Happy New Year Confetti Cookies

Chocolate covered caramel squares

I didn't attempt to stage these for a pretty photo as they're really messy, but they may be the yummiest item I've made. Chocolate and caramel. How can you go wrong?

Snowflake Cookies

I've always loved snowflakes. I'm not sure I've actually ever seen a snowflake that looks like a snowflake in real life...

The color in the photo turned out a little wonky I'm afraid, but it was the best picture I could get with the light blue.

Gingerbread Houses decorated

Merry Christmas~! The gingerbread houses are now decorated.

When I think about gingerbread houses I think of cute and sweet.

I really had no idea what I was getting into when I issued this challenge...

Which do you prefer?

Santa's Cookies

Merry Christmas Eve!

Some traditional cookies for santa. We've been pretty good around here, but I don't think this is going to encourage Santa to bring us any gifts. Mo says it can't hurt to try.

Caroling Snowman Cookies

Snowman melt my heart! They are my absolute favorite display of the season.

Ornament Cookies

I didn't like how these turned out, but I had excess colored dough from the pinwheel cookies that I needed to use. Next year I'll try something a bit different.

Ruffle Tree Cake

I've been wanting to try this out for almost a year! For a year I didn't realize I'd hate the final result... It looks better in pictures than in person. It actually looks messy. I saw a tutorial for a messy ruffle cake which looked really neat and I will have to try that.

The actual technique is super easy and quick... If you make enough frosting for your cake... which I did not. Rationing frosting creatively is not that fun when you're sleepy!

Original concept by Martha Stewart.

Pinwheel Cookies

I first saw cookies that looked like these on Pinterest and thought they looked gorgeous! Mine aren't quite as gorgeous, but they're great for anyone who prefers unfrosted cookies. Somehow I always know one or two of those weirdos.

Caramel chocolate pretzel sandwiches

If you haven't discovered Pinterest, I highly suggest it. If you need an invite let me know and I will send you one!

The original version of these involves a Hershey's Hug sandwiched between two pretzels. I took it a step further to involve caramel. Also, the store had sold out of hugs somehow so I used milk chocolate chips.

The basic idea is to place the pretzels on a cookie sheet and top with a Hug.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Place the pretzels with the hugs into the oven for 2 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow to sit for one minute

Top with another pretzel and gently smoosh.

Pretzel rods

I always love caramel pretzel sticks, but I didn't realize how much of a pain it would be to make them. I likely won't do this again anytime soon... I'm sure I was doing something really wrong. They taste great though!

Soft Sugar Cookie Trees

I've made many many decorator sugar cookies with royal icing this week, but my true love will always be butter cream frosting.

Quilted Pillow

I'm finally finished with my classes so I have a little time to try out some things I'd been putting off.

My mom gave me some money for my birthday which I put towards a new sewing machine. In talking with some friends I got the idea that I'd like to try to make a quilt. Considering the time and skill level quilting takes I decided to try a miniature version to start with. I had one flaw, but it turned out overall ok and I really liked my new machine!

Gingerbread House

I was going to buy a gingerbread house kit, but my sister reminded me that they can be made. I've got enough pieces for a little competition and any potential mishaps...

The recipe can be found here.

I did a google image search for mini gingerbread house templates and saved and resized the image before printing out templates to cut the pieces. I just used a straight edged paring knife to cut the pieces and it worked well.

Cherry Pineapple Cobbler

Ingredients

White boxed cake mix

1 can cherry pie filling

1 can pineapple chunks

1/2 cup melted butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Spread half of the dry cake mix in the bottom of your pan.

3. Mix pineapple and cherry pie filling in a separate bowl.

4. Spoon pineapple and cherry pie filling evenly over cake mix.

5. Sprinkle remaining dry cake mix over the top of the pineapple and cherry pie filling.

6. Drizzle melted butter across the top.

7. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour.

8. Allow to cool a bit before serving.

Cinnamon Ornaments

My mom and I made cinnamon ornaments for the trees. They look like cookies, but are not at all edible. They are very easy to make and smell great!

Ingredients

3/4 cup applesauce

1 bottle (4.12 oz) ground cinnamon

Additional Supplies

cookie cutters

drinking straw

colorful ribbon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

2. Mix applesauce and cinnamon in a small bowl until a smooth ball of dough is formed. (You may need to use your hands to incorporate all of the cinnamon.)

3. Using about 1/4 of the dough at a time, roll dough out to 1/4 inch thickness between two sheets of plastic wrap.

4. Peel off the top sheet of plastic wrap.

5. Cut dough into desired shapes with 2 to 3 inch cookie cutters.

6. Make a hole at the top of the ornament with the drinking straw.

7. Place ornaments on baking sheet.

8. Bake 2 1/2 hours. (you may also dry the ornaments at room temperature, carefully place them on a wire rack and let stand 1 to 2 days or until thoroughly dry, turning occasionally.)

9. Cool ornaments on wire rack.

10. Insert ribbon through holes and tie to hang.

11. Decorate with opaque paint markers, found in arts and crafts stores, if desired.

DO NOT EAT!!!

Cinnamon ornaments original information can be found here.

Cinnamon Roll and Cream Cheese Icing Recipe

Cinnamon Rolls

1 (1/4 oz) package dry yeast

1 cup warm milk

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup margerine

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

4 cups flour

Filling

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 1/2 tbs cinnamon

1/3 cup butter, softened

Icing

8 tbs butter

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 (8oz) package of cream cheese

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/8 tsp salt

Directions

1. For the rolls, dissolve yeast in the warm milk in a large bowl.

2. Add sugar, butter, salt, eggs, and flour. Mix well.

3. Dust your hands lightly with flour and knead the dough into a large ball.

4. Put in a bowl, cover, and place in a warm spot for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size.

5. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thick. (approx 21 inches long by 16 inches wide).

6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

7. To make filling, combine the brown sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.

8. Spread the softened butter over the surface of the dough, then sprinkle the brown sugar and cinnamon mixture evenly over the butter.

9. Slowly roll the dough from the longer edge to the bottom of the longer edge forming a roll.

10. Cut the dough into 1 3/4 inch slices and place in a lightly greased baking pan. (you may also choose to cut your slices so that they fit nicely into paper baking cups for easier transporting and serving).

11. Bake for 10 minutes or until light golden brown.

12. While the rolls are baking combine the icing ingredients.

13. Beat well with an electric mixer until fluffy.

14. When rolls are done, spread generously with icing (or you can microwave each roll before serving and top with icing so that they are freshly warm).

I've had this recipe for quite a while and have mildly altered it from it's original. It's supposed to be a copycat of the Cinnabon cinnamon rolls. All I know is I love them!

Leaves

I have been so excited to use these cutters and to make marbled dough!

I separated the dough and colored each part. I then took small amounts of each color and made a larger marbled ball. I worked a portion of the dough at a time as the colors get more and more mixed each time you reform your ball.

I love how the cookies turned out without the frosting and will have to make some other cookies this way that I can leave unfrosted.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm not sure if owls are Thanksgiving-y, but perhaps some people eat them instead of turkey.

Raspberry Almond Torte

This is absolutely one of my favorite desserts.

This is nearly correct, but not quite there. I had a piece of the real thing tonight and have some ideas for improvement. Can't say I'm surprised considering how hard it is to get copy cat recipes to be the same as the original, but I have hope for success in the future of this cake!

Lessons Learned: copycat recipes can be iffy. Pastry cream needs to be thicker. Cake needs to be cooked more consistently and for less time. Cake needs to be sweeter so as to offset the rest of the ingredients in the cake. Needs more raspberries.

Creme Brulee

Prepared custard and baked in a water bath:

Added sugar to the top for hard shell:

Baked under broiler for 2 minutes:

Lesson Learned: adjust amounts so custard will set more solidly. Buy blow torch... there's really no substitute for the caramelized top. It did harden under the broiler, but it's just too hard and nerve wracking for me to monitor a perfect top and it doesn't give the same effect.

Bright side: tastes good!

Failure aka Meringue Cookies

I only made these to avoid wasting extra egg whites not utilized by my other two recipes. Absolute failure.

Lesson learned: evaluate many recipes before attempting something new. Try recipes with consistent instructions. Something like a 100 degree increase in oven temperature is probably not a good gamble if it's unique to one recipe (my house still smells like smoke -_-). I'm sure I made other errors in these cookies, but that one was un-recoverable.

Learning Experiences...

This weekend was not a good one as far as baking was concerned. I made three new things. I was not successful in any of them. I gained insight into three items I've never made before and do have ideas to improve each of the recipes I attempted.

I did make a lot of progress on my classes this weekend so that's something...

Belated Halloween Cookies: Part 2

More Halloween cookies!

I like the black with white polka dots and pink ribbon hat which I almost didn't do at all. Trying to think of something else I can do with those colors...

Belated Halloween Cookies: Part 1

I missed Halloween!

I was so busy last week I never got to use my Halloween cookie cutters. I couldn't wait a year to use them so I've made belated Halloween cookies.

I use to make cute chibi characters out of clay and used that as inspiration for my cookies. I prefer cute to scary and even better, some scary cute!

Happy Birthday to... me?

This is likely the ugliest cake I'll ever make. Fitting for my birthday.

It was suggested that I finish it out and make it look something like this:

The aim of this cake was to try out as many tip techniques as possible. This thing is fully covered in frosting.

I'm using my new cake plate that my sister got me for my birthday. I love it!

Cinnamon Roll cupcakes

This is the best cinnamon roll and cream cheese frosting recipe ever!

I wanted to try making the cinnamon rolls in cupcake wrappers so that they would be easier to handle and serve in an effort to make them more transportable so that the frosting could be put on each roll one at a time.

When warm the frosting melts nicely over the rolls.

I'll post the recipe another day.

Cake Balls

I've made oreo balls, but I've never made cake balls. I prefer the oreo balls as far as taste goes.

Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting dipped in white melting chocolate with fondant flowers.

I wanted to see if you could color the melting chocolate. You can!

This was more of a test for a pending larger project that keeps getting postponed due to lack of time.

Fall Cupcakes

I love fall!!!

I had some extra cupcakes and some extra frosting so I thought I'd try mixed fall colors. I added each color to the pastry bag along the side one at a time and piped as normal.

I was going for something that reminded me of this...

Hello Cupcake!

Someone asked me for a cupcake earlier in the week and I forgot.

Due to my negligence I decided she deserved an upgrade:

Inspired by this. It only took me 10 minutes to frost this cake and I haven't looked at the original design in months so I realize it looks a little different.

I added black and gold edible Disco Dust for the Halloween effect although it just looks like pepper in the photo.