Shabby Chic Christmas

Here are some ideas I'm playing with for Christmas cookies this year. 

I'll be making lots of these and others over the next few weeks!

Tea party

More teacups for my Grandma! 

Crab Favors

These favors were for a wedding in Annapolis, MD.  

Blue crabs are kind of a thing there...

Red, White & Blue

We spent Independence Day celebrating a little friend's birthday, listening to live music, and watching a surprisingly good fireworks show together. My kids loved it and I wish I could've gotten some pictures of their awestruck faces during the show. Baby Ryan liked it too even though he slept through half of it. It was a good time!

I made these cookies using the vanilla version of the chocolate cookies from LiliLoa. They kept their shape beautifully and were amazingly easy to roll out and cut. (and again, no chilling the dough!) Hubby and I both agreed that they didn't taste quite as good as my usual recipe but I don't think anyone else cared and it might just be worth the small sacrifice in flavor. Well, he doesn't think it was worth it, but was he doing any of the work to make them? um, no.  Maybe I'll play with my old recipe and see if I can come up with something in the middle that tastes good but is also easier to work with. We'll see.

Hope everyone had a happy fourth!

An Out-of-this-world Birthday

These cookies were for our friend Landon's 5 year birthday party. The party was outerspace themed, with planets hung from a blackened ceiling, a stomp rocket target game, real astronaut food, a space shuttle pinata, a rocket launch in the backyard, and more...  I'm hoping all our friends forget about this party before my son's in September, because ours will definitely not be as cool. 

I didn't have any outerspace cookie cutters, so I had to improvise.

I used a smooshed circle for the planet, gingerbread man for the astronaut, bell for the rocket, and what I think is supposed to be a hat for the flying saucer.

This is how I usually start my cookies. I trace the cutters onto paper and then sketch how I want the cookie to look in the outline. 

Next time I think I'll use colored pencils to try out the colors in the design before frosting them. This will cut down on the number of mookies (mess-up cookies), which I really need to do especially when making chocolate cookies, because I 

can't. stop. eating. these. cookies.

  

By the way, if you decide to make these cookies, which you should, use Hershey's special dark cocao instead of the regular unsweetened cocoa. I tried both and the dark is more delicious. The color is darker too- you can see that the rocket and flying saucer above were made with the dark and the others with regular. Both are good, but dark is better. 

Also, these cookies are amazing because they do not spread or lose their shape AT ALL while baking. Really. They are fool-proof. And you don't even need to chill the dough! I didn't even know such a dough existed!

I am a fan. Thank you LilaLoa for a great recipe! I am trying her vanilla variation today. Yum!

Wahoo - wa!

Congratulations to my niece, Maeve, who graduated from high school last week 

and will be attending my alma mater in the fall! 

Go 'Hoos!!

Butterflies & Daisies

Happy Springtime!

Wow, it's been a while since I posted anything here. I have been baking but I guess we've been eating everything too fast to get pictures...

But even better than pictures are recipes, so here are a few I've made recently:

chocolate cookies with various chips... white chocolate, peanut butter, milk chocolate, semi sweet... all yummy

Key lime pie - so easy and delicious!

Orange cranberry scones - melt in your mouth good.

I did take some pictures of the cupcake ice cream cones I made for Audrey's birthday back in February.

I tried making these different ways-

You can bake the cupcakes in the cones, set up like the picture above. It was hard to get the right amount of batter into the cones and some of them were not cooked through and deflated as they cooled.

You can bake the cupcakes in muffin tins as you normally would and put the cones upside down on top so the cupcake rises into it. This worked pretty well but the top of the cupcake was shaped like a bottom so it was hard to frost. Also you don't get that "muffin top" texture that really makes a cupcake a cupcake.

In both of the above methods the cone did not taste very good even if the cupcake turned out because it got kind of stale from being baked.

The best looking, tastiest, and the easiest way to do it is to get Jumbo ice cream cones (found mine at Bloom) and then just bake regular cupcakes and stuff them in the cone when they cool. They fit perfectly and it kept the cones from getting chewy or soggy.

My favorite part of this cupcake though was the frosting. I have tried lots of recipes and this one is the best I've had I think. Might have something to do with the heavy cream, I'm not sure.