Tag Archives: icing

April 20, 2012 · 8:00 am

Circus Birthday {Girl}

A couple days ago I posted another circus birthday, but for a boy. This time, the circus party was for a little girl.

I definitely wanted to do circus tents again, because I loved the way my last ones turned out.

I recently bought a big assorted set of Wilton cutters. (Actually didn’t get too many duplicates, which was awesome! What does everyone do with all those duplicates anyway? I have a bag started..) Anyway, in it was a balloon cutter, and after seeing the balloon cupcakes for my last circus party, I thought the balloon would be a good addition to this cookie party.

(If I weren’t doing these for 2 year olds, I would have stuck a sting to the back of each balloon with a dab of frosting. I figured 2 year olds wouldn’t know to pull it off so I just left it out.)

I came across these adorable circus cookies by Nicole of Life’s A Batch a while back, and the mama for these cookies just loved them when I sent her the link. From these cookies I drew inspiration for the pink elephants.

We also liked the idea for popcorn buckets. I had seen these by Bridget of Bake at 350 a while back, and I also loved the ones from Life’s a Batch, so I combined the ideas into something I could create with my style of frosting/icing.

For the actual popcorn kernels, I was having a hard time deciding what I wanted to do. First I tried using only icing, and planned on layering blobs to create “popcorn.” But because my icing is similar to glaze, it wasn’t holding it’s popcorn shape the way I wanted.

I scraped that idea (literally) and kind of “gave up” and turned to my trusty buttercream… just started creating my blobs. They were kind of bumping into each other and not really looking like kernels anymore.. They needed butter. Problem was, I didn’t have anymore buttercream to dye yellow for the butter. I definitely didn’t want to make a whole new batch just for a couple tablespoons needed. So I winged it and started using icing. Not something I’ve ever done before. I outline in buttercream, fill in icing, and use buttercream for details. Icing on top of blobs of buttercream? What the hell is that?

I’ll tell you. It’s butter. MELTED butter.

Perfection. Accidental perfection.

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Filed under Cookies

Tagged as balloon, birthday, brown, buttercream, circus, cookie favors, elephant, icing, pink, popcorn, red, sugar cookies

April 17, 2012 · 8:00 am

Circus Birthday {Boy}

What are the chances? Two back-to-back circus birthdays for 2 year olds? One is for a boy and one is for a girl. You will see the girl’s circus birthday later this week.

I want to start by saying I LOVE the circus. I went every year as a kid. Even when I got older and didn’t yet have kids to take with me, I still loved to go. Oddly though, I don’t like clown stuff much. I don’t mind the actual clowns at the circus, but I don’t like clown dolls, pictures, figurines, etc. And I’ve never even seen It or Chuckie or anything scary. I don’t know, they just weird me out. Sometimes when I do to Chevy’s, there’s this clown there who makes balloons for the kids. She kinda creeps me out too. Maybe I just prefer a safe clown distance when they’re real.

Anyway, I didn’t make clown cookies. I didn’t have a good cutter… and what I was envisioning was not translating to paper well and not really “findable” through a google search. For some reason people think clowns in cookie form need to be wearing pointy party hats, although I’ve never seen a real-life clown wearing a party hat. Ever.

So I made circus tents. I found a few images through google search that I liked, but they were made with royal icing, so I had to adapt to my own style. Here is what I came up with:

I am SO in love with how they turned out!

We also did some #2’s for the 2-year old birthday boy.

I bagged them up to be favors, and attached these cute little tags the mama found. It’s hard to read in this pic but it says “Thank you for coming to my party.”

I also made cupcakes for this circus party. There were red yellow and blue striped cupcakes with cute little toppers…

…as well as a few balloon decorated cupcakes for a special display.

and here is a picture of the whole treat table!

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Filed under Cakes, Cookies

Tagged as birthday, blue, buttercream, circus, cookie favors, icing, red, sugar cookies, yellow

April 6, 2012 · 8:48 am

Easter Cookies

I love Easter colors!

The butterflies are a new cutter I bought recently. Much cuter than the round-winged Wilton butterflies I had before.

I wanted to make only eggs, but my friends (who I do a cookie decorating party with) wanted other shapes too…)

I love sprinkles. It’s like glitter. Makes everything better.

The rest were done with stencils and Wilton color spray.

I icing them solid white…

Then layed out the stencil on top (sorry no picture)…

Then went outside because the color spray flies everywhere… and kept spraying until it got a nice dark color. Waited a few minutes, then removed the stencil to find these beauties!

I bought my stencil on Amazon. This paticular one can be found here.

And this is why my husband does not help me decorate…

…and yes there is a “base coat” of sprinkles under the icing…

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Tagged as blue, buttercream, easter, green, icing, pink, purple, sugar cookies, tiffany blue, yellow

April 3, 2012 · 8:00 am

Peacock Martinis

Last week I got to make cookie favors for the bridal shower of my husband’s coworker. The bridal shower was cocktail themed and the wedding colors are teal green and bright purple. (With peacock feathers!) I was so excited to make these.

I chose martinis because nothing screams “cocktail party” like a martini. Here is what we came up with:

First I outlined just the glass and background, then I squeezed a bit of uncolored icing (so that it would dry somewhat clear) into the rim of the glass.

While that dried, I filled in the background. I think the color turned out a little lighter than the wedding color, but I got it as close as I could.

Then I filled the glass with the cocktail…

Lastly I re-oulined the glass and piped on a stem and base.

Tied them up with a ribbon and they were good to go!

Too bad they’re not real martinis, I bet they would taste delicous!!

**UPDATE**

Here are some pictures from the party these were for!

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Tagged as brown, buttercream, icing, martini, purple, sugar cookies, teal

March 30, 2012 · 8:00 am

Rio (Parrot) Birthday

For a little guy’s 2nd birthday, the theme was Rio the movie. I’ve never seen it, but it’s about a blue parrot. Looks pretty cute, I need to add it to my Netflix queue.

I made Rio cookies, along with 2’s on little circles, and packaged them up similar to the bridges I did recently.

I also made parrot colored cupcakes… I used the same technique for these as the rainbow cupcakes I made here and here.

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Filed under Cakes, Cookies

Tagged as blue, buttercream, cookie favors, icing, parrot, red, sugar cookies, yellow

March 23, 2012 · 8:00 am

Red Velvet Cake Balls

We’re back with my BabyCakes! These are what I refer to as cake balls, not to be confused with cake pops.

Here are the first ones I made a while back… along with some tips and some mistakes. (Number one tip being use a piping bag/zip top bag to fill the reservoirs.)

These were for a 15 year old’s birthday party, and the request was for red velvet. My manual that came with the babycakes had a recipe for red velvet, so I used that.

(I have never made, or even EATEN red velvet until I made these. Not bad, not bad… maybe that’s why the world is currently obsessed?)

The recipe made about 40 cake balls.

For the icing, I wasn’t sure what to use. For the lemon cake balls, I used my regular cookie icing. It was light and soft, and perfectly complimented the lemon.

For these, I wanted something heavier/thicker, but still somewhat soft. (As opposed to hard chocolate shell or something like that. In the end I had a combination of the two. I mixed together candy melts with a tiny bit of milk, then melted it in the microwave. The mixture was thin, so I added a bit of powdered sugar to make it more like icing. It was actually easier to dip these balls into than regular candy melts.

I don’t know exact measurements, but I would say I used about 1/4 cup candy melts and a teaspoon or so of milk. I melted for 20 seconds, then stirred until it was completely combined. I added about a spoonful of powdered sugar, but more can be added to get a good consistency. Too thin, add powdered sugar… too thick, add a few drops of milk. Pretty sure you can’t really screw this up.

The end result was colored (from the candy melts – no food coloring needed), vanilla flavored, dried well so that they could be handled, and was soft to bite into. Like a frosting shell. I will definitely be making this again for cake balls!

Here is the inside! Pure fluffy cake…

psst! – Kendra, see my little clippy on the piping bag up there? These things are heaven. Don’t leak and easy peezy to get on and off.

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Tagged as blue, cake balls, candy melts, green, icing, purple, red velvet

March 13, 2012 · 8:00 am

So many cookies…

I have been busy busy making sugar cookies lately. Like really busy.

Just thought I would share some pics rather than go into tons of detail about everything… enjoy!

Above are pictures of bridges and hard hats I made. I work at a bridge building company and some boy scouts came to visit to learn about engineering. These were their take-home treats! The hard hats are trimmed baseball hat cookies.

Above are some monkeys I did for a little boy’s first birthday party. Brown food coloring and I are not friends. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

The circles and onesies were for a baby shower. Too many boys I tell ya, we need some girls!

The California’s were for my husband to take to work. He works for a company that makes camping and tour reservations for national and state parks. California parks just opened yesterday for reservations so he thought these would be a good addition to their potluck. He also works as an intern for the state of CA a couple days a week, so he brought a couple in for his coworkers there.

These were for a surprise “baby is coming soon” party we had for a male coworker. They don’t know the sex yet and s/he is due in March, so we went with green!

Made these bunco cookies for my grandma. The little guys are so fun!

These cookies were for Cody’s Catholic confirmation. The silver crosses were iced first, sprayed with Wilton luster spray, then the rest of the cookie was iced.. Very carefully, haha.

There will be more cookies and other treats coming soon…

PS. I have been so busy that I didn’t have time to do St. Patty’s Day cookies. 😦

4 Comments

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Tagged as black, blue, bridge, bunco, buttercream, california, dice, green, hat, icing, lustre dust, onesie, sugar cookies, tiffany blue

March 6, 2012 · 8:00 am

The Lorax Cookies (and Roundup!)

Ever since the first commercial I saw for the Lorax, I have been BEYOND excited for the release! My husband agreed (after much persuasion) to take me to see it on opening night (he wasn’t very excited about that). It ended up being a very late showing and I was too tired, so we waited until Sunday instead. It did not disappoint!

These cookies took me a while to get to because I was waiting on my mustache cookie cutter to come in the mail. Then I was busy. Like really busy. So (finally) here are my Lorax decorated cookies!

I baked the mustaches separate and iced both cookies. I set the mustache in place on the circle so that I could mark the eye placement with toothpicks. I piped the eyes, then glued the mustache on with some frosting. Then I realized his eyes were way too small so I piped them bigger.

To finish it off I colored the eyes with food color markers, added eyelids and a nose, and piped on the big bushy eyebrows!

So many others have joined in the Lorax treat fun, so I wanted to do a little Lorax roundup of the things I have seen out there. Some of these ladies are SERIOUSLY talented, so if you have time you should check out their blogs/websites!

Truffula Tree Push Pops by Emily of So Domesticated. How cute are these?!

Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie by Ginny’s Cookies. Looks delicious!

Lorax Cupcakes by Hoosier Homemade. Love the bar-ba-loots!

Marshmallows by Meaghan of The Decorated Cookie. Have you ever tried drawing on a squishy marshmallow? It’s not easy! Meaghan can work these mallows like it’s nothin’. Love the 3 tiered trees!

Lorax Sugar Cookies (book version) by Paula of Vanilla Bean Baker. Look how perfect these are!

Lorax Decorated Cookies (movie poster version) by Marian of Sweetopia. I love the straws for the trees, it’s absolutely perfect! (and perfectly fluffy!)

Truffula Tree Decorated Cookies by Ellie’s Bites Decorated Cookies. So simple yet so perfect!

Lorax Cake Pops by Angie of Bakerella. I almost cried when I saw these. They are so perfect and I love them all so much! Wish I could handle a cake pop like this brilliant woman!

Truffula Tree Cupcakes by Courtney of Pizzazzerie. Perfection! She also has lots of fun party ideas whether for Dr. Seuss or anything else!

Thank you to everyone who let me link up their Lorax treats and share their pictures!

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Tagged as buttercream, icing, mustache, orange, sugar cookies, yellow

February 24, 2012 · 8:00 am

Meyer Lemon Sugar Cookies

I made my usual sugar cookie recipe, with just a couple changes.

I cut the amount of vanilla in half

I added the zest from 1 meyer lemon (my lemon was pretty small)

I added the juice from 1 meyer lemon (lemon was small but had a lot of juice)

I made cookie disks like I did here, and baked for 8 minutes.

Once completely cool, I drizzled them with lemon icing:

Mix powdered sugar and a little bit of milk together with juice from a whole meyer lemon to syrup consistency.

The cookies turned out very mild lemon, but the icing was a little tart and a little sweet. They tasted light – almost like there were no calories!

Valentines Sugar Cookies

For valentine’s cookies, I always do the traditional colors, then throw in purple. This year, inspired by this beautiful set by iambaker, I decided to go light blue instead. Enjoy!