Gingerbread Cookies

I meant to post this like a week ago, but better late than never. I don't regret it either. I enjoyed a fantastic week-long stay with my family. We got to visit my family, my husband's family (including his grandfather that I hadn't seen in 3 years), and old friends.

For this visit, I made (for the first time) gingerbread cookies for my mom. She really likes gingerbread cookies so it was a no-brainer. Even better, Bakerella recently posted a recipe! Her decorations were adorable!! I would've loved to do that but (1) I don't have her large selection of sprinkles and (2) I didn't have that kind of time. I was surprised I managed to get them decorated. "Fortunately," I couldn't sleep the night before we left, so I stayed up and decorated them.

I just got these sprinkles and since I didn't have the time to color icing and swap back and forth, I piped in white and then sprinkled with sprinkles! I think they were perfect for snowflakes.  

I had to make gingerbread men/women! C'mon, it's gingerbread! I should've thought ahead and made one for each member of my family.

I really liked this recipe. It was really easy to work with.

Appealing???

 Ready to bake

Turned out quite nicely. The only challenge with baking gingerbread cookies is that it's hard to tell when they're done. I wanted them soft. I don't like crunchy gingerbread. I managed to not burn any and most were soft! Pretty successful for the first time.

So it's 2012... goodness things in 2012 seemed so far away. Now everything is going to be here before we know it!! Such as the annual cake competition in February! I've done it the past 2 years. I really look forward to it. I've got to figure out what kind of cake I'm going to do. So if you guys could give me some ideas, that'd be fantastic!! The theme is "Grandma's Attic." I need to come up with an idea soon. Any suggestions?? What's in your Grandma's attic?? There are raccoons in my grandma's attic! But I'll keep thinking... :)

Christmas Cookies

I really enjoy decorating cookies. I don't do it that often, unfortunately. It does take up a good amount of time to just do a few, but if I have the time to focus and decorate, it's so much fun!! I was really determined to do some Christmas cookies this year and I managed it! Yay!!

Ready for pictures? I'm not holding back.

 The most boring ones, but still cute, right?

 Candy Canes

 "Frahhhhsty the snowman!!"

(We've been doing a lot of caroling lately)

 A larger snowman that is arm-less 

 Snowman family

 Stockings for everyone!

 I had some sprinkles leftover from last year so I was able to do the holly!

Don't worry, sprinkles last a year. I've been eating them.

 Christmas tree... the swirl was on purpose.

 many a Christmas tree

 like the sprinkles to make it look "fuzzy"??? I do!

A nice review of all of them :)

I think I've made some improvements from last Christmas...

Wow, I'm rethinking even showing those. And I was reeaaallly proud of those last year. Yikes.

Speaking of more cookie fails... I decided to make some chocolate oatmeal cookies (the best cookies ever!).  I thought I'd try to shape them into Christmas shapes. It might've worked better if I hadn't added too many oats (arg!! --although still not bad:)

 Them falling apart

A few made it, which made me realize they're just not appealing so might as well just make them in blobs. Or eat out of the pot... But I wouldn't ever do that.. :D

Sooo since it's Christmas I want to share some cute decorations I have! These are just a few I just snapped since they're in the kitchen.

 adorable penguin cookie jar

incredibly cute penguin pepper and salt shakers

my "baking" tree

notice the ornaments

(that's a baking snowman!)

 Isn't this precious?!

And cookies on cookie sheets!!

My mother-in-law got me all these. They are just too cute!!

I hope everyone has a fantastic and safe Christmas!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Houndstooth & Zebra

Whew!! There is so much going on!! And there are a few things I've wanted to share but haven't really had the time. I'll try to at least mention them here....

Here are two cakes I did this week. Two cakes on a Wednesday... how random. It's funny how it works out that way. I don't have any cakes for a while and then 2 people ask me for one mid-week. Whatever. I can work with that.

First was for a young girl who is, apparently and not surprisingly, an Alabama fan. Last year I got some houndstooth edible image to do a groom's cake for a friend of mine.

I had a lot left over and had the chance to do several Alabama cakes last year. Here are a couple.

Anyway, this year I didn't get asked to do any Alabama cakes (hopefully that's not a bad sign). But I had just a few strips of the edible images left. Just enough for this cake!

I should've thrown some more color in there. And I think I got the red/maroon color a little wrong. Looks more like MSU colors. Oops. And the piping wasn't supposed to be that dark either. If I'd gotten it the redish color, it wouldn't been prettier. But they seemed to like it so that's good! I do like how I put the A on the front. Something I hadn't done before!

The second was for a girl turning 18. 

This is the second zebra cake I've done recently, and I really like how they turn out :) It might be a common look, but maybe because it looks good! I like it :) This is a 12" (which means large!) It's a pretty big cake. 

Alright so really quickly, here are some recipes I've tried recently and I recommend:

• Chubby Hubby Bars - recipe from Cookies and Cups. She has fantastic recipes!! Try this out!
• Chocolate Chip Cookies - from Bakerella. I used Reeses' Pieces instead of chocolate chips. Yum.
• well, there's another, but it'll be on another post... so come back!! :)

Peacocks and Mermaids

A friend of mine has a sister turning 16! Big birthday. So she wanted a big and special cake. My friend got her sister these really cute shoes with a peacock on them. They're really cute. I was excited to see them too because I'd been planning on making a feather as similar to a peacock's as I could. But these feathers seemed to be more simple and easier to pull off. Well you tell me.

The first feather I did made me nervous. By the time I'd done them all I was happy with it. But I'm still not sure how others saw it... Or if they had any idea what it was supposed to be. Alright, here are the shoes...

 Requested colors were turquoise, pink, and red. I thought the cakes being blue would be best with red and pink details.

 I also had a really cute 16 to put on top but it cracked when I put the lollipop sticks in.

 Not sure why that happened. That's why you make back ups! Even though I should've made another back up like this one. My go-to back ups are my cookie cutter numbers. Not the best but usually reliable.

 The next cake was a Little Mermaid cake. The birthday girl's mom sent a picture of a cake that she liked so I used it as my guide. Fortunately she also had an Ariel figurine I was able to use. I do need some lessons on figures. Maybe I can find a (cheap and close) class.

 The birthday girl requested a purple cake so that's what she got! Easy way to make a little girl happy.

 I had fun working on the details.

See the extra numbers... just in case! :)

 Oh yeah, one more. A cookies 'n cream cake. 

It's the first time I've ever made it. I just blended up Oreos and put them in my vanilla cake batter. I did the same for the buttercream. I had done this before for my sister's birthday. I really liked it then! It was paired with chocolate cake. Yum. The cake didn't taste as I expected but I got a few comments that people liked it so that's a good sign! But it did remind me I have several recipes I've been planning to try out... Hopefully I'll eventually do it :)