Cookie Fun

Hi there! I haven't been baking as much but I can already tell that will change with the holidays coming up. I keep dreaming up new treats to try out. :)

Last week I was asked by my friend to watch her kids for a while. I wanted to take an activity that would be fun and would keep them busy for a while. I looked through my *ahem* many cookie cutters and pulled out this fun set of "critters".

I won these cookie cutters from one of my favorite cookiers - Sweet Hope Cookies.

 

Can you tell what each of them is supposed to be? I can tell you this - we didn't necessarily decorate them to match the animal! I love decorating cookies with kids because of how easily they think out of the box. They can come up with the best ideas and designs.

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed these cookies. I will be back soon with some fun Halloween/Fall posts!



Pie Trippin'

Hi! My summer is going by too fast. I thought I would have time to play around in the kitchen but I've been too busy with work. :( Oh well, I like my job so I'm not complaining too much. ;)

One night I was at the local library and saw this book below. I had to check it out and I enjoyed it so much that I ordered my own copy. The book talks about a bunch of famous pies that you can find in the state.

There is a section about fried pies and the author mentioned there is a Amish food store in Dermott that sells these pies. Now, there is a Amish store in Huntsville that I love to go to when I go visit my dad so I wanted to go visit this one to see how it compared. Sad to say - the one in Dermott is very small and has a VERY limited selection of goods. However, that didn't stop me from buying one of the fried pies they were selling. :)

Yes, I was hungry so I sampled some it in the car on the way home! It was apple and it was so good. They also have chocolate chip cookies which I think I liked better. I ate it too fast so didn't get a picture of it - Ha!

I just had to share this picture of my cat "photobombing" my photo session. 

I'm planning on trying out some more of the places mentioned in the Arkansas Pie book so stay tuned!

About time

Wow - sorry it's been so long since I've written a post! Life has gotten in the way and I've been busy with work and cake orders that I haven't made the time to sit to write a post.
I finally got inspired when I decided at the last minute to enter in LilaLoa's Be Inspired Challenge. I wasn't going to enter but then I kept coming up with these cookie ideas. So here's what I came up with.

These are the colors I finally decided on. I only had to make two batches of icing to get it right. ;)

Here are the cookies I decorated. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.

  

I hope to be able to post more here in the next few months as I made the very hard decision to shut down the cake business. I will still be baking here and there but not as much as I was.
Thanks for sticking with me and I plan on being back sooner than three months!

Easter Cookies - kind of

I had plans to make different kind of cookies for Easter, but the time got away from me and I only ended up making one. I think it's a good one though.

First, it starts with these sugary, orange strips. Can you guess what they are? They're carrots! I didn't take any pictures while making these because I wasn't sure if they would turn out or not. I found a recipe for candied orange peels and just substituted the carrots. Believe it or not, but they are addictive to just munch on!

Next up is one of my favorite ways to add flavor to my cookies and that is to brown my butter. I just take the amount called for in the recipe - brown it and let it harden up a bit before mixing it up with the cookie dough.

I just used the recipe off the back of the chocolate chip cookie bag (in this case, I used white chocolate chips) and came up with these yummy cookies. Not that I would know - since I taste-tested just a "few". ;) Let's say it's a good thing I'm going to see family tomorrow and will hopefully pass these off to them. I hope they like them as much as I do!

Yeah, I know....

Valentine's Day 2013 has long gone, but I never got around to posting the pictures of some cookies I made. I figure since this is my blog I can do what I want. ;)

I did try a new cookie recipe in making these cookies and I think I finally have the chocolate roll out recipe down pat. Of course, that's until I decide to try something new.
What I did to come up with these cookies was to take my favorite brownie recipe and change a few of the measurements and ingredients and came up with these...

I did make these with Andes peppermint crunch candy bits. Oh - so good!

My favorite decorated heart. 

 With this set, I was attempting to use colors like the ones used in vintage valentine's day cards. However I ended up making a 'Harry Potter' set. :)  That's the only thing I can think of when I look at these cookies!

First Birthday Cakes

It's been busy at work and at home so I haven't be able to play around with any new desserts lately. I did try to make a homemade banana cream pie last weekend. Let's just say there's a reason why I don't have any pictures of it. Can we say major fail?
Oh well - I'm still learning with each new thing I bake. :)

I made a 1st birthday cake for a friend's daughter and it set me to thinking about all of the 1st birthday cakes I've made this past year. I've made many more than what I'm showing but I don't want to overwhelm you all so I'll show just these few for now.

Valentine's Day Fun

I love word puzzles, so I decided to make my own Rebus puzzles for Valentine's Day which is coming up this week. 

This is also a contest with the prize being a $20 Amazon Gift card. To enter, just leave a comment at the bottom of this post, telling me what the answers are to the 5 puzzles below. I will draw a name from the people who get them all right.  The winner will be chosen this Thursday the 14th.

Have fun!

Scrapbook Cookies

I have a friend who is really into scrapbooking so I wanted to try to make some cookies that might look like stickers you would find in a scrapbook.
Also, I wanted to try out an idea I had with texture mats (typically used with fondant) and cookies.  Let's see how it all turned out. :)

Pictures of what the dough looked like with the texture mats before being cut into shapes and baked. Of course, I forgot to take pictures of the cookies after they came out of the oven....

A few of my favorite cookies - the pink one was painted with a pink sheen food color. It's normally used in airbrush guns but I just paint it on. The bottom cookie was painted with an egg wash before it was baked. The egg wash is just an egg yolk with white icing color mixed in. It gives the cookies a sheen. The white part is rice paper which is just painted on.

 

A few more of my favorites. I love the heart with the blue flowers. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of it....

All the cookies! :)

Baby Shower Cakes

I finally get my electricity back - then my stove decides to burn out! I was baking a cake and all of sudden saw a white flash in the oven. I thought some cake had bubbled up, but nope - it was my heating element on fire!

Since I'm without an oven for a few days, I thought I would share some of the baby shower cakes that I had made for friends this past year.

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm not doing too well with posting. I made these cookies Christmas morning and at 9:00 that evening lost my electricity for almost 5 days!

Browned butter is a very popular thing to put in baked goods these days (hopefully it's still a popular thing). I'd been wanting to try some chocolate chip cookies with browned butter and the butter really does add another flavor to the cookies. Let's just say that it was a good thing I only made a half batch of these. ;)

The browned butter and sugars in the bowl.

I found these fun marshmallow bits in a store close to my hometown and couldn't resist adding some to my cookies.

 Oh yum! How hard it was to not just stop here and start eating this right out of the bowl. But I didn't.....

 Love how the marshmallows added a bit color to the cookies.

Since I just used the recipe from the back of a chocolate chip cookie bag - I won't put it here. But all you have to do is to use your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and brown the amount of butter called for. If it calls for 1 cup butter, then just brown that same amount. It's best to let the butter harden back up before using it.
Here are two very good tutorials on how to brown butter - http://www.sweethopecookies.com and http://www.howsweeteats.com/2012/10/.