First Royal Cookie Sweepstakes!

I’ve decided to hold my first sweepstakes in honor of some recent cookies I made. I realize I only have a few followers but hey…it only increases your odds of winning right!

I don’t know what it is, but recently the cookies I’ve made turn out closely resembling eggs! I’m leaving for a well needed trip to Mexico tomorrow morning and thought I’d make some Sunshine Cookies for my husband and his parents who are coming to help take care of our two girls. Only…my suns look like EGGS!

And if you remember, I made flower cookies for my friend and even they looked like eggs!

Clearly I have some mother  hen thing going on 🙂

Sweepstakes Rules:

Leave me a comment on this post (not Facebook) with your best “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke and the funniest one will win a dozen of my very own cookies (I promise…nothing that resembles an egg!). The funniest person in my house is by far my husband so the winning joke will be selected anonymously by him (no use trying to butter him up y’all!). Entries need to be submitted by Sunday, March 4th…winner announced Monday the 5th. If you think I don’t already have it, make sure to leave an email address so I know how to get a hold of you if you are the lucky winner.

Good luck and I’ll see you when I’m back from vacation!

Final Cake Full O’ Flowers

Final class of course 2 in the Wilton Cake Decorating series…COMPLETE!

I was telling the other girl in the class that I enjoyed this course (Flowers and Cake Design) more than the first (Decorating Basics) because we did cooler things, but I missed not bringing something home to eat each week like we did in the first course! hehe  Not that I need it of course and not that my husband and I even eat it, but it was still fun to have a little treat.

Last night I decorated my final cake using the flowers I’d made from the previous classes. I have zero artistic creativity so with some help from the instructor talking through the placement of the flowers I came up with this. Note the last picture is how my husband decided to dig in and eat the cake 🙂

The Cake That Couldn’t Break Me

If you saw my post from earlier today you know I baked a couple cakes to play with today. I need one for Monday’s cake decorating class and the other for my friend’s brunch tomorrow. I’ve been really looking forward to this brunch! I was assigned to bring a fruit salad…lord knows I love fruit so it was a perfect pairing. However, she also said, and I quote,

Should you have any type of homemade pastry/baked good hanging around the house, feel free to bring it with you on Sunday…I mean, why feed the raccoons of Bellingham when you can feed the girls of Arlington..? 🙂

So what’s a sugar crazed girl gonna do? Bake a cake!

Thank you to my sister-in-law who thought of me when she saw this amazingly beautiful cake on Pinterest. I Am Baker is an amazing site for things like this 🙂 Gorgeous! And since I was pretty good with making the rosettes I figured I should give it a whirl 🙂

Ran into a few hurdles along the way, but I was bound and determined to clear em.

First…Ran out of buttercream. I’ve never used buttercream before, but figured I needed quite a bit so I doubled the recipe, which by the way is SCRUMPTIOUS!! However it only made enough to frost the cake and make the roses around the sides.

Second…During mid-cake clean up my hubby crunched my only 1M decorating tip in the garbage disposal because I was an airhead and dumped out the cup they were soaking in. Never never never put the cup you are using to soak tips in the sink…always keep on the counter so you think about what you are doing! Nothing that a quick trip to the local Michael’s craft store can’t fix!

Third…My daughter who I swear grows an inch a week is either taller than she appears or used her go-go gadget arms and stuck a little finger in one of the side roses for an unofficial tasting.

Fourth…New batch of frosting tint doesn’t quiet match the tint for the side roses. Maybe after it sits a bit it’ll blend.

and Fifth…The cake is all done, pictures are taken and I’m happy. If you’ve ever seen the Food Network Cake Challenges you know it’s not over until you move the cake to the table. In my case, move the cake into the cake holder. My finger slipped when pushing the cake board back and whoops! there went my finger through one of the roses. My personal touch I guess 😉

Regardless…I’m happy with the cake for the first time making something like this. It’s pretty and I can’t wait to share it with my wonderful friends. The best part…I used milk chocolate mousse filling in the middle of the layers!! If you haven’t heard of this, it’s like heaven and you can find the recipe on one of my earlier posts here.

I Spy

I’ve been cooped up this week with a nasty head cold, not to mention my two kiddos were under the weather too. It’s been a rough one. I told my husband he’s lucky he can open the door and walk through the kitchen with how I’ve been feeling. But my energy level is back and I’m ready to bake!

On that note…I spy 2 cakes, milk chocolate mousse filling, 4 sticks of butter and new Americolor color gels. (oh and some chocolate chip cookies my hubby made while I was getting my piggies painted) Oh yeah I’m feeling better! Now, what to do…what to do…

Making a Garden

I have to be honest here (I mean I’m writing on the internet so what else could I possibly be??)…I’m loving making flowers. I wasn’t sure I would since I’m more of a cookie gal, but after the last three cake decorating classes I’m seeing how fun other treats can be. The words that come to mind when I look at these flowers are classy, beautiful, elegant, realistic (ok that’s a stretch I even know it), and maybe most appropriate…royal 😉

Here are the flowers I made last night. Now I just need to decide which ones make the cut and get used for my final cake design next week 🙂 All I gotta say is they better put their game face on before judging!

Lillies

Daffodils

Violets

And of course more roses!

Color Me Chartreuse

I’m on a mission to decorate a cookie that looks like a chocolate chip cookie. However, I am the proud owner of only 6 color gels…none of which are close to brown/tan. So I got to thinking…do they make decorating gels in every color or do they have some sort of mixing table to make certain colors? Looks like the latter is where it’s at. I’m happy to say that I will be purchasing some more gels this coming week so I can play around and decorate up some chocolate chip sugar cookies…OH YEAH!

Here are the links I came across that seemed to be the most helpful. I obviously haven’t tried any of them, but wanted to get them documented so I can soon 🙂

Americolor Soft Gel Color Guide

Americolor Guide from Sweet Sugar Belle’s Blog

Chefmaster Color Gels

Chefmaster and Americolor Guide

Wilton

Hodge Podge of Everything

Rose Addiction

OK I know some of you saw this post title and thought “Seriously? More roses? Enough already!” I have been on a rose kick lately, but hey this is a little different. Just wanted to show my girlfriends what arrived in the mail yesterday. Do I hear final rose ceremony cookies??? Ohhhh yeah!

Rose-a-licious

My amazing hubby sent me flowers for Valentine’s Day. They are on my kitchen counter smelling wonderful and making me smile every time I see them. While yesterday was a tough day for me, today things are looking up! I got both girls down for their afternoon naps and I even got a shower in before noon!! I know, GO ME! I came downstairs after my shower and saw my beautiful bouquet of flowers. I immediately knew what I needed to do.

I popped a waffle in the toaster and started filling up a piping bag (yes…waffle first…a woman does have her priorities after all). I decided to practice my Wilton roses. I hardly had any icing left over from Monday’s class, but enough to make 4 roses. So, as Jack Johnson sang sweet love songs to me I piped away! Definitely better before the icing gets too warm from your hand but I think I did pretty good 🙂

Get Well Flowers

One of my besties was in the hospital last week and I’m happy to say is home, resting and getting back to her beautiful, happy self again. Thought I’d send a different kind of bouquet of flowers to help her feel better soon…Hopefully she recognizes them as flowers and not over easy eggs 😉

Love you girl!

A Not So Pretty Valentine’s Day Cookie

They can’t all be blue ribbon winners.

No one’s ever told me this, but I can imagine if when I was really good at raising squash or hogs as a kid someone would’ve wound up telling me this as a way to sooth my hurt pride when I didn’t win the local town’s heaviest _____ blue ribbon contest. So as I stare dumbfoundedly (there’s that damn word again) at my cookie I think to myself, “Suck it up girlfriend…they can’t all be blue ribbon winners.”

Scenario…Vanentine’s Day. Two sick kids at home, a kitchen in complete disarray and no boxed cake mix. There’s no way I can make a cake for my hubby with the heavy responsibilities of the day today. Nor can I bundle everyone up for a quick (read hour…don’t forget I have two kids nothing is ever quick) trip to the grocery store to buy a mix. So my next thought…I made cookies yesterday maybe I can decorate one for him. However, the only icing on hand is the one I made for class last night and it wasn’t what I was used to. Needless to say I was rushing things and next thing I knew I was piping out WAY too runny icing on my cookie. Thought the damn was going to hold but when I flooded it it ran over the sides. This picture shows the attempt at fixing it with a little scrapeage. Yeah…not gonna work. So…my hubby has a cookie that looks like it was decorated by his 2 year old daughter. Guess I could go for the cute factor and win a few points in the end 😉