Worst Blogger EVER!

So apparently I'm not that good at keeping up on the blogging. I have so much to post. I'm hoping to get all my Christmas goodies up this weekend! So check back! I have some cuties. Plus I was spoiled at Christmas and have a lot of new baking equipment to try out! YAY!

The Baking Checklist!

Chocolate chips... check! Sprinkles... check! Holiday Rice Krispies... check!

50 lbs gained... check!

And so it begins...

Christmas is Coming!

YAY! It's almost December! Which means, CHRISTMAS BAKING! Sadly it also means eating the Christmas baking and gaining 50 pounds, which I do not need to gain. I have so many things I want to try this year too! Guess lots of people are just going to be ending up with goodies on their doorsteps!

Tricks or Treats?

I vote TREATS!
So Halloween has come and gone, but I still had to share my fun baking adventures!

These cute little cookies were so easy! Mainly because I didn't have to bake the cookie! To make these little guys, all you need are Nilla cookies, a can of pre-made icing, and edible ink pens. I melted down the icing to make it nice and runny, dyed some of it orange, then drizzled it onto the cookie. I followed the same steps with the white, except for the dying part of course. Once the cookies were dry, I drew on the cute little jack-o-lantern faces and of course little ghost faces. EASY! And so cute! Personally I didn't find them all that tasty, but I would be all over using them as a decoration.

Of course I couldn't just stop with one Halloween themed treat. So of course I turned to bakerella.com for some more inspiration. And I definitely found it! First off, Cheesecake Pops!

Now, Bakerella had made these for Valentines' Day by adding cute little heart sprinkles to them, but I thought, why not make them a little more ghoulish. I found these amazing Halloween sprinkles at Michaels which were
perfect! I think the best part of the Cheesecake Pops is that they are made from a store bought cheesecake. So no hassle of making the cheesecake! Using a cookie scoop I got my little cheesecake balls made. I rolled them in graham cracker crumbs to help them keep the shape. I put them in the freezer for a little while after that so that they would be easier to attach to the sticks. Next step, the candy melts. I found black ones (special for Halloween of course!) and melted those following the directions on the package. Yep. That's all the instruction I'm giving on that one. After taking the slightly frozen cheesecake balls from the freezer I dipped the end of the stick into the candy melts and then pushed on the cheesecake ball. Then the fun part of covering the entire pop with the candy melts. I can't tell you how to do this. It's more a trial and error of finding what works best for you. Then sprinkle on some sprinkles and pop them back in the freezer for a couple minutes to make sure everything is set. And can I just say... YUMMY!

These are very very tasty! I love them. Perfect bite sized cheesecake.

So now that I had Cheesecake Pops, I moved on to Bakerellas Cake Pops. She had all sorts of cute Halloween ones, but I decided to start simple. I went with ghosts and pumpkins. First step: Bake a cake. Second step: Let it cool. Third step: Crumble it. Fourth Step: Add a container of pre-made cream cheese icing. Fifth Step: Make into little balls.

Then follow the same steps as with the cheesecake pops. Make sure they are fairly firm prior to putting them on the sticks.

For the ghosts however, you do have to change the shape slightly from balls to more of a cone shape. I covered them in white chocolate then using mini chocolate chips and regular chocolate chips, I pushed them into the cake pops, pointy side in. CUTE!

For the pumpkins, I used sour green apple sticks that I cut to make the cute little stems. ADORABLE! Oh, and the flavor of the pumpkins and ghosts was devils food. Yum. Chocolate!

Then of course, it's all about the presentation. Individually wrapped with a cute little black or orange ribbon tied on. Put into the cutest pumpkin shaped baskets I've ever seen. I found them at Michaels, and I also happened to find them on sale for 50% off. So that in itself helped to up the cuteness factor. Now they are ready to be enjoyed!

I have to say, I was quite impressed with the tastiness and cute factor.

Photographs of these creations were done by Chelsea Belle Photography. (She's fantastic!)

What a Hoot!

I may have conquered the sugar cookie! Or I may have cheated and used a mix....



I found a great website, http://www.cookiesbydesign.com/, which makes and sells cookie bouquets. I was looking around and thought, I could do that. There was one which had owls on it and was one of the cutest things I'd seen so I used it as my inspiration. Of course to make owl cookies you kind of need an owl shaped cookie cutter and living in Lethbridge, those are very hard to find. Thankfully I have an amazing Aunt who lives in Portland with great supply stores.


Once the cookie cutter arrived I was ready. I made the cookie dough and set to work trying to get the perfect thickness so that the little ears of my owls wouldn't burn.


Next was icing the little owls. I decided to try 'flooding', which is technique using a very loose royal icing and it 'floods' the cookie giving it a nice smooth finish. Add a couple of mini chocolate chips and then pipe on a cute little orange beak and voila! Owl cookies! Throw those into a cute basket (that even had owls on it), put in a couple cake pops (look for more info on those to come in a later post), a little tissue paper to cover the sticks, and a cute sign saying, 'Happy Birthday... Hope it's a HOOT!', and then you're done! I have to say, I find it rather adorable.

Pumpkin Pie Bites

So my Aunt found this wonderful blog which is now a website called 'Bakerella'. This woman is a genius! She has amazing ideas, so for Thanksgiving I decided to give one a try!

There's nothing like a bite of pumpkin pie that actually looks like a pumpkin. And they were surprisingly very easy to make. I figure they turned out quite cute as well. On the Bakerella website she drizzled chocolate on them, but my family is a big fan of whipped cream on our pumpkin pie, so of course to top off these cute little ditties I had to add just a puff of cream. Delicious!

'Bakerella' had also done some of hers up to look like Jack-O-Lanterns, which I have to say were adorable. If I make them again for Halloween, I will have to give that a try but I felt a little strange about eating a Jack-O-Lantern at Thanksgiving.

I have to say I was quite impressed with these cute little guys. Can't wait for my next attempt at some Bakerella projects!

2nd Wedding Cake... and a sad sad attempt at sugar cookies.

Well, let me first start by saying, despite my cakes and successes there, apparently I cannot make sugar cookies. 3 batches of dough, and nothing. SO SAD! I guess that will have to be something I aspire to. I WILL CONQUER THE SUGAR COOKIE!

Now, moving onto things that I can do! My second wedding cake was for my best friend Teresa. Teresa and I have been friends for at least 17 years or so, so of course I was going to make her cake! Teresa and Kevin got married in May of 2009. For Teresa's cake she wanted chocolate! Her colors for the wedding were chocolate brown and golds. So a brown and gold wedding cake it is! She pretty much gave me free reign which was great. She had ideas that she wanted and she had her cake topper so I took it from there. I also made 200 cupcakes, large and minis. The cupcakes were an assortment of vanilla, and chocolate with a vanilla buttercream icing and then hershey kisses on top.

Because I made the 200 cupcakes for the guests, the top 2 tiers of the cake were actually styrofoam. Yep. I cheated! But it still looks good! I piped all the vines onto the tiers and the leaves were individually punched out of fondant then handpainted gold and dusted with a gold glitter. Fun times. The doves for the top of the cake were originally cream colored, but they looked really really funny on top of the cake, so Teresa quickly got some spray paint and commissioned Kevins' parents to turn them gold! And it's really good that she did.

The cake itself was swiss chocolate with vanilla buttercream between 2 layers and a milk chocolate ganache in the center. YUMMY!

I have to say, a small part of my heart died when they cut into this cake. I saw so much of a difference between my first wedding cake and my second one. I was very proud of myself (and humble). I still had some stumbling blocks as I made this cake, but in the finished product, you couldn't see the little issues that I was so worried about! I was very happy with the finished product! I can't wait to continue working on perfecting my wedding cake techniques.... So if you happen to know anyone who needs a wedding cake maker.... hint hint. I may have to say yes if they asked me to make them one!

So in conclusion. I can make cake, cookies are the devil, and I definately want to continue doing this!

October FUN!

So, October is just around the corner and I've come across so many cute cake and pie and cookie ideas! So many in fact that I can't do all of them sadly. So I've narrowed it down to 4 different projects. A cookie, a cupcake, a cheesecake, and a pie! I'm excited!

My 1st Wedding Cake

My good friend Chrissy got married October 11, 2008. She decided that I should make her wedding cake! Can I say pressure? I'd never made a tiered cake before, never covered a cake in fondant, and never had to deal with making a cake to feed 50 people. Plus, it's only a cake for one of the most important days of your life! So it was a bit of a challenge. But considering a first try at all these things, I feel it worked out pretty good. It was a devil's food cake with buttercream icing which ended up being quite tasty if I do say so myself!
I do however see every little imperfection everytime I look at this picture. That's the curse of feeling the need to have all crafty endeavors end in perfection!

I've started a blog

So, I've decided to start a blog. Yep. I'm a blogger. I don't even know what that means. I've decided to focus it mainly on my creative endeavours. So hopefully it will provide someone with inspiration or even allow for me to have more opportunities to be creative.
The first few posts will probably consist of things that I've already done, but eventually it will get more up to date. Enjoy, I guess. My life isn't really all that exciting, so I can't guarantee excitement.