12th Birthday Cookies!

My oven broke about 3ish weeks ago. It literally just quit working one day, no clue why. Of course, the fact that it was probably 20 years old didn't help (no idea how old...but it looks pretty ancient). Really, it was a blessing. It's old. It didn't bake evenly. It didn't tell me when it was preheated (I got an oven thermometer so I could at least tell from that). We've wanted to replace it since we got married. It's just hard to convince ourselves that it was worth spending that kind of money when it DID still work. So, it breaking was unfortunate, especially cause the bread I tried making when it went kaput on me never got made :( However It gave us the reason to actually get the new one we've been talking about getting for a year and a half now. We looked online, read reviews, talked to my mom, and finally picked one. Of course, we picked one that they didn't have in the store, so I've been waiting patiently (sometimes not so patient) for a new one to arrive. Well guess what???? It comes TOMORROW!!! YAY! I'm so excited. I'm sure I'll post a picture at some point.

I'm telling you this, because, well, I write about baking and an oven is a pretty important thing for a baker. AND, cause it went kaput just a couple days before I had to bake some cookies for a friend's daughter's 12th birthday! uh oh...what to do? Thankfully, it wasn't an issue at all cause I have a friend who lives like 2 min. away and I was able to go and use her oven. So I made my dough, rolled out my cookies, put them on cookie sheets and drove them over to her house. Then, I baked them and drove back. fun stuff. It totally worked out and the cookies were a ton of fun to do.

I was given only a few instructions. The birthday girl's favorite color was blue and she wanted some butterflies and flowers, specifically roses. I had gotten some fun birthday type cutters that I wanted to use, so I chose variety to add in along with the butterflies and roses.

A Spring Cake

A couple of week ago, I had a baking fail. Now, I don't know about you, but I hate that. Especially when it is something relatively simple that I've tried (and failed) at before. ugg! Maybe one day I'll tell that story. However, this post isn't about that, it's about the cake I made the day after that to make myself feel better. To be fair, I had been wanting to practice my buttercream frosting techniques and had been itching to make a cake anyways. The previous days failure just neccesitated the need to bake something and have it actually turn out. I'm certainly still learning the ins an outs of cake decorating (there's a ton to learn), but it was fun to practice.

So without further ado, here's my cake-

Mother's Day Cookies

These cookies were fun to do for a number of reasons, 1) Yhey were for my mom and Mother-in-law 2) They were the first cookies that I've mailed to my mom (and by extension my dad, brother, and Sister-in-law) in Florida, so they finally got to try some of my cookies and see them in person! [Ang-I have no idea when, but you're family is definitely getting cookies one of these days too!] 3) I got to try 3 different cookie ideas that I've been wanting to try 4) I got my first experience at making a cookie basket!

Whew! Basically, these were awesome cookies to do! And thank goodness all my ideas lived up to expectations and turned out relatively as anticipated. Trust me, that's rare. There are many ideas in my head for cookies, that once I actually start decorating, just don't happen! I try to make them happen, but my cookies yell back at me and say they aren't gonna do it. Then I yell them, walk away and we have a stand-off for about 20 minutes, until I concede and do what they want. (parts of that may or may not be true).

To start with, I've done some brush embroidery before, but not on a lot of cookies at once and the flowers looked a little different. You may notice that there is only 1 or 2 cookies with the 2 flowers on them instead of one. I had intentions to do more, but just got in such a groove with the single flower ones that completely forgot to stop and do more of the other kind!
I also was able to really try to paint them with pearl dust (aka, the stuff the makes them glittery). I've dry brushed pearl dust on, but had yet to (successfully) paint it on. You can see it best in the 3rd pic here-it photographs a but funky, buts it like tiny silver glittery specks all over the flower! (I like sparkly things...).

I saw this cookie idea on Cookie Crazie's blog here. I thought it was adorable and knew I wanted to recreate it for my own Mom and MIL.

Here's what the cookies for my mom looked like before they got  put in little boxes and then in a bigger box with lots of padding so they'd make it across the country safely. They are packaged 2 to a bag (back to back). I love these toppers-so pretty and elegant, perfect for my mom.

I made the cookies for my MIL into a cookie bouquet. I had some trouble getting them to stand up properly, but it was a good learning experience for cookie bouquets.

Spring Flower Cupcakes

I think I've mentioned before that I've got a friend who also enjoys baking a lot (and lives like 2 min. from me!). Well, a little bit ago, we were itching to make something AND a friend was having a birthday! (you can see where this is going..right?). Well, we decided to make her fun springy cupcakes in honor of her birthday :)

 

We weren't able to fit them all our original display, so here's ALL of them.

Fun girly butterflies and flowers

A friend of mine recently asked me if I would make some cookies for the favors at her daughter's fifth birthday party. I was excited to help a friend out and a little girl's birthday sounded like a fun thing to create for. There was no real theme for the birthday other than cute and girly. The birthday girl likes pink and purple, so those were my color choices.

I decided to do fun little butterflies and flowers. I used a darker and lighter shade of both pink and purple and sprinkled a little pearl dust (aka, edible glitter) on top at the end to make them shimmer a bit. I am not a photographer by any means (as anyone could tell) and the purples all ended up looking blue in the pictures. They were actually a fun, bright purple, but you'll just have to imagine it.

I also made a special birthday cake cookie for the birthday girl.

I put the cookies in little treat bags and the birthday girl's mom added adorable little tags and ribbon to them. Aren't those tags so cute? (I blocked out part was the birthday girl's name. Here mom did not have strange purple blocks on the tags!)

hats and flowers

I know, those two things don't quite go together. However, I only did a few of each and so it made sense to just put them together. A friend of mine mentioned throwing a Kentucky Derby Party sometime. I have no idea if she will actually do it, but when I saw the cute hat cookie cutter in a bake shop, I had to get it and try out some fun hats. Some other day, I'll have to really give it a go. I didn't quite have the energy or the right colors to do much with these.

In the midst of my cookie making, I did some more flowers as well.

I thought they looked prettier with the butterflies added in :)

More Sugar Cookies!

I have more sugar cookies to share! I made more last week and tried a number of different ideas, so I have quite a few pics to show :) I'm going to split them up into separate posts though to make it easier...so if you like what you see, make sure to come back every couple days for more pics.

My first (and quite possibly my favorites from this batch)- cherry blossoms! These reminded me of the time I went to Washington D.C. right during cherry blossom season. It was sooo beautiful!

 I tried a couple different methods of doing the cherry blossoms. What you see above is definitely my favorite. This next picture, you can see on the 2 bottom ones where I tried the wet on wet technique. I didn't like it nearly as much. (it also didn't help that my icing wasn't the right consistency-which makes all the difference in the world when working with royal icing.

Bouquets and Bouts

I was given an opportunity for my MIL's wedding to put together the Groom and Best Man's Boutonnieres as well as the  Bride's and the matron of Honor's bouquets. Putting together flowers aren't really my thing, though I love them and think they are gorgeous. My Sister-in-law (of my immediate family) is the flower one in our family (she put together all the flowers for my wedding and they were beautiful!). Well, she lives in another state and we're talking about my in-laws here, so I got to give it a try :)

The Best Man's Boutineer

The Groom's Boutineer
Photo taken by Marilee Photography

They ended up looking quite nice and it all worked out!

The road to success certainly must include some failure...

A while back, I discovered this thing called royal icing. It's basically an icing you can use to make flowers and other decor details, then let it harden completely and store the details until you are ready to use on a cake. Remember the little packets of letters and flowers you can buy in the grocery store to put on cakes? It basically looks, tastes, and feels like that.

I tried it out myself a month ago or so and made some very simple flowers and was excited by the prospect of what this icing meant. I ha visions in my head of making elaborate and not so elaborate flowers that I would have stored nearby ready to pull out for any and all appropriate occasions. It sounds like a great idea, right? decoration pieces that you could make weeks or months ahead of time and then just place on a cake or cupcake?

And then...reality [and a bit of failure] hit.

I made a batch of this icing the other day and had instructions that I had printed off on how to make about 6 different types of flowers using this icing. I actually remembered this time to split the batch into 3 bowls so I could work with different colors. First off, this icing is a bit tricky and dries really quickly, so if you aren't using it, you have to keep it covered with a damp cloth. second, the only liquid in the icing is water and the littlest amount can change the consistency very quickly.
Well...with my first batch,  I made some purple icing. I didn't put enough water in. I was afraid I hadn't, but didn't REALLY know I hadn't until it was already in the icing bag and by that point I wasn't about to take it back OUT of the bag. So, I learned what happens when the icing is too dry. Not only is it impossible to work with, but you get a result like this-

See those purple ones and how crackly they look? ugh.

Being stubborn, I attempted to work with the purple for a while before I finally just gave up. For my next batch, I chose a teal/blue. I made sure to add a little more water and this was much easier to work with. However, then I came to the realization that I Could NOT make the flowers. Seriously, I had simple instructions on making flowers apple blossoms, violets, daisies and another I forget. they were all labeled "easy" or "somewhat easy" and it was impossible. I spent 45 minutes trying to get something decent and this is all I ended up with....

yeah...not quite the pretty flowers I was hoping for. I had also printed out the instructions of making roses, which was in the "medium" category for difficulty and seemed difficult. I figured though, I've already royally screwed up all the other flowers, why not screw up the rose too?
Imagine my surprise when I started these and they were actually looking decent-even good! what? It doesn't make sense at all. But hey, I'll take it.

I actually still have the 3rd batch of frosting set aside in a Tupperware. After the several hours of working with all the stuff previously, I just didn't have the energy to try any more. Maybe one day I'll give those other flowers 1 more shot and If I can't make them decent, then I'm giving up royal icing flowers!
Here's my roses-