Tag Archives: pink

Lemonade Cupcakes

These babies are GOOD. Personally I think the best cupcakes I have ever made.

I like lemon. I love lemonade. It’s pretty standard that I order it wherever I go.

I saw these cute little mini cakes on Kristan’s [hilarious] blog Confessions of a Cookbook Queen. I knew lemonade was going to be somewhere in my near future.

I decided to go regular lemonade on this, because it’s my favorite. And sometimes you don’t want to mess with a good thing.

Lemonade Cupcakes adapted from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen

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1 box vanilla or white cake mix (I like to use Betty Crocker. She’s my gal.)

1 can frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed

3 eggs

1/3 cup water

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1. Mix 1 cup of the lemonade concentrate with the rest of the ingredients. 30 seconds on slow, scrape the bowl, then 2 minutes on medium.

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2. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 the way.

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3. Let batter sit in cupcake liners for about 10 minutes undisturbed. I always do this now when I make cupcakes. The tops bake more evenly (instead of looking like giant nipples when they come out of the oven.)

4. Bake at 350* for 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

5. Let cool completely before frosting.

Lemonade Frosting – adapted from my own buttercream recipe

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1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened or cut up into small pieces

1 lb powdered sugar

1 tbsp meringue powder

2 tbsp lemonade concentrate (you have plenty leftover from above)

5 tsp milk

1. Mix all ingredients together. It will be thick and weird at first, but trust me just keep mixing. Once all the powdered sugar is incorporated (we don’t want a snowstorm here) turn the mixer up to medium/high. It will get smooth.

2. Pipe on, or spread it on – it doesn’t matter. Whatever is faster for you so that you can pop one in your mouth as soon as possible.

Don’t forget to share!!!

The cupcakes below are the same recipe, but I colored the frostings for my cake decorating class.

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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!

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Love these sweet pink and white ones…

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This one is my favorite!

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Love the little bow on this one…

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Can never go wrong with sprinkles, especially festive non-pareils!

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My husband said the blue one below looks the yummiest… the big heart sprinkles on the pink one I found at the 99 cent store!

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Valentine’s Snowballs

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My husband calls these ‘snowball cookies’ but they are also commonly referred to as Mexican Wedding Cookies.

I came across these made by the talented Callye of Sweet Sugar Belle, and decided I wanted to make some for Valentine’s day. I’m not so much a red girl, so I opted for the very lovely, very predictable, Pink!

I told my husband about them and he said “oh you mean snowball cookies?” I had never tried or seen them before, but apparently his mom makes them every year for Christmas. I asked her about them and she was happy to share her recipe. I compared it to Callye’s, and it was identical, except Callye’s had 2x more nuts. I texted my mother-in-law to tell her this and she said her recipe had been in the family for generations! How funny that they were the same!

I am pretty much obsessed with walnuts in my cookies, so I opted for the double amount.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter (2 sticks), softened – or cut up into small chunks

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Food coloring (optional)

2 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups chopped nuts (I used walnuts… pecans and almonds are also a popular choice)

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar for rolling

Directions:

1. Mix together butter and powdered sugar until fluffy, then add vanilla and food coloring.

2. In a separate bowl, mix together flour and salt, then stir in the nuts.

3. Add flour/nut mixture to butter mixture a little at a time until fully incorporated. The batter was very thick; I had to make husband stir it with a wooden spoon because my mixer couldn’t take it.

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4. Form into 1″ balls, and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

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5. Immediately after pulling from the oven, roll in powdered sugar then place on a cooling rack. After all cookies are baked and rolled and cooled, roll once more in powdered sugar.

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6. Store in an airtight container with the remaining powdered sugar to keep them well dusted.

**I just realized after typing this that my mother-in-law’s recipe says to bake at 300 for 30 minutes. I am curious what difference that would make to these, since they have all the same ingredients. I will have to have her try these and tell me what she thinks?

Make something sweet for those that you love for Valentine’s Day! ❤

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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.

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These sassy cookies are my addition to the virtual party!

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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?

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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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Bubblegum Cupcakes

I was inspired and intrigued by this photo. When I was younger, I was in love with this blue bubblegum flavored ice cream at the nearest waterpark. It had real gumballs throughout. So naturally when I saw a bubblegum cupcake, I wanted to create it myself!

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Whenever I make cupcakes now,  I put my batter in piping bags so that I don’t make a mess when filling my liners. A big ziploc bag would work too, just cut one of the corners.

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The actual cupcakes didn’t come out as pink as I wanted, but at least I had good pink liners on them.

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Look how pink I got my frosting! I used my normal buttercream recipe, but substituted half of the vanilla for bubblegum flavoring.

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I had to get gumballs to decorate them. Apparently it’s hard to find gumballs in all the stores around here. This is how I had to buy them.

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They turned out pretty cute. Too bad I work during all daylight hours and couldn’t get better lighting for these photos!

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The taste? Exactly like bubblegum. It’s good. A little weird because it’s so much like bubblegum, that you expect what’s in your mouth to be chewy. Very strange sensation, worth a bite!

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Baby Bottle Cookies

My boss was throwing a surprise baby shower for her daughter-in-law and asked me to make her cookies!

The invitations were covered in baby bottles of white, pink, and orange – that’s right, a baby girl!! 🙂 I love orange, and this was such a cute color combo.

I bought a baby bottle cookie cutter to make matching cookies. This baby is 5″ tall!

 

Pink outline…

Filled them in white… because milk is white? I dunno it just made sense I guess.

I  planned on doing pink nipples. I think the very tip ended up looking funny pink, so I did that in orange instead.

On the bottles I did hash marks in pink, and he baby girl’s initials “R.E.C.” in orange.

Love them!

One last thing to mention.. With these cookies I tried adding corn syrup to my icing for the first time. (See this post on icing to see what I am talking about.)

I really liked how much easier it flowed, but I won’t be doing it again. I thought it would make them shinier, but they looked just like my normal icing. I thought maybe they would harden up better, but it was actually the opposite – they still seemed pretty soft after drying for 30+ hours. I bagged them carefully and let them sit over night again before stacking them up for delivery. They were hard enough that they were definitely okay, but I don’t really want to take that risk again. As far as taste goes, I didn’t really notice a difference besides them being softer when I happened to be taste-testing.

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Princess Cookies

Katie is 3 and wanted a princess party!

What better dessert than matching princess cookies!?

Castles..


Glass slippers..

and crowns with her very own name on them!

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These were so fun, I love the girly colors!

Thank you to miss Katie for letting me make these for you 🙂

Birthday girl enjoying a cookie (a day early because she couldn’t wait!)

And older brother too of course!

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Pink Daisy Cookies

Star of the week at school again – this time for the older sister of the butterfly cookies. Pink was a must, and daisies were the shape of choice.

I love my daisy cutter! (Found at an antique fair.)

I planned on doing centers like the purple daisies I did awhile back, but after just one cookie my hand was killing me and it didn’t look as cute. The swirl lets you see all the sprinkles anyway! (Kids love sprinkles!)

All bagged up and ready to go!

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Cookie Truffle Balls

I found the inspiration for these here. Brilliant! Why did I not think of this sooner when I heard about cake pops? These are basically the same idea as cake pops/cake balls, except instead of using cake, you use cookies!

I baked my normal sugar cookie recipe, making sure to cook them a little longer than normal so they were extra crispy. Then I turned them to dust in my food processor. I guess you could put them in a bag and smash them if you wanted, but I didn’t want to end up with chunks. I used almost a full batch of cookies. (I baked a few for a friend with the same batch, pics of those soon.)

I mixed in cream cheese. I used my KitchenAid for this because it would have taken me forever to mix it in by hand. I just kept adding more until it all started to stick together in a huge clump. it came out to about 1 1/2 bricks. (Oh and I used the kind that’s 1/3 less fat.)

Then I formed balls (just like cake pops) and set them on wax paper. I did a few with sticks, but I left the rest just as balls so they could be cute little truffles.

They sat in the fridge/freezer for a few minutes, then they were dipped in candy melts. These I was making for a friend’s birthday, so I did her favorite colors.

The purple candy melts you buy were kind of a weird color so I added some purple food coloring (Gel kind only, you don’t want to add liquid to candy melts!)

Oh and she has a twin, so I made some for him too. His “favorite” colors are all his sports teams’ colors. I had a choice between red-gold (49ers), purple-silver-black (Kings), or orange-black-white (Giants). I chose red-gold because the ones I was making for his sister were going to be purple and I wanted them to be different. I was trying to figure out how I was going to do gold when I saw these at Michael’s:

They look perfectly gold! So I made them and they looked awesome. Then I tried to move them and they got really messed up and I got SOO mad at myself for trying to move them… so I remade them. Don’t they look awesome!

THEN my friend finally texts me back… see when I bought the “gold” candy melts it occurred to me that some people  are allergic to peanuts. I have known these guys all my life and I figured he wasn’t, but it is still important to ask. Turns out, he IS allergic. Yeah, all his were completely done at this point. (Plus there’s the 3 that I had to redo because I tried to move them.) GRRRRR….

So then I had to redo all of his in red-white. They still turned out great but not as “wow” as the gold ones. Oh well. 🙂

…and then I needed a ride to dinner with them and the friend driving said she’d only pick me up if I made her some treats too. Anyone okay with getting paid in treats  is fine with me! It’s not hard to guess that these were my favorites!

Everyone at work is getting the rest, so I just made them fun colors with what I had left. The ones with sticks actually came out pretty cute too.

I bought these cute little treat boxes at Michaels for the ones that were gifts. I was just disappointed that I couldn’t fit more in each one. Next time I will get the “candy” sized papers and make the balls a little smaller…

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Butterfly Cookies

It was “star of the week” at school for a 3 year old girl. Star cookies? Nope, she wanted butterflies!

Pink and purple are the only colors acceptable. Fine with me!

All bagged and ready to go!

Have I ever mentioned how much I love to use pink? But now I have a craving to make stars…

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