Birthday desk surprise

Posted in Cakes, Celebration, Chocolate, Custom, Gluten-free, Littles, Sweet by shimmrblu

Friends at work have gotten into the fun tradition of decorating each others’ desks for birthdays! My favorite part is dreaming up personalized and specialized themes that are fun and fit the person we are celebrating, and seeing what we all bring and how it comes together. The latest was a collection of vignettes that included Easter, candy, chocolate, cute, minis, marathon runners, gluten-free, snow sports…

I baked this gluten-free chocolate cake from Bob’s Red Mill, and decorated it with fluffy vanilla “snow” frosting, coconut, mini skaters, daring skiiers, a marshmallow snowman and a cute gingerbread house!

14Feb2016

Matchstick Cookies

Posted in Celebration, Cookies, Mini, Sweet by shimmrblu

I saw these mini matchstick cookies from SprinkleBakes and had to try them myself!

It took me several rounds to get these little cookies the size and shape I wanted, but I finally got some I was happy with. You have to make the dough, freeze, cut, freeze, and bake immediately to help them hold their sharp shape…

It would have been faster to buy a package of ready-to-go white matchstick boxes, but by the time I decided I was going to go for it, I was a little short on time to order and hand out by Valentine’s Day like I planned (but not soon enough :P). So I ended up just buying a package of matchstick boxes at Fred Meyer, pocketing the matches and cleaning/altering/decorating the boxes for my own use with white paper and washi tape. I had more cookies to share, but the box alteration time set my limit for sharing to a special few 😉

How cute are these ?!! 🙂

14Feb2016

Raspberry Almond Valentine

Posted in Celebration, Cupcakes, Holiday, Mini, Sweet by shimmrblu

Happy Valentine’s Day! I was inspired to use fresh berries for my Valentine bake and came across these lovely raspberries, and then the almond cupcakes and bittersweet chocolate ganache followed 🙂 I look forward to getting a new camera someday soon, but for now, these camera phone photos will have to do!

This lovely cake stand was made locally by JaMpdx! Thank you, Jenn and Meghan! 🙂

15Jan2016

HBD BRO

Posted in Cakes, Celebration, Chocolate, Gluten-free, Sweet by shimmrblu

A little gluten free chocolate cake with whipped vanilla/almond butter frosting for my older bro’s birthday 🙂

5Dec2015

1st Birthday Cupcakes in a Flash!

Posted in Celebration, Cupcakes, Sweet by shimmrblu

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!

10Jul2015

Patriotic Pie

Posted in Celebration, Holiday, PIe, Sweet by shimmrblu

I’m a little late posting, but Happy Independence Day!

Here are some late night snapshots of the blueberry-blackberry pie my Mom, brother and I made together and that I got to decorate the top of 🙂

4Apr2015

A Hoppy Easter to All! ^^

Posted in Celebration, Cookies, Holiday, Sweet by shimmrblu

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. 🙂

Candid: Staging in process…

Easter pineapple, anyone? 😉

23Dec2014

Merry Cookie Christmas!

Posted in Celebration, Cookies, Holiday, Sweet, Themed by shimmrblu

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

MerryCookieChristmas_02

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…

Voila!! So many….

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

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

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… :/

Just dipped!

27Nov2014

Thanksgiving 2014

Posted in Celebration, Holiday, PIe, Sweet by shimmrblu

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…

17Nov2014

November Bachelorette

Posted in Celebration, Cookies, Letters, Sweet, Themed by shimmrblu

I had fun creating these custom bachelorette themed cookies for party favors this week! I used my Grandmother’s sugar cookie recipe and SweetSugarBelle’s royal icing recipe again 🙂

I had a little extra time, so I started experimenting with some additional arrangements….

I’ve noticed some of my favorite blogs use cups and mugs of steaming hot beverages in their overhead shots. I like the warm, cozy feeling the beverage gives to the shot, and I had the perfect dish towel to go with it… I’ll work on adding more to my layouts to pump them up!

And some fun with minis <3

Sweet Rosalie

Irresistible Sweet Treats

Category Archives: Celebration