Tag Archives: icing

February 8, 2012 · 8:52 am

Under the Sea Cookies

My family loves going to crab feeds… we go to at least 3 a year.

I just recently learned that crab feeds are a Northern California thing. I had no idea that the rest of the world didn’t enjoy all-you-can-eat crab feasts like we do! I’m sorry people that live everywhere else… I feel very bad for you. A piece of my heart belongs to crab. ❤

One of the crab feeds my husband and I attend each year is put on by my mother-in-law’s church. They always have a silent auction as well as a live auction to raise money, and this year I decided to make some treats for them to auction off. (I thought it would be in the silent auction, but I was lucky enough to get my items auctioned off live. A little embarrassing because my husband’s grandpa kept trying to buy them, but I know it was out of love!)

The theme of this particular crab feed is “under the sea,” and there are cute decorations everywhere of not only crabs, but fish, frogs, and starfish. I made my cookies to match the theme.

I did shells with the same wet-on-wet technique I used here. Just do lines of icing right in the wet background…

Then trace a toothpick through to create swooshes. Technical term.

I also did some fun little bubbles…

Some bright fishes…

And some crabbies of course! So glad I decided to add sparkles to these guys. It really made them pop!

Here they all are, ready for the auction!

I also made a tray of cake pops. They’re not really anything special enough for their own post. I got a little crazy with the sparkles on these but I love how they turned out!

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Filed under Cake Pops, Cookies

Tagged as blue, buttercream, cake pops, crab, fish, icing, shell, sprinkles, sugar cookies, tiffany blue

February 3, 2012 · 9:14 am

Football Cookies

I made these for the superbowl of course… now that our team (49ers) is not playing, I really could care less about the big game. Seriously, who wants to watch a repeat of a game from a couple years back? Not I.

My parents are throwing a small party anyway, so I offered my already-baked-up football cookies to them.

These are from the last time I made footballs, which was for a baby shower back in June… I think I have improved slightly since then!

Btw, this is the footballs before I added the stitching… they look like coffee beans! Future cookie idea?

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Tagged as buttercream, football, icing, sports, sugar cookies

February 1, 2012 · 10:00 pm

Lingerie Cookies

So many people told me they love my clothing cookies I did a while back…

Well ladies…I have something new to add to your cookie closet!

I have been dying to make these ever since I bought the cutter months ago.. what better time than Valentine’s day?

Guess what? I was invited (well everyone was) to the Dollhouse Bake Shoppe Virtual Valentine’s Day Party!

Everyone “brings” something to the party, and we all get to marvel at the wonderful things others have contributed.

These sassy cookies are my addition to the virtual party!

Which one is your favorite?

I was favoring the sexy little number above… until I made this one lace up the sides:

I personally think it would be hilarious to tell your hubby you got him lingerie for Valentine’s Day… then see his face when you give him a cookie.

Too mean?

While these wouldn’t be appropriate for kiddos, they would definitely be perfect for a bachelorette or bridal party.

I even made some little hearts to go along with them. A little bit of sparkle adds a whole lotta glam!

I can’t wait for another excuse to make more! I am really kicking myself for only baking 8 this time!

Want to check out everything else that was made for the virtual party? Click here.

PS. If you haven’t already, Like me on Facebook!

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Filed under Cookies

Tagged as black, buttercream, clothing, icing, lingerie, pink, sprinkles, sugar cookies

January 3, 2012 · 10:09 pm

Lemon Cake Balls

First things first, I have to make an important distinction that will impact the future of my little baking blog.

Cake Pop = bake cake, crumble cake, mix in frosting, form into balls, dip. Whether it has a stick or not, this is the essence of a Cake Pop. I have an entire category dedicated to them. They are heaven. If you have never tried one, go to Starbucks and get the pink one.

Some people, however, do not like Cake Pops. (Crazy, right?!) They say they are too sweet, too rich, whatever. I use those phrases sometimes too, but not about Cake Pops! Others think the texture is weird. They’re gooey-ish, so it almost seems like they are uncooked. I hate lots of foods because of texture, so I can’t hate those people either. Anywhooo, I won’t judge. Because there is a solution to these Cake Pop hating individuals.

babycakes!!!

It bakes cake (and just cake) into balls, so that you can skip the whole crumble-cake, mix-in-frosting, form-into-balls part. You just bake the cake, then dip it! Another bonus, the little balls of cake take just 4-5 minutes to cook! Sorry for all the exclamation points, this is just a very exciting idea.. especially for all the Cake “Pop” haters.

So has anyone else caught on to the dilemma here?

What do you call these little balls of cake? Although the machine refers to them as Cake Pops, they are not the same thing and I refuse to refer to them with the same name. After much thought on the matter, I have decided to call them…..

Cake Balls.

Creative, I know. (For future reference, Cake Ball posts will be classified under “Cakes” and not “Cake Pops.”)

So here we go with my first Cake Ball run!

I went with a from scratch recipe for the first time, ~~but I am pretty sure box cake works with it too~~. I’ll let you know next time. (**update** boxed cake does not work!)

First batch was a little brown. Still tastes amazing though!

If you put too much batter in the holes, it makes a little edge where the sphere halves meet. Easily broken off though.

If you don’t put enough batter in the holes, the top half of the Cake Ball is not round. Like these…

Cake Balls ready for their coating!

These are lemon flavored, so instead of coating them in candy melts (like you would use for Cake Pops), I wanted to do more of a glaze. Think donut holes!

I used the same glaze I use on my cookies, but I added some lemon extract and lemon juice to make them just as lemony as the cake.

I dropped them in a bowl of glaze, covered them well with a spatula, then fished it out with a fork and tapped off as much as I could. I carefully set it on the wire rack (with wax paper underneath) and gave it some rainbow sprinkles. Sprinkles make everything 549463135487 times better.

Aren’t they pretty?!

See?! The inside isn’t gooey, just fluffy cake! Very good fluffy cake. A couple people said it reminded them of a donut, especially with the glaze coating.

**Disclaimer – All words above are my views only and I was not paid to talk about the babycakes product. It was a Christmas gift from my brother actually. 🙂 What a good brother I have!

4 Comments

Filed under Cakes

Tagged as cake balls, icing, lemon, lemon cake, sprinkles

January 3, 2012 · 9:50 pm

Beer Cookies

These were made for a friend’s friend’s husband’s birthday. The birthday boy loves Sierra Nevada beer, so these were done especially for him. (He also loves Budweiser but I was not brave enough to go there!)

I wanted to stick to the design of the real label as much as possible, so I formed a plan of attack before I did a single thing to the cookies. First I outlined the labels, then dropped some white dots in the center for the “mountain scene.”

I wanted to wait for the green outline to dry completely before adding the brown bottle outline, because dark colors tend to bleed.

And bleeding cookies are just as yucky as real blood. Okay not really, but to a cookie decorator it’s just as tragic.

Anyways, so I went ahead and filled the green in next before adding any brown.

Once the green was set, I outlined the rest of the bottle and carefully filled it in without letting any of the brown icing touch the still-wet green icing. It did touch on a few. I used those for practice when it came to the next steps…

I put these away and waiting until the next day to do the detailing. I didn’t want to mess up the perfect smoothness of the icing! I first drew on the mountains and river, and piped trees and wheat next to it.

Let’s pretend I remembered to take a photo at that stage. It’s the first time I really used my food markers. They’re tricky on my icing because it’s not completely hard like royal icing. More practice is needed!

The text for “Sierra Nevada” was more difficult that I expected… I was nearly crying over these! (Out of frustration, not sadness.) I wanted it curved over the top of the mountain scene, but it didn’t fit. Then I tried curving “Sierra” over the top and “Nevada” under the bottom. Too much curving and I couldn’t get it right… I decided to just bite the bullet and go straight across with both. The harder I tried the sloppier it got. Piping words it hard! You just have to relax and go at it as natural as possible. Once I realized this (and stopped crying) I was more relaxed and they turned out better.

Okay, suspense is killing, here they are!

My favorite part is the bottle caps!

Six pack anyone? 🙂

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Tagged as beer, buttercream, icing, sugar cookies

December 21, 2011 · 1:12 pm

Christmas Cookies

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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Filed under Cookies

Tagged as buttercream, christmas, icing, sprinkles, sugar cookies