Let them Eat Cake

I don't know if you know this, but my husband likes to challenge me. In fact, the very first post on this blog was in response to his challenge for me to make Cookie Monster cupcakes. 

His latest challenge is for me to make our daughter's first birthday cake. Not just any old cake, he expects layers, he expects fondant, he expects greatness. Since she just turned four months old I only have eight months to perfect my craft. 

I took one cake decorating class at Michael's years ago. I did not hit it off with the instructor. It did not help that they canceled class for the day I signed up and put me into a class a week after it had already started. When your class is only four weeks long, missing the first night does not set the right tone.

I do have to say that I've watched all of Cake Boss that Netflix has to offer and with that, I present my first go with fondant. It's harder than they make it look on TV - literally. Rolling this stuff out was a workout!

Trying Something Different

I recently had a conversation with one of my cousins about trying new things and how we suppose some people resist new things (recipes in this case) due to a fear of failure. That conversation came back to haunt me as I tried two new roll out cookie recipes this weekend. 

Graduation Cookies

So graduation season was months and months ago. But as we've already established, I am months and months behind and re-entry into the real world will likely be painful and is coming sooner than I like.

My sister-in-law asked me to make these for her daughter to give to her dance friends that were graduating. Lucky for everyone, I had already baked these cookies and had them in the freezer for another project (which never happened).

Baby Girl Shower Cookies

I made these for a woman at work who was pregnant the same time I was - our due dates were only days apart.I referred to her as the "other pregnant lady" for months. I enjoyed doing these and may have pretended they were for my own baby (I think our babies were born 6 days apart). 

Apple Season

It's apple season and one of my favorite apple desserts is... all of them. Okay really, it's apple crisp. Quick and delicious.

Are You Tough Enough?

Last fall my brother-in-law started recruiting people to run a big event/obstacle type run. The group decided on the Tough Mudder and for half a second I considered signing up too. Then I remembered I hate running and I was trying to get pregnant. Call me stingy, but I didn't want to spend the $100+ on registering and then have to back out.We were keeping our pregnancy plans a secret at the time and it turned out a good thing neither of us signed up! At one point, someone was joking about pulling a six-months-pregnant me over an obstacle - that would be fun...

Breast Cancer Awareness Month Cookies

It's October, which means fall is in the air and women's (and men's) breasts are okay to discuss freely. Get those babies checked out!

I Brought the Awesome

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law both turned 30 this summer and decided to throw a big party to celebrate. 

It's a Girl!

I had my baby girl in July. Yes I know it is the last day in September but somehow time gets away from me. The weekend before I was due, I was decorating these cookies. 

The day I went into labor, I made drop sugar cookies to give to our guests and nurses/doctors. I guess you could say I have a thing for cookies. Everyone at the hospital asked where I bought the cigar cookies. Ha ha!

Oh and I learned my airbrushing lesson. These were airbrushed in the garage to avoid getting food coloring all over the house.

The most beautiful baby I've had the pleasure of meeting.

You had me at Banana Bread...

Technically, I'm not talking about banana bread today. I'm talking about Banana Bread Rolls that I found here.

Chocolate Chip Roll Out Cookies

I've been meaning to try a new recipe with decorated cookies for  a while and finally got around to trying this recipe recently.

It is really good, so good that only a few cookies survived to get any sort of decoration at all.

Baked Chocolate Doughnuts

The other day I decided I needed to make doughnuts but I didn't want just plain vanilla doughnuts. I wanted extreme, I wanted chocolate. And I had some leftover cream cheese frosting from another project and thought that would be delicious on a doughnut. 

He Is Risen

I threw together a few Easter cookies for my grandma this year. Yes - my grandma is the recipient of many of my projects. 

Grandma shared these with the ladies in a nursing home and brought smiles to everyone. One particular woman who suffers from Alzheimer's enjoyed them so much she asked for a second and even smiled - a rare occurrence that brought smiles to everyone. 

 I also left these stenciled chocolate chip Easter Egg cookies for Grandma to enjoy or share or enjoy sharing.

Bridge Cupcakes

I made some cupcakes for my Grandma's bridge party the other day. She has been quite busy with lots going on in our family so I thought I'd take a bit of burden off her shoulders. 

The Basics: Cookie & Icing

Now that you baked some cookies and you made your icing, let's decorate a cookie.

Having a heart...results

Hi!

I took a bit of a break from cookie-ing after the many hours invested in the fundraising I did in February. Also - if you're reading this blog, you probably know me or someone I know in real life and will already know that I'm pregnant and have had other projects and concerns of late. I do have a backlog of pictures to watermark and I'll be getting posts up to accompany those as I get time.

I wanted to let everyone know that I was able to make and sell enough cookies to donate over $500 to the family that my parents' VFW was fundraising on behalf of last month. You can read more about that story here.  The bake sale itself raised around $130 so I think I took the right road by selling them myself and then donating the cash. I don't remember exact figures... apparently I have pregnancy brain.

My husband was kind enough to put together a small collage of the cookies I made minus the last 75 or so that were just neon colors that I kicked out in exhaustion and did not take time to photograph. We included a copy of this collage with the donation money.

Thanks for looking and supporting this cause if you are one of those kind enough to purchase a cookie or two (or a dozen or six).

The Basics - Icing

Now that we've made some cookies, let's go over the icing you can use to cover them. As in all aspects of life, there is more than one way to do this - you can use many mediums to ice your cookies. The ones I'm familiar with are Glaze and Royal Icing or a bastardization of the two that I am growing to like more and more. The most important thing when using any of these recipes is getting the correct consistency for your needs. If your icing is too thin, it will spread all over and be a big mess; if it's too thick it will give you arthritis, break a tooth and generally not work out very well. I'm going to put some links in this post that are very helpful if you're interested in learning more. 

Have a Heart...

A couple weeks ago, my mom told me about a fundraiser her VFW was doing for a local woman and asked me to donate some decorated cookies to their bake sale. Having the tender heart I do and feeling genuine heartache at the situation the woman was in, I said no. No I would not donate decorated cookies to the bake sale. I would however sell decorated cookies and donate that money to the woman (via the VFW) instead. You see, making these cookies is a lot of work - these are not fifty cent cookies. I was afraid I would spend so many hours on these and they would raise a fraction of the worth of the cookies at their sale. Oh no, I was not going to let that happen.

The Basics - Baking Sugar Cookies

I like to pretend that I have a super popular blog that tons of people read and people are hanging on my every word and wondering, "How does she do that?" So just play along and I'll tell you, ok? Although to be honest, I do get asked these questions in real life.

Today I'll share recipes and tips for baking the cookies themselves. I hope to do another post on icing as well as listing some of the resources I use for inspiration or for shopping purposes later.