE Hostess cupcakes, even though they’re probably one of the worst things a human being can consume. These are waaaaaay better than their inspiring counterpart. I was lazy and did the cupcakes from a mix (hey, I was supermom the past week and took care of a sick little girl and her daddy, not to mention fought off the plague myself, so I think I’m allowed some leeway once in awhile!) and I have to say, it’s entirely unfair that the box mix created such perfectly domed cupcakes.; The yummy filling and frosting recipe is from scratch, and I used leftover royal icing to create the swirls on top with the word ‘love.’

They were incredibly delicious and my coworkers loved them. If the word is short enough, these could be used for lots of different events. And imagine changing the color of the cake and frosting! I may bake these again next year but with red velvet cake, cream cheese frosting, and red lettering. Shoot, I might even do these for my daughter’s birthday party too. Recipe for the filling and ganache are below or you can follow the link for the original cake recipe and blog entry from Bake at 350.


Instructions for constructing the Hostess cupcakes:

1. Bake chocolate cupcake according to package directions.
2. Use a piping bag fitted with a filler tip (or wide tip) and insert it into each cupcake, squeezing gently until filling is just beginning to ooze out.
3. Let sit in the fridge for a few minutes, while you mix up the ganache.
4. Once the ganache has cooled a bit, gently dip each filled cupcake into the chocolate and set aside to set up.
5. Put your choice of icing into another piping bag and pipe the trademark swirls and word of your choice across the top.

For the Filling
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons heavy cream
1 cup marshmallow creme

Using a mixer, cream the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar. Add the vanilla and 1 tablespoon heavy cream; beat until smooth. Beat in the remaining 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar and 2 tablespoons heavy cream in batches, alternating after each addition. Beat in the marshmallow creme; set aside or refrigerate.
For the Ganache
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract


Place the chocolate in a stainless-steel bowl. Heat the cream and 1 tablespoon butter until just boiling, then pour over the chocolate; let stand for 5 minutes. Whisk until smooth. Add 2 teaspoons vanilla; let stand until cool but still glossy and liquid.



I hope you all had a lovely Valentine’s Day with your loved ones, and that this post inspires you to be a ‘sweet’heart to all you meet!

Happy Valentine’s Day!
Kelly

Music Note Cookies

I got an order from my friend Kristen for a super cute music themed birthday.  The birthday boy was turning one and his family decided to celebrate it with music!  I love this theme, it's so cute.  Kristen had me make quarter note shaped cookies in orange and blue icing for the favors and they came out beautifully.  They also tasted quite yummy, as my husband and daughter, er I mean, quality assurance testers informed me.

Being a music minor (ok six hours short anyway, but I know my stuff!), I couldn't resist doing this little number.  Tee hee!

Happy birthday to the special little boy...your birthday is certainly something to sing about!

Cheers,
Kelly

Recipe: Homemade Oreos from Scratch

If there's anything you've learned about me by now, let it be this: I LOVE COOKIES.  So does Billa.  I love that hand-held portion of sweet, sweet goodness right in the palm of your hand.  Cupcakes come close, but there's the wrapper and other accoutrements one must deal with.  Cookies are infinitely better.  No mess, no fuss.  Just simple sweetness wrapped up in a couple of bites.  Heaven!

Ever since Billa and I went to the cookie party a couple of weekends ago, I've been obsessed with the homemade Oreo cookies the hostess made.  They were soft, like whoopie pies, but they tasted just like the real deal.  I was in LOVE at first bite.  She promised to post the recipe on her blog, but I'm not very good at being patient, so I went scouring for one on my own while I waited.  Y'all, I need to be more careful about adventures like that...I was afraid my keyboard might short out from all the drool!  I found the following recipe on Smitten Kitchen, which apparently came from the book Retro Desserts by Wayne Brachman. 

If I'm being perfectly honest, this recipe was not what I expected.  The cookies are crunchy, not soft, so I ended up being a little disappointed.  But they were still tasty, so it's only fair to share the recipe anyway.  If you ever wanted to make homemade Oreo cookies, crunch and all, this recipe is the way to go!

Homemade Oreo Cookies
For the chocolate wafers:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (156g)
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa (48g)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar (188g)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks or 142g) room-temperature, unsalted butter
1 large egg

For the filling:
1/4 cup (1/2 stick or 58g) room-temperature, unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable shortening (58g)
2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar (250g)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1.  Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375F.

2.  In a food processor, or bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While pulsing, or on low speed, add the butter, and then the egg. Continue processing or mixing until dough comes together in a mass.  You may need to get your hands in the mix and knead it all together.  It will be a very stiff dough.

3.  With your hands, roll the dough into small balls and place on a baking sheet, about two to three inches apart. Using slightly moistened fingers, flatten the dough a little bit.  Bake for 8-9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Place on a rack to cool.

4.  To make the cream, place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla. Turn the mixer on high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.

5.  To assemble the cookies, in a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch, round tip, pipe teaspoon-size blobs of cream into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the cream. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream.

Some food for thought...

• Smitten Kitchen made a note about the amount of sugar on her blog; she said that the wafers come out sweet, unlike real Oreo wafers, so she gave a range of 1 to 1 1/2 cups of sugar.  I personally am on a quest to reduce the amount of sugar in my life, so I have re-posted this recipe with a smaller amount of sugar.  Feel free to use the original amount as you please!
• As I noted before, the cookie itself is crunchy rather than soft.  Don't over bake the cookie, otherwise it will burn quickly.You could probably add things like chili powder and cinnamon to the wafer recipe if you wanted to mix things up a bit.  You could also add mint extract and green food coloring to the cream filling to make your own mint Oreos.  Add other extracts and colors to be more adventurous!

Happy Baking,
Kelly

Friday Fun: Cookie Flowchart

In a world where we all worry about our weight, the question of "Do I deserve a cookie?" has never been more important.  Use this helpful flowchart to determine the answer:



In a nutshell?  YES, you deserve a cookie :o)

Happy Friday!
Kelly

Portfolio: Red Velvet Whoopies and "2" Sugar Cookies

My daughter and I had the joy of attending the birthday party for the daughter of a dear friend of mine this past weekend.  Abby Lu turned two and her mom planned a cookie themed party for the little munchkin.  Anna is a corporate event planner and she always has the most wonderful and fun ideas for birthday parties!  She blogs about that and her crafty activities frequently, and I just love, love, love reading about all the fun stuff she does.

Anna had a milk moustache photo station for everyone to take their pictures.  Here's me and Billa!

She planned on having quite a few cookies for the party and asked me to bake up some red velvet whoopie pies and some sugar cookies in the shape of the number 2 for Abby's party.  Abby apparently adores red velvet and I was excited to try a new recipe for them at the party.  I have a recipe that is pretty good, but after baking some chocolate whoopies for my mom's birthday, I wanted to tweak the chocolate recipe and see if I couldn't duplicate the texture with red velvet.  They came out fantastic!

The cookie buffet...so many tasty treats!

For the number 2's, I did half of them with solid cookie monster blue and the other half with blue sprinkles.  Doing these brought back memories of my daughter's second birthday last year, in which I did a Sesame Street theme and gave away sugar cookie S's, 2's, and Elmo's as favors. 

My daughter and I enjoyed visiting with lots of our friends that we had not seen in some time.  The party was so much fun because we got to eat my favorite thing: cookies!  They also happen to be one of Abby's favorite things too!

Abby Lu and Billa swinging on the swings

Happy 2nd birthday Abby Lu!  May you have many more!

Happy baking,
Kelly

The J-O-Y of Cookies

I love baking at Christmastime!  I can't ever seem to get enough and it's the perfect time of year, especially since you can share your kitchen's bounty with your nearest and dearest.  Another one of my favorite treats at Christmas are sugar cookies.  I saw an idea in an email newsletter for sugar cookies cut out in letters to spell words.  I loved the idea and decided to spell the word "joy."  You could also do "peace" or even spell the word Christmas if you're feeling ambitious!  I did some of the cookies with simple sugar sprinkles and some with royal icing in red, green, and white.  The beauty of this project is that you can get as simple or as creative as you wish.  This idea would also work well for other holidays, like Valentine's Day. Who wouldn't love getting a box with cookies spelling out the word love?  Or "boo" at Halloween?

And of course I did cookie pops for my daughter's class!  Here are the designs I created.  I did gingerbread boys and Christmas trees.  I really hate the fact that Christmas is one of those taboo things in school and society these days, so I tried to keep them innocuous.  Regardless of the design, the kids loved them.  As I picked Billa up from school, she told me all about her yummy "kee-coo" (she transposes the syllables).  I asked her which one she got and she told me "ginja boy!"  It just warmed my heart.

I hope you have fun baking your own versions of sugar cookies!

Happy Holidays,
Kelly

Halloween Cookie Pops

The week before Halloween I had an order for cookie wedding favors.  I decided to make some cookie pops for my daughter's daycare with some of the leftover dough and they came out really cute!  I had originally wanted to do some pumpkins and/or ghosts, but creativity and energy had left me as a result of being sick with a sinus infection earlier in the month.  The kids loved them and there weren't any left when I got Sybilla from school that day!

I lucked out in the packaging department with these Halloween bags that magically appeared on my desk at work last year.  Really, I have no idea who left them for me, but someone decided they needed a home and placed them on my desk–and wouldn't you say I found lovely home for them, indeed?

The design was actually very easy to make:

1.  Create a dam from white royal icing around the edge of the cookie.
2.  Flood outline with white royal icing.
3.  Working quickly, create a bull's eye out of black royal icing.
4.  Use the tip of a toothpick to 'pull' the icing from the center of the cookie to the edge.
5.  Allow to dry and eat!

Make a bull's eye or swirl while the flood is still wet, otherwise it won't work!

Then starting from the center, pull the tip of a toothpick through the rings, creating the webbed effect.

Once they're dry, you can make little spiders to sit on them.  I made some from additional royal icing, but you could use small candies too.  I think this technique would be great to use with other colors and other shapes.  The trick is to make sure that you pipe the contrasting color while the flood is still very wet, otherwise, it won't work.  Something else to think about too: use a very small tip to pipe the contrasting color.  I was using a squeeze bottle which had a larger tip and as a result, created really thick bull's eyes.

Hope you all had a great Halloween!

Happy Baking,
Kelly

Portfolio: Black & White Polka Dot Letter Cookies

I had an order for some sugar cookies for a wedding recently.  The bride wanted something sweet to place in welcome boxes for all of her out of town guests and my friend Kristen asked me to make some for her.  After going back and forth a bit, we decided to do packages that contained L's and W's for the bride and groom's names.

The L's were done in white with black polka dots and the W's were done in black with white polka dots.  It took me a little bit of experimenting before finally figuring out the best method.  I decided to flood each cookie and then use a toothpick to drip the coordinating color into the flood.  Yes, it was a lot of work, but the results were worth it.

I finished them off by wrapping them in clear cello bags and tying them with black and white polka dotted ribbon.  They were so cute and the bride was thrilled.  Congratulations to the happy couple...may you have many years of bliss!

Happy Baking,
Kelly

Portfolio: Monogram Cookies

I admit it, I love cookies more than cake!  Cake is nice, but I love that cookies are perfectly portioned for your hand.  You can sometimes have more than one without feeling guilty.  With cake, you eat more than one piece and people give you funny looks.  Unless it's my cakes of course, in which case, they're so good you can't help but have seconds! Ha!  I kid, I kid.  They are mighty tasty though.

Cookies are also wonderful because they are perfect to give as gifts and especially as favors at weddings.  I made these simple but elegant sugar cookies as favors for a wedding this weekend.  I used a fluted round cutter which adds some texture to the sides of the cookie and made them a bit more fancy, I thought.  They are all identical, with a white background and the new couple's monogram in apple green.  Packaging those little babies reminded me of my dog biscuit baking days, when I would package hundreds upon hundreds of gourmet dog biscuits in cello bags and sheer ribbons.  I was a little rusty, but in the end, all 284 of them were baked, decorated, and packaged well ahead of time to be delivered for the wedding.

Congratulations to the happy couple and many blessings upon you!

Happy Baking,
Kelly

Recipe: Cherry Almond Wedding Cookies

Hello, everyone!  I just realized that I have been remiss in not posting this on my baking blog (I originally had it on my family blog) and since I am making these for a dinner party tonight to honor the departure of a friend, I figured better now than never!

This recipe is a slight adaptation of one I gleaned from CookingLight.com and originally called for pistachios.  I'm not a fan of pistachios and they're a little expensive, so I used the next best thing: almonds!  And seriously, dried cherries are so great, they're like the original fruit snack.  I have to hide them from myself, they're so addictive and yummy.  I really hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do; it was delightful and weighing in at a mere 86 (roughly) calories per cookie, you don't feel so bad for eating more than just one!

Portfolio: Easter Cookie Pops

Spring came early to Central Texas and with it, so has Easter!

To celebrate the return of spring and Easter, I made some bunny cookie pops for my daughter's class.  I had joked with her daycare provider about making chocolate bunnies, well, I did just that! Sort of, anyway.

I had planned on doing them with chocolate royal icing, but my plans got ruined when I forgot to set the timer on the first batch of cookies. 

Tutorial: Baking a Cookie Cake

Ever walked through the mall and seen the Great American Cookie Company with their cookie cakes on display?  Or maybe you've seen them in your local grocery store bakery?  It wasn't so long ago that the ubiquitous cookie cake was a novelty, an rare little item.  These days, they're everywhere and most often covered in some decorator's buttercream scrawl with the words, "Happy Birthday!" on them.

Don't get me wrong.  I LOVE me some cookie cake.  I think the cookie cake is genius: it's a giant cookie!  And who doesn't love cookies?!  Definitely not this guy:

At least he did, until childhood obesity became an epidemic and now he's the Veggie Monster.  C is for Cookie, which is good enough for me!