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!