Pretty

And the latest party favors for the adorable soon to be 3 Brooke. Brooke is having a Valentines Day birthday party tomorrow and hopefully she and her friends will love their pretty party favors. Happy Birthday Brooke!

Birthday Cake

As promised, I made myself a birthday cake. I've been wanting to try my hand at it for a while now and with no friends or family with a birthday in the near future, I am left to make my own. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It was a three layer cake (2 chocolate, 1 yellow cake) with vanilla buttercream frosting. The yellow cake was my first ever attempt at completely from scratch cake and it was fabulous. I used half of the yellow cake to make my cake pops so I rummaged through my pantry and made the two chocolate layers with a box mix. They both were delicious but the hands down winner was the yellow cake. Here's some before and after pics to make you salivate. I must add that this cake was so enormous that on the evening of my birthday I was driving around my neighborhood with packages of cake for friends and family and still had enough for next-day leftovers for the girls.

And just delicious!

Mmmmm....

Okay. Is it time to take a breather yet? I don't think so. So, since I've started with the cookies I've become completely obsessed with trying to make new things to see what I can do. If you've read previous posts then you know that I, never in a million year, thought I would be baking anything at all. So, my latest projects were to attempt the fabulous Bakerella's Cake Pops. Let me tell you, they're delicious and adorable. I can't wait to get more creative with them next time. I just need some volunteer eaters!

Well, my birthday is Wednesday. My next project is going to be a birthday cake for myself. I don't have anyone else to make a cake for and I just can't wait any longer. I simply just HAVE to try my hand at cake making/ decorating. I will post the results regardless how it turns out, just a warning. Wish me luck!

Do I need sleep?

So, how necessary is sleep anyway? In truth, the best time to decorate cookies is very late at night when the house is quiet, I can turn on my own music, and not have to worry about my two year old yelling, "I want cookie!" So here I was, last night, let's say maybe 11:00 (not too bad), trying out some new designs. I have some royal icing leftover from some cookies I made for a friend so I just threw some cookies in the oven and I was off. Now let me tell you, I have tried probably 5 different sugar cookie recipes and I really believe the one I have decided on is the best sugar cookie ever. Not too hard, not too soft. Not too sugary (leave that to the icing) with a rich, buttery taste. Yum! I also happen to love the recipe I got for the royal icing. It doesn't dry rock solid so when you bite into it there's still a delicious creamy taste that I believe all frostings should have. It does, however, firm up perfectly for wrapping and stacking, an essential when it comes to sugar cookies! So here are the yummy cookies I stayed up decorating last night, the reason why I used my arm to prop my head up today at Disney On Ice with the family...

So now that you know a brief story of my baking history (see previous post below), let me show you what I've been working on. Since the first bake sale was a bit of a success I decided to try again. Here's a few pics of those cookies:

Sorry, the picture's not so great. I've been working on that.

Branching out from just Batman.

A few for the pre-schoolers. In this pic the cookies we still 'in progress'.

I've just completed my first birthday party favors and they were a huge success. Rainbows for girls and Batman for boys. I had so much fun with these. I made a custom cookie cutter for the rainbows, which after a little work, turned out just great. Since then I've learned a little more about the art of decorating a cookie but let me show you how these turned out. I'm pretty happy but can't wait for my next project.

This was a practice cookie for how I would do the rainbow. 

And here's how the rainbows turned out. Fun!

I've done so many Batman logos I fell like I could do them in my sleep!

So since those were done, and my next order isn't due for another week or so I've moved on to Valentines Day! I've just been playing around with a few designs and practicing on tons of little hearts. Now I have a few small orders for V Day to start working on, but let me show you the latest hearts.

You probably recognize these from the top of the page. Love 'em.

Me? A baker?

The first week of freshman year of college my mom sent me a HUGE box of homemade cookies. Now let me preface this with what 'homemade' meant in my house growing up when it came to baking... If you put it in the oven yourself, it earned the title 'homemade'. So, my sweet mother sent enough cookies to feed a small army and I marched down the hall of my dorm passing cookies out and trying to make new friends with the people that lived on my floor. I get to the end of the hall and the girl living in the room, Brooke, says, "Wow, are these homemade?" Hmmm... How to answer.... So I tell her, "Sure, my mom made them." So Brooke takes a bite and sure enough, what does she pull out of her mouth? A piece of the slice and bake wrapper.

So up until recently this was what I thought of when I thought of baking. Then, I got involved with a great organization called Camp For All Kids. You see, I went to sleep-away camp growing up. It was the most amazing place, where we could be ourselves, and learn what kind of person we wanted to be. It was home, but better. I would have much rather gotten in trouble with my parents than with the director of my camp. My 'second father' as I thought of him. Looking back on it though, every kid there was from a middle to upper class family and almost every kid was caucasian. The great thing about Camp For All Kids is, through camperships (scholarships), they help to bring ethnic diversity to the camps that they work with. They enable kids who for many different reasons, but especially financially, wouldn't be given the opportunity to attend these camps. This was very close to my heart because of how much my camp meant to me.

I wanted to get involved and the main thing they need was help with fundraising. I've never done a moments worth of fundraising in my life. What on earth would I do? A bakesale? But, I don't bake. So here I am, holding a bakesale. Since I have a design background, I decided in order for people to but them they would have to be eye-catching. So here we go... For my first attempt it wasn't too bad, and people were very generous when they heard where the money was going.

Since then, I've become completely obsessed with baking and decorating cookies, learning new techniques, and trying to challenge myself. All of my proceeds are donated to Camp For All Kids. Hopefully, through the money raised from my cookie biz, I'll be able to change at least one kid's life. Now, let me see if I can figure out how to post some pics of that first attempt for you...