A Bridal Shower!

A While back, I was invited to a friend's bridal shower. I asked if I could help make anything (baking-wise that is), and the host said I could bring some cookie favors! I was excited to get the little Wilton's wedding pack and try my hand at some bridal cookies. The cake was fun to work with, but I think the little dress may have been my favorite.
The bride's colors are Tiffany blue and a bright poppy red. I did my best to recreate the colors. Not having a reference for red, mine ended up darker than what she's going for and the blue needed to be a tad lighter. Still, I think they were close enough ;) If you've worked with royal icing before, you know that it tends to darken in the 24 hrs. after you've made it (it does this whether its already on the cookie or not). I still haven't quite figured out how much it darkens and how to account for that. So honestly, I think I "probably" had a pretty good Tiffany blue initially and then it darkened from there. I'll never know!

Regardless, I absolutely love these colors together. I think it's such a pretty combination. Had I gotten married in spring or summer, I likely would have considered these colors myself.

And finally, the cookies themselves...

I attached little toppers to all the cookie bags

Birthday cake pops!

Remember the little girl's birthday cookies I did? (as in the previous post) Well her mom (who also loves to bake) wanted to cake pops instead of cake for her daughter's birthday this year. Since we liked to hang out and bake together, she asked me to join her in  making cake pops for the party.

We did chocolate cake with pick and purple for the outside. I learned a lesson with these. For the purple, we started with pink candy melts and tried coloring from there. I figured the fact that we had purple, red, and blue food coloring we could come up with a good color. Honestly, we never really loved the purple we came up with. In the future, I will either start with purple or white candy melts and color from there.

Remember the adorable tags this mom did for the cookies? Well, she made an adorable stand for the cake pops also. I'm learning from her to think outside the box on the display aspect. (I can do the baking...my brain has to be trained to think crafty presentation!)

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!)

Valentine's Cake

And now begins posting catch-up....

I made a cake  for V-day, it was a fun 3-layer, 6 in. cake. It was my first time do 6 in. rounds and my first time doing 3 layers. I think because of inexperience, it ended up being a little lopsided and the top layer was a bit smaller than the others. Certainly not perfect, but I learned for the future! I did the hearts using a technique called quilling. They were made out of fondant, but the actual cake was covered in buttercream.