Airplanes

I have been decorating my little heart out the past few weeks....finally posting a few of my creations fo ryou!

These airplanes were a bit of a special order. They are for a post wedding brunch. The bride had my cookies at a shower someone threw for her and she liked my cookies so well that she contacted me to order some. I thought that was the neatest compliment!! The brides future husband is a pilot and she wanted airplanes to give to her guests the day after the wedding. She requested the personalization on the plane but didn't care what colors I used. Being for a wedding event I thought it would be neat to add some sparkles to the plane with disco dust!!!

Disco dust is very pretty - BUT - very messy and very time consuming. These cookies probably took the most time of any that I've ever done - from baking to individually bagging them - took me 8 hours to make 50 cookies. Of course this is not all at once but broken up over several days. Personalizing on cookies takes a lot of time - a steady hand - and it something I'm still improving on. And then the disco dust takes time to put it on, then you have to shake off the excess and get more off with a paint brush. I even ran out of disco dust and had to get more - and this stuff is not cheap!

Check out how nice and shiny my flooding icing is - go me!!!

The planes say "T.J." and "Katie" on the wings and "Just married". On that tiny space it takes a lot of time and a very steady hand!
With disco dust it's hard to get the rest of the cookie clean so you get a little bit of sparkle on the rest of the cookie too!
Happy Baking.
Jen

Trevor's Birthday

I haven't posted anything lately but that does not mean I haven't been making cookies. I have! Plenty of them. I'm working on a few orders and then lots of things for Trevor's birthday party. All of which I will post when the orders have been delivered!

I did have another calamity in the kitchen recently....measuring away and splat....almost 2 pounds of powdered sugar all over your floor. I suppose there could be worse things, but at the time this didn't seem all that great. Not sure really what happened, just dropped the bowl I was about to make my frosting with and it had powdered sugar in it. Went all over the floor. I did have my little helper, Trevor though. He didn't mind using the vacuum to suck up most of it and did a pretty good job. Actually took the vacuum out of my hand so he could do his part. Thank goodness Pat came home though - because when we looked under the fridge it went there too....and he had to move that and finish cleaning up for me!

I really do have some adventures in my baking, don't I? Ha-Ha

Happy Baking,
Jen

Yum Yum Treats

I've been working on some sugar cookies this week but won't post them to my blog until after the event....so nothing to show yet! But I did try a few new recipes of desserts to try this week.

Had a craving to try something with peanut butter again...my favorite. And found there - Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars from Martha Stewart. The recipe is here. They are splendid. Very yummy and not too rich if you are a peanut butter fan. They came out of the pan very nicely - just a bit hard to cut with the peanuts on top. The jelly/jam is nice in there -but next time I might add more.....
A very simple but yummy recipe - Graham Cracker Chewy Bars from the Culinary in the Country Blog here. This was very easy to make - came out very nicely from the pan and was easy to cut. I always pray for those to work. A different taste and "cake" like. But very good!
Happy Baking. Already rolled some more sugar cookies this week to decorate!
Jen

Baking Lull

So I've had a bit of a baking breather with no sugar cookie orders pending these past few weeks since I finished doing 4th of July and Birthday cookies. A big strange for me....I've really been on a roll this year it seems making a batch almost every week. I do have to say it was nice to be able to relax a bit at night and then catch up on some MUCH needed sleep. But I've felt like I've been missing something and I know it's my baking! Have no fear, I'm about to get back into things this week with about 3 orders that are due on the same day....this is going to involve careful planning on my part for the next few weeks! So I'm about to be back and busy - yeah - I do like it that way!

I did try a cheesecake bar recipe - and although it looks pretty, it isn't much to write about! Thought I would post a picture at least to show that I have at least been using my mixer! LOL


HAPPY BAKING

Happy 4th of July Treats

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAT AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA

I had to make something for Pat's birthday so he would have some home made treats that day! Nothing too fancy or creative. Just some big monster chocolate chip cookies.....


My little taste tester seemed to like them.


And some white cupcakes with my leftover icing from my cake. Couldn't let that go to waste now could I?




Hope everyone had a good 4th of July!
Happy Baking
Jen

4th of July

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA
And Happy 40th Birthday to my husband Pat!
We had our 4th of July celebration at the surprise party I had for Pat. Here are all the goodies that I had at the party!


I used this recipe to make a flag sheet cake and loved it. It is from Pioneer Woman. I had to buy a new sheet pan for the event - which didn't take much twisting of the arm! I"m always worried about my cakes not getting cooked evenly but this one was great. Pat's favorite cake is white cake with white icing.


The cream cheese frosting went on very nicely - although it did make way too much even for this big 17 * 12 inch sheet pan. Fresh blueberries and strawberries to make the cake look like a flag. I like how it turned out, but perhaps I should have use raspberries like some other recipes used to make smaller stripes. But all in all, I''m pleased with how it turned out. The blueberries are actually fresh picked by Trevor when he went on a field trip last week with his school!!!!


Here's Pat with his cake right before blowing out the candles.
Always worried about how a cake is going to come out of the pan - but it was beautiful! The cake was a big success for me - Yeah. Although there was more than 1/2 left over. Darn it. People don't save much room for dessert anymore!!!

And what would a Birthday around my house be without some decorated sugar cookies? I think I really like doing 4th of July cookies best - you can pretty much do any cookie in red, white and blue. And a lot less work with only the 3 colors than most of my cookies that I decorated!

Can you tell this is a firecracker? I found this design on Ali Bee's Bake Shop Blog and had to make one. I didn't have exactly the size cookie cutter that I really wanted to use so had to improvise a little...next time I will have to use a bigger one to make the "sparkles" at the bottom much more prominent.

And what is better to help celebrate Pat's 40th Birthday party which is on July 4th then red, white and blue beer mugs? At least these won't give you a hang over the next morning if you eat too many.

The whole assortment of 4th of July and Birthday cookies. Here's something else I was busy making for the 4th of July. This is another idea from The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle. I thought the popsicles I saw here were so cute that I had to try them. Another very creative idea to use a cowboy hat and make them popsicles. These went to Trevor's friends at school and my friends at work.
Can you see the cowboy hat? I cut off the edges....and then "iced" sticks to the back to make them look authentic. Sugarbelle is so darn creative!!! What a perfect thing to give to my coworkers and Trevor's friends at school to say Happy 4th of July.

Hope you all have a spectacular 4th of July!
Happy Baking.
Jen