1st Birthday Cupcakes in a Flash!

BirthdayCupcakesFlash_01

A friend of mine reached out to me in a panic and needed help decorating cupcakes for her son’s first birthday party in a jiffy! I brought some emergency sprinkles, supplies and a couple ideas, and Grandma, Mom and I decorated these babies (cupcakes, not the birthday boy) in a flash just before guests arrived!

Happy 1st birthday, Little George!

BirthdayCupcakesFlash_02

BirthdayCupcakesFlash_03

BirthdayCupcakesFlash_04

Springerlie

This year I tried my own hand at making the German Springerlie cookies I remember my Mom making each Christmas time. They involve a wooden rolling pin with little molded patterns, fresh anise seeds, allowing the cookies to dry out overnight before baking, and then leaving them in an air tight tin for a few weeks to soften and soak up the anise flavor!

Ready to roll…

Springerlie_01

Ready to cut…

Springerlie_02

Ready to dry overnight…

Springerlie_03

Baked and ready to be stored! We’ll see how they turn out in a few weeks 😉

Springerlie_04

Thanks, Mom!

Just Peachy

JustPeachy_04

I am so happy to be posting after such a long, unintentional break! So grateful for 3-day weekends 😀 Happy Labor Day!

Picked up these beauties from a local farmer’s market this afternoon…

JustPeachy_01

 

JustPeachy_02

 

JustPeachy_03

The crust definitely did not turn out to be the prettiest… but the pie was delicious.

Happy Memorial Day

HappyMemorialDay_01

A simple red velvet cake to say thank you. This was my first attempt at covering a cake in fondant, and well, I got it covered! 🙂 I used a beautiful patterned embossing rolling pin, but realized fondant takes so much smoothing once on the cake, most of the pattern disappeared…. you can still see some subtle hints of the damask pattern. I’ll try it again with a pie crust.

This red velvet layer cake recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction blog is delicious and moist!  If there’s one thing I hate, it’s dry cake!

HappyMemorialDay_02

my fondant is stretched too thin…. but you can see some of the damask pattern on the sides 🙂

HappyMemorialDay_03

HappyMemorialDay_04

HappyMemorialDay_06

HappyMemorialDay_05

HappyMemorialDay_07

And with leftover batter… a patriotic cupcake with a little man saluting (kind of) and thanking those who gave their lives while serving. Thank you.

HappyMemorialDay_08

HappyMemorialDay_09

A Hoppy Easter to All! ^^

Easter 2015_01

These egg cookies look nothing like the Ukranian eggs my Grandma was so good at decorating (similar to these), but I definitely thought of her and her immensely talented detail work while baking this batch. There is nothing waxy about these royal icing decorated sugar cookies – only a sugary, buttery, slightly soft crunch. 🙂

Easter 2015_02

Easter 2015_03

Candid: Staging in process…

Easter 2015_04

Easter 2015_05

Easter 2015_06

Easter 2015_07

Easter 2015_08Easter 2015_09

Easter 2015_10

Easter 2015_11

Easter 2015_12

Easter 2015_13

Easter pineapple, anyone? 😉

Easter 2015_14

Merry Cookie Christmas!

This year was my second Cookie Exchange Extravaganza, and I made sugar cookie Christmas sweaters and mittens 🙂

MerryCookieChristmas_02

MerryCookieChristmas_01

For the sweaters I used Sweet Sugar Belle’s royal icing recipe again and separated the icing into red, green and white. As the planning continued, my strategy got simpler and simpler… Maybe another time I can make all of them customized and silly with santas, snowmen, reindeer, presents, lights, sleighs, chimneys etc.

Since the royal icing takes a number of hours to set, I baked and created the background icing layers one day, and piped the detail in white another…

MerryCookieChristmas_03

MerryCookieChristmas_04

Voila!! So many….

MerryCookieChristmas_05

MerryCookieChristmas_06

MerryCookieChristmas_07

I packaged what I had up into baggies of 6 each…

MerryCookieChristmas_08

MerryCookieChristmas_09

And off to the exchange I went! Look at the piles of amaaazing cookies that everyone brought!

MerryCookieChristmas_11

For my NEXT three dozen (remember–strategy got simpler and simpler… eight dozen sweater cookies, ok six dozen sweater cookies, ok only two base colors and white decoration, ok actually three dozen sweater cookies and three other dozen of something else…that will be faster to bake and decorate)….. I made mitten cookies dipped in semi-sweet chocolate and garnished with little cookie stars and snowflake sprinkles! There were a few I tried edible glitter, but the glitter got away from me… :/

MerryCookieChristmas_12

Just dipped!

MerryCookieChristmas_13

MerryCookieChristmas_14

MerryCookieChristmas_15

MerryCookieChristmas_16

MerryCookieChristmas_17

MerryCookieChristmas_18

MerryCookieChristmas_19

MerryCookieChristmas_20

 

Thanksgiving 2014

So for Thanksgiving this year I tried baking a sweet potato pie, enhanced with bourbon and a brown sugar layer between the crust and the filling…  Honestly, I was disappointed–especially with the crust. The recipe was much more involved than I ever do for crust, and did not come out well for all the effort! Needless to say, the filling was pretty good…

IMG_1925

IMG_1916

IMG_1918