Rainbow Treats for a rainbow party!
Cupcakes…
and cakepops!
The purple and red were chocolate…
and the yellow and blue were vanilla cake!
I really ❤ cakepops. Bakerella, you’re a genius!
If you love cakepops too, you should try making them! I have had some hard times, did some troubleshooting, and I updated my cakepop instructions. Let me know if you try them and how they turn out!
My search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie has ended.
This is technically round 3 of my personal chocolate chip cookie challenge. This go-round I combined different elements from attempt 1 and attempt 2. The result is a thick, chewy, loaded-with-good-stuff cookie with perfectly balanced flavors.
Here is my recipe:
1 1/2 sticks butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups + 2 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
1 cup oats
1. Preheat oven to 350*F.
2. Melt butter, then set aside to cool down.
3. Mix together the flour, salt, and baking soda. Set aside.
4. Mix together the sugars. Add the butter and mix well. Then add the vanilla and eggs and mix well again.
5. Add dry ingredients and mix until completely combined. Stir in chocolate chips, walnuts, and oats.
6. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Use a cookie scoop (or spoon) to make 2 tbsp sized balls and space them about 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 12 minutes. Let cool on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes before moving cookies to drying rack.
Self proclaimed challenge complete… now I have to find a new goal to work on…
Filed under Cookies
This idea I got from Pinterest. It blew my mind, just as much as the cake and soda thing. Sorry there aren’t more pictures, this was kind of a fast process and, well, I forget. You ever forget? It happened to me.
So you take an entire pack of Oreos (double stuf of course) and grind them to smithereens in the food processor. I hope that’s how you spell smithereens. Fun word.
This process is fast, so you want to have your pan ready to go. Take a sheet of wax paper and shove it in a 8×8 pan. (I guess you could use 9×9 but they’ll be a little thinner.) The paper won’t stay, but that’s okay for now. Rub butter all over it so that your treats won’t stick. Trust me, wax paper doesn’t taste so good.
Then in a large microwave-safe bowl, you take 5 cups of marshmallows – I used the minis (and yes this is how I measure a “cup” or marshmallows), and melt it with 4 tablespoons of butter (half a stick) until the marshmallows get puffy and the butter is melted (takes about 2 minutes, at 30 sec intervals).
After it comes out of the microwave, stir in 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract. You can leave this out if you want, but I tried it both ways and with peppermint was much tastier!
Dump in the Oreo crumbles and mix mix mix until you can’t mix any more… It gets very hard, so have a strong man handy if possible to do your stirring. Once it’s good and mixed up, scoop it all into your pan and press it in as hard and as flat as possible. Make sure you get it good in the corners and everything. You want your coal to be pretty, right?
Now comes the hardest part. You have to wait. I did this in the evening and waited until the following evening to cut it. I’m guessing a couple hours would do it though.
Once the waiting is over, pull up the wax paper and pop out the massive chunk of coal and cut up into little squares. There you have it, Chrsitmas Coal!
The texture is kind of like a tootsie roll. Chewy, soft, just a slight minty flavor… and come on – you can’t go wrong with something created from Oreos!
I suspect kids would love this recipe, and it’s something they could definitely help with. Plus, it’s fast and easy, and doesn’t take much planning. I hope you will try it!
Filed under Candy, Marshmallows
Easy, gorgeous, and soo yummy! I will not reveal how many of these I ate. Mainly because I don’t know, I lost count!
Filed under Candy, Marshmallows
I made a variety of Christmas cookies… enjoy!
Snowflakes… the ones above have sprinkles on the icing, the ones below just have sprinkles on the buttercream details…
Candy Canes…
Christmas Trees…
Peppermint candies… I used this technique from Bridget over at Bake at 350. I never would have thought of doing it that way.. brilliant.
I piped the red lines on the wet white icing, the swirled it with a toothpick 3 times.
I added lines on the sides the next day. The red icing bled into the white a bit, but it works because they’re peppermint candies!
Elf feet… similar to my witches’ feet I did for Halloween.
I used a food color marker to draw the shoes on the first few until I got the shape down right.
Presents/Gifts… I am pretty much obsessed with these. The bows came out so much nicer than I expected!
Gingerbread houses… I wanted to go candy/sprinkle crazy on these, but I didn’t have enough time.
Rudophs… both the houses above and the rudoph heads were made with chocolate sugar cookie dough. More of these to come, but the recipe needs perfecting first.
Santa Bellies…
Ornaments…
Penguins… I intended these to have cute little hats/ear muffs and hands/feet, but I ran out of time.
Christmas Lights… I wanted to make every color, but I didn’t have any more frosting and icing to dye, and it was too late at night to make more just for a few lights… I like how they turned out with the sparkles though!
So it was midnight… and like I said, I didn’t have anymore frosting or icing, and didn’t feel like making more. So instead of these becoming the rest of the Santa Bellies as intended, they got the lazy treatment…
and why were these the favorite of my family?! I swear I should just make circles for every holiday and cover them with sprinkles instead of doing all the fun little shapes. It would save me time and my sanity! On a brighter note, aren’t the sprinkles I used awesome?! Found them at Target while perusing down the baking aisle… I love Target.
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I had some leftover cake batter and decided to bake mini cakes and layer them for a work treat.
Vanilla buttercream and chocolate buttercream decorations. Snowflakes of course, I’m on a snowflake kick.
Two chocolate layers, two vanilla layers…
I had the best idea, but not until it was too late. How awesome would it have been if I did chocolate frosting between the layers!? Oh well, maybe next time.
Filed under Cakes
These are some Christmas cookie favors I made… It was a little last minute so I had to go with something simple yet festive.
I did Christmas Trees, Ornaments, and Snowflakes.
The Snowflakes are defnititely my favorite. I have been pinning snowflakes like crazy lately!
Each bag contained one of each cookie shape.
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The first and second times I have ever been asked to make cookies on sticks, were for parties on the same day, and both were trucks!
These were for a baby shower, and the theme was dump tricks. I did a Tonka style yellow dump truck.
The baby’s name is Teddy, which I wrote on the side of the trucks in Tonka style lettering, in navy blue – the color of the shower.
For the delivery, I wrapped styrofoam blocks in wrapping paper, and stuck the trucks on display!
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Here are some cupcakes I did for a friend:
I did the same chocolate cake recipe I used here, but this time with chocolate buttercream frosting.
Now for my adventure with the frosting:
I had never made chocolate frosting before, so I started off with the frosting recipe on the cocoa box. It was too runny to pipe, so I ended up adding a lot more powdered sugar to make it thicker. I honestly couldn’t tell you what the end quantities were… next time I make it I will keep better track of it. If I had to guess, I used at least 2x the powdered sugar. It still wasn’t thick enough, so I decided to add another stick of butter. The butter would not integrate into the frosting (because it was so runny) so there was little lumps of butter throughout. I stuck the whole thing in the fridge thinking it would thicken up a bit and then I could try whip it again. Still didn’t work… As a last ditch effort, I stuck the whole bowl of frosting in the microwave. I let it all get runny and melty (and smooth!) then I stuck it back in the fridge for a while. When I pulled it out and stuck it back in the mixer, it whipped up perfectly! I will be making it again, as it was approved by the chocolate lovers in my family. Except next time I will know exactly what to do to thicken it up!
The bling on top is blue candy melts with clear sugar crystals. Same technique as the pumpkins here.
I love these plastic cupcake boxes. The cupcakes slide in and out easily, nothing gets messed up from bumping into each other, and they are stackable!
Filed under Cakes
One of my mom’s good friends was throwing her grandson’s 1st birthday party and asked me to make cookie favors for the event. Here is the invitation:
So cute!! The tires are made of foam..
I found a tractor cookie cutter at cheapcookiecutters.com. She asked that they be on sticks, which is something I had never done before. (I had practiced with my Halloween cookies here.)
For it to work well with my cookies, I had to basically roll the dough extra thin, and do 2 layers of cookie surrounding the stick. Worked out nicely, and the cookies just came out a little thicker than I normally do.
Since the tractors were a little lob-sided shaped, I had to do them sideways on the sticks.
Accompanying the tractors I also did a few lonely tractor tires. I decided to add a little sparkle to these to brighten them up.
Love how hey turned out!
Cookie Carrie 
