Tuesday, January 22, 2013

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! :)





Monday, January 7, 2013

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.





Wednesday, January 2, 2013

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/.