Today's Special Value

When I started thinking about making my mom's birthday cake, I had trouble coming up with a design theme. I was discussing the cake with my brother and jokingly suggested making her a QVC (the TV shopping channel) cake. He liked the idea and thought I should go with it. When I mentioned it to my dad, he had a good chuckle about it. And so it was decided - QVC it was!

The cake was a funfetti mix that I thought would be festive with the red logo. Icing the cake was trickier than normal because I didn't realize I was missing a few important tools. My large cake icing spatula had broken in the dishwasher, and I forgot that I hadn't replaced it. I also didn't realize that I was out of 16" bags until I was elbow deep in icing. Because I was already so far into the cake-making process, and because I was a little short on time, I decided to forge ahead. I iced the cake with my smaller cupcake sized spatula and used the cake icing tip with a 12" bag. It was tricky, but I was able to get the job done. The result, however, wasn't as smooth as I would have liked. I then cut the QVC logo out of red fondant. Moving it to the cake was made more difficult by the open portion of the Q, but overall I didn't think it looked too bad. I didn't want to bother with trying to tint red icing, so I used store bought red for the borders. I did a shell border around the bottom, and considering that I hadn't practiced in a while, I thought it turned out pretty good. I didn't have quite enough, however, and had to space out some stars along the top. I was hoping that I'd be able to cover up the messy icing a little bit better, but again, being short on time, I went with what I had.

Mom was surprised, and everyone had a good laugh about the design. Apparently, it was so tasty that the leftovers never made it to her co-workers. :)  Aside from the icing being a little messier than normal, it was a good cake.

Continue reading...

Berrylicious

I was walking into Publix one day, and right inside the door was a bin of fresh blueberries. I had been wanting to make blueberry muffins from scratch for a while now, so I snagged a batch. The same weekend that I made the Valentine's cookies, I made myself some blueberry muffins for breakfast.

I found a recipe that seemed pretty easy. The only change I made was using berry flavored yogurt instead of plain. I thought that would make the muffins have a stronger berry flavor. And I had another chance to use my silicone muffin liners!

The muffins turned out very soft and fluffy. I was very happy with the texture. They were packed with tasty blueberries, but I thought the bread part of the muffins would have more flavor. Maybe they needed more sugar? I'm not sure. But I would make them again.

Continue reading...

Have a Heart

I totally fail at posting things in a timely manner - I really need to work on that! - but these cookies were too cute not to share.

I had told my new co-workers that I liked to bake but hadn't made them anything yet. So I figured Valentine's Day was the perfect occasion to take them some cookies. My snowflake Christmas cookies were such a hit that I decided to repeat that technique. When I found a recipe online for chocolate sugar cookies, I decided to add a twist. Plus, I knew the brown would look cute with pink icing!

The chocolate cookie dough was "interesting". It was thicker than regular sugar cookie dough, so it was easier to roll out and cut the cookies. I tasted one out of the oven, and it was a little too close to cardboard for my taste. I didn't have time to make another batch of cookies, so I forged ahead hoping they would taste better with icing on them.

I made royal icing again but was more careful not to add too much water. The icing turned out better, but I had a new problem this time - when I was piping the icing, the tip kept clogging up, and I had to free up the icing with a toothpick more times than I can count. This royal icing thing seems complicated - I wonder if I'll need to take a class to figure it out better.

I had reserved some white royal icing, and had intended to pipe another white heart on top once the pink icing hardened. But I started to run out of time, so I went with white and brown sprinkles instead.

Overall, I was very pleased with the look. The cookies did taste better with the icing on them, but - except for the other half batch in the freezer - I'm not sure if I'll make the chocolate version again. I think I prefer regular sugar cookies.

Continue reading...

Let it Snow!

I realized that I've been bad at updating my blog and never posted these Christmas cookies that I made a little over a month ago. What better than being snowed in to remind me about my snowflake cookies!

I had a set of snowflake cookie cutters that had been calling out to me for a while, so I decided to make use of them for the first Christmas party of the season. I made a sugar cookie recipe that I have used in the past, and it always turns out well. Cutting the intricate snowflakes was slow and careful, but I was happy with the results.

I also decided that my snowflakes needed royal icing to decorate them, so I attempted it for the first time. I used the Wilton recipe with meringue powder. Since I was going to be covering the cookies, I followed the instructions for thin royal icing, and let me just say that it was MESSY! I'm not exaggerating when I state that my kitchen looked like a smurf exploded. Next time, I will definitely add less water. The thinned icing also made piping more tricky - even though I was only using a #3 tip, the designs came out much wider than I intended, and it only got worse as the heat from my hand on the bag warmed the icing.

Overall, I was pleased but learned some things to do differently for next time. The cookies got lots of compliments, and there were hardly any left at the end of the evening - I consider that a success.

Continue reading...