Megan's Confections

Why I'm not baking

2011-01-30T01:40:00.000-05:00

I may be a bit too occupied to bake and blog for a while. This little girl is going to be taking up a lot of my time and attention!

Cold weather cookies

2011-01-20T21:07:00.001-05:00

We had some snow & ice last week (mostly ice!), so I was off work for a day and a half. I decided to spend my time baking cookies!

What better shapes to make than mittens and snowflakes?

I need to be a bit neater on my snowflakes, but I was in a rush and just making them for fun.

I brought these to work the next day to share.

I used wet on wet icing to add the designs to the mittens so they would lie flat.

I also made some hats to go with the mittens, and as I didn't have a hat cookie cutter I freehanded it. Andrew thought they looked like UFOs. Maybe they would have turned out more hat-like if I had drawn them out first. Icing is not the easiest thing to draw freehand with.

The cookies were yummy, and my coworkers and I ate them all the next day!

Elephant and Giraffe Birthday Cookies

2011-01-10T09:58:00.000-05:00

These elephants and giraffes were made for Andrew's cousin's birthday (ages ago!).

He loves the zoo!

My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-01-08T10:30:00.000-05:00

Different people have different ways of coping with stress. I cope by baking. It's cathartic. Especially when I bake something I've baked before, and I know it will turn out just fine. We had a bit of an emergency yesterday, so when it finally got handled, I decided I needed to make chocolate chip cookies.

My favorite recipe for chocolate chip cookies is Alton Brown's thin chocolate chip cookie recipe. He also has a puffy and chewy recipe that taste the same (amazing!) but have different textures.

Before my cookie project began, we had a bit of an emergency at the house. The pipe burst under the sink and started spewing water all over my bathroom! Thank goodness I was at the house at the time. I called maintenance and figured out the turn the water off. After about 2 - 3 minutes of spewing water, my bathroom was flooded with about an inch of water, the carpet right outside the bathroom was saturated, and water was pouring into the floor vent. This caused water to start leaking out of the ceiling in the kitchen. I threw down all our beach towels to soak up the water in the bathroom, and waited for maintenance to come.

After three different groups of workmen came in and out, we finally got the sink fixed, the water sucked out of the carpet, and a nice big hole in our ceiling in our kitchen. It's drying out, and hopefully the hole will be patched up Monday.

Anyway, back to the cookies. I started by putting one egg, 2 ounces of milk, and 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla in a bowl. Real vanilla is important here.

I whisked the mixture gently with a fork and left it to come to room temperature while I got together other ingredients.

Next, I added 2 1/4 cups flour and 1teaspoon each baking powder and kosher salt to another bowl.

Regular salt would work, but I think the kosher salt is really what sets this cookie apart. The salt is more corse and it makes the chocolate taste more chocolatey.

I should have sifted these ingredients together, but I didn't feel like cleaning out my sifter, and stirring them with a fork has worked for me in the past.

Next, I got together a cup of white sugar, half a cup brown sugar, and 2 sticks of unsalted butter (I only had one stick unsalted, so I used a pinch less salt in the flour mixture and a stick of salted butter).

Of course, a bag of chocolate chips.

The butter was already room temperature, so I beat it in the kitchen aid for a minute. If it hadn't been soft enough, I would have put the sticks in the microwave for 5 seconds. I'm sure I'm not supposed to do that, but sometimes I just don't have the patience to wait for butter to soften on its own.

Then I added the sugars.

I beat them until combined.

Then I poured in the egg mixture.

And I beat it until combined.

I added the flour mixture by the cup full, beating until combined between each addition.

And finally, I added the chocolate chips.

I just turned the mixer on stir for a few seconds to get then mixed in.

I set the oven for 375 and covered two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Then I used a scoop to scoop out 6 cookies per sheet.

When I make smaller cookies, like these, I can fit 8 on a sheet. They spread out a good bit when baking.

I bake them for 5 minutes, turn them in the over, and check on them after 3 more minutes. The cooking time varies depending on the size of the cookie and the oven. Our oven runs hot, so the big cookies took 10 minutes and the little ones took 8. Cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet before moving them to a cooling rack.

We had guests over for dinner, and these were dessert. They might be Andrew's favorite thing I bake!

For the full recipe, go to food network's site and look up Alton Brown Thin Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Souffle

2011-01-07T10:24:00.002-05:00

So, I decided to make soufflé for Andrew and me. I like baking things I haven't ever baked before just so I can say I've tried it.

The cheese souffle turned out pretty good! It did fall a bit after it started to cool, so I'm sure I did something wrong, but they looked nice and souffle like right out of the oven, and they tasted cheesy and delicious!

Baklava

2011-01-06T04:47:00.001-05:00

Baklava seems like a scary thing to make, but it really wasn't as hard as it seemed. The hardest part was parting with the cash to buy the nuts that go in the filling. With a bunch of pistachios, walnuts, and almonds, this is one expensive dessert!

After shelling and grounding the nuts with some sugar and spices, I unrolled the thawed phyllo dough and cut it to the size of the pan. This stuff gets crumbly quick, so I made sure I had everything ready before I took it out of its packaging.

I had the filling and a bowl of melted butter ready to go.

After brushing the pan with butter, I put down the first sheet.

Each sheet of dough got a brushing of butter. I put down 10 sheets, one layer of filling, 6 sheets, another layer of filling, 6 more sheets, the last of the filling, and 8 sheets on top.

I baked the baklava then made the syrup to go on top. It has honey, sugar, water, cinnamon, and an orange peal (gets removed at the end).

Though it turned out pretty good, I don't think I cooked the syrup enough. I used Alton Brown's recipe (available on the food network site - I omitted the rose water because I didn't have any), and the reviews said if you cook the syrup as long as it said to, you'd end up with hard candy. I was overly cautious, and it didn't get thick enough!

It still turned out pretty good, and I'll definitely make it again! Apart from gathering ingredients and shelling the nuts, the process was pretty easy!

Bridal shower cookies

2011-01-04T10:14:00.005-05:00

These tea cup & tea pot cookies were made for a bridal shower.

Unfortunately, they did not make it there intact. They are the only cookies I've ever shipped to break like that!

Luckily, I did figure out what was wrong so that that hopefully won't happen in the future.
I have done most of my baking in the fall, winter, and spring, so the hot and wet summer meant I needed to use more flour in the dough to get it as sturdy as normal. Plus, I now bake cookies that will be shipped a little longer to ensure they will be sturdy for the trip. These were softer, which is tasty, but dangerous for travel.

I was devastated that they broke in transit, but glad to have learned more about properly shipping my cookies.

Christmas Eve cookie decorating

2011-01-02T10:31:00.004-05:00

On Christmas Eve I pulled out all my cookie decorating supplies for Andrew and me to decorate cookies! We put on the Grinch and got to work.

He usually watched while I decorate things with specific colors in specific ways, so this time I let him choose the shapes, colors, and how he wanted to decorate. Hence the pterodactyl in the above picture.

We used gingerbread cookies and buttercream icing.

His gingerbread man has a funny mouth.

Note the Christmas cow.

We happily ate our mistakes!

A stocking for Me, the baby, and Andrew!

Yes, there is a dinosaur, some squirels, and a sheep.

There's the traditional Christmas octopus...

We had lots of fun decorating and eating cookies!

Gingerbread House

2011-01-01T09:57:00.002-05:00

Seminary housing had a gingerbread contest this Christmas, so Andrew and I rose to the challenge!

We found a template for a gingerbread house, sized it, printed it, and used it to cut out the gingerbread pieces.

Then we baked the gingerbread, crushed butterscotch candies, filled the windows, and put the pieces back in the oven to melt. Before assembling, I piped on the details and Andrew sanded down the edges to fit perfectly with the micro-plane grater.

Andrew made a box base and covered it with foil. He put holes in it so we could fill it with Christmas lights. They lit up the melted candy in the windows to make the house glow. We then put together the house around the bunched up Christmas lights.

Here's the finished product (pardon the not-so-great lighting).

The trees are upside down ice cream cones with dark green icing piped with a star tip. After they dried, I used meringue powder and water (egg whites would have worked, too) to glue on some sanding sugar snow to the branches.

We also added candy canes to the corners of the house.

The snow on the ground is royal icing covered with sanding sugar.

The ceiling is wheat Chex cereal. This took forever! We had to get the Chex pieces to be just the right shape and size to fit in odd roof angles. We dusted the finished roof with powdered sugar snow.

The walkway is made of cappuccino jelly beans.

The berries on the greenery are red sprinkles that I added with tweezers.

We won the housing competition and probably started a new Christmas tradition! This was a lot of fun!

So.... I haven't posted in awhile

2011-01-01T09:32:00.005-05:00

I haven't updated the blog in forever, but I've been a bit busy. I've been working at a new job (not so new anymore), and I've been growing a baby! Sarah Grace is due to make her way into the world Feb 8th. Between morning sickness, fatigue, and growing too big to comfortably bend down, baking and blogging haven't been priorities.

I have done some baking, though, and so I'm going to start posting again - even though there may be no one left reading.

Late Mother's Day flowers.

2010-05-28T10:10:00.005-04:00

I made these pink and white flower cookies to send to my mom for mother's day. Unfortunately, I they didn't actually get made until Mother's Day, and my mom lives 12 hours away from here, so they arrived a good while after Mother's Day...

Now I'm talking about them almost a month after Mother's Day, so I guess I should just call them Spontaneous Summer Flowers for My Mom.

I kept it simple with only 2 icing colors for the designs. Sometimes simple is better, especially with flowers and bright colors.

The tulips are my favorite.

Or maybe the daisies...

I like them all! They are chocolate cookies after all, and chocolate is great no matter what shape.

Georgia Tech Graduation cookies

2010-05-23T18:21:00.005-04:00

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last updated my blog! These last few weeks have flown by. Andrew and I took a trip to Ashville to see the Biltmore House and my wonderful parents, Andrew's parents came all the way from Iowa to visit us, and Andrew's spent most of his free time studying for finals.

Luckily for the future of my blog, I've also been baking cookies! These Yellow Jacket cookies were made for my brilliant cousin, Joey, who just graduated from Georgia Tech.

I didn't have a GT mascot cookie cutter sitting around, so I just used a circular cookie and drew on the design. They aren't perfectly uniform, but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out considering I don't have a way to project the image onto the cookie.

I packaged all the cookies up individually for the trip, and I'm told they all made in to my Aunt whole!

Congratulations Joey! I hope you liked the cookies!

Robot Cookies

2010-04-27T07:19:00.006-04:00

I made robot cookies for a friend's baby shower Sunday.

There were robots on the cupcake kit they used for the party, so I based my cookies off of those robots.

I did the bodies and the color details the first day, waiting a few hours for the icing to set before adding the top details.

I added the black icing details the next day to prevent color bleeding. I think I got the black icing a little too thick, it would not flow smoothly from the icing tip.

I used made four different colors of robots, each color with a different design.

The blue ones are my favorite. I liked the light on the top of their heads.

Blue and White Butterflies

2010-04-16T17:26:00.005-04:00

I tried a couple new designs for butterfly cookies the other day.

To make this butterfly, I drew a white line down the center of each wing while the icing was still wet.

Then I dragged a toothpick back and forth through the icing.

These butterflies are simpler than my usual design, but I like the simplicity.

I also used the brush embroidery technique on a couple of butterflies.

After experimenting awhile, I decided to ice the rest of the butterflies with zigzags on the top wings and dots on the bottom, like I usually ice them.

I used teal, blue, and white and rotated the colors on each butterfly.

Butterflies might be my favorite cookie to ice. There are so many color and design options that they are hard to mess up and almost always end up looking pretty good!

Brush Embroidery

2010-04-14T18:35:00.006-04:00

I finally found a design that I like for the teacup and teapot cookies! I made the flowers with a technique I just learned called brush embroidery.

After looking up how to do brush embroidery, I practiced on a salad plate.

I used thick royal icing and outlined a flower.

Then I dragged a clean paint brush from the edge of the outline towards the center.

After the outside petals are finished, I do the same thing with the inside petals and finish with a dot in the center of the flower.

I think I'm going to be playing around with this style of decorating a lot now. I really like how it turned out!

Fixing Mistakes

2010-04-13T21:22:00.005-04:00

I had some extra icing and dough from the birthday ladybug cookies that I didn't want to go to waste, so, along with a batch of black, red, and white butterflies, I took the opportunity to try out a little apple cookie cutter I'd not used yet.

One thing I learned pretty quickly when I picked up this new hobby is that mistakes are inevitable with a medium as fragile as sugar. Often these mistakes just get eaten by Andrew, one of our friends, or myself, but sometimes a messed up cookie can be salvaged.

A common problem I have is when flood icing leaks off the edge of a cookie. This happened with one of the apples.

To fix the mistake, I first waited until the icing had hardened for a few hours. Then, I pulled the cookie off of the baking sheet.

I gently rubbed off the icing to the edge of the cookie with my clean fingers.

Because I had added the white stripe to the cookie before it leaked, I had to cover up part of the stripe with red icing. I piped on just a tiny bit and worked it into the right place with a clean paint brush.

After allowing the new icing to dry for a few minutes, I piped on a new white stripe.

It's still obvious that one cookie is messed up, but not as obvious as before. After it dried completely, it looked even better.

I never actually finished the apple cookies; I just didn't want to make a tiny bit of green icing for only three sets of stems and leaves. Maybe in the fall I'll make a whole batch of red, green, and yellow apples!

Ladybug Birthday Cookies

2010-04-11T07:30:00.001-04:00

These lady bug cookies were for a little girl's first birthday party. Her mom gave me a picture to work from and asked that I add a 1 to the cookie.

Black and red are the hardest colors to use. Red is difficult because it takes more dye to get it the right shade than other colors do. Black icing needs a lot of dye too, and it can bleed onto other colors. For this reason, I did each stage of the cookie in shifts and allowed the icing to dry for 24 hours before I added the details on top.

I added the head and feet after the red body had dried for a day.

I let the head set up for a few minutes, then added the other details.

The white details on the face were added after the black dried overnight. (I thought the ladybugs looked a bit creepy at this point.)

I added the pupils and the 1 after another few hours of drying.

The most difficult thing about these cookies was trying to make them uniform. If I had a ladybug cookie cutter, it would have been easy to make sure every ladybug was the same size and shape, but free-handing the shape on a round cookie was a challenge.

I think the faces turned out pretty cute, and I'm so relieved that the colors did not bleed. All that patience and planning was worth it.

After the cookies were completely dry, I packaged them in individual bags and tied the tops with a coordinating ribbon.

I hope the birthday girl liked her cookies!

Black, White, and Red

2010-04-09T22:36:00.004-04:00

I have an order of birthday cookies due Saturday, so I've been really busy baking and decorating this week. I won't post pictures of those cookies until Sunday because the birthday girl should get to enjoy them first!

The birthday cookies were black, white, and red, so I used the extra dough and icing to make some butterflies.

All the swirls are made by adding wet icing details to wet flood icing and dragging a tooth pick through the design. It is so satisfying to make cookies like this! The swirls are easy to do, but they look complicated and impressive.

I don't think I've ever seen butterflies with these colors in nature, but I hate wasting icing and I love decorating cookies, so I just had fun playing around.

Tomorrow I finish up the birthday cookies, so I'll take pictures and post them soon!

Happy Easter!

2010-04-04T18:01:00.006-04:00

I hope everyone is having a lovely Easter! Andrew and I had a wonderful time at church this morning celebrating Christ rising from the dead and conquering death! Yesterday, I made a bunch of flower cookies to give to my Kindergarten Sunday school class. I picked bright spring colors and a simple design so that I could make a bunch of cookies pretty quickly.

The most time consuming part of cookie decorating (besides cleaning up) is preparing the icing. Mixing it to the right consistency, separating it out, dying it the right colors, and putting it in piping bags takes a long time. Especially for this many colors.

I made a few bunnies after I have a little over 30 flowers (I was pretty sure we wouldn't have 30 kids). My grandmother's birthday fell on Easter this year, so I thought I'd send her some spring cookies. She's getting bunnies and a few flowers mailed to her (it will be a little late for a birthday present. I'm not very punctual about these things).

I picked the colors carefully. Kindergarten boys can sometimes be very sensitive about "girl colors," and because flowers are already a bit girly, I wanted to make sure I could give out blue to the boys. I figured yellow wouldn't cause any problems either.

I guess I could have made them all yellow and blue, but I like pink and purple, and I'm the one making the cookies so I if I want pink and purple cookies I make pink and purple cookies.

I packaged them in individual bags with a Happy Easter tag that listed the ingredients on the back. I handed them out to parents as they picked up the kids so that the parents could decide when and if the kids ate their cookie (I didn't want to have to worry about allergy problems, that's why I listed the ingredients).

After the bunnies dried I added sanding sugar to their tails. To add sanding sugar or sprinkles after a cookie is dry, just mix a solution of meringue powder and water and paint it onto the area you want the sugar to stick with a clean paintbrush (egg whites can be substituted for the meringue powder solution, but make sure they are pasteurized). Spoon the sugar onto the area, then gently shake off the extra sugar.

I made the eggs with some leftover dough just for fun. I love designs where I get to swirl colors together.

I hope everyone had a very happy Easter!

Spring Cleaning

2010-04-03T15:09:00.006-04:00

It's spring! That means lovely weather, short sleeves, beautiful blossoming trees, and an overwhelming desire to get things organized. When it looks this beautiful outside, I can't leave the inside cluttered and unorganized.

Getting an new spring wreath might not be categorized under "organization," but our red berry wreath we got for Christmas just seemed out of place the last few weeks. The new wreath looks like the trees lining the drive to our apartment complex.

My cookie cutters have taken over the house. It's frustrating to find the one I'm looking for and Andrew's about to go nuts because he can't stand it when something doesn't have a proper place to go (it's ok if it's not in its proper place, as long as it has one to go to eventually). We only have so many cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, and they were all in use, so we did a bit of rearranging.

We got the cube storage shelf from Target today and moved the table to the center of the kitchen.

I put my cookbooks on the shelf and my cookie cutters in the bins.

I have them separated into three categories: animals; shapes and letters; seasons and special occasions.

We finally got some table clothes for our super cheap, particle board side tables.

And we got a new bed spread. (Ok, we did this a while ago, but I decided to put it here anyway).

We also got baskets to organize our DVDs. It looks less cluttered and they don't all fall every time we get one out.

And we put some shelves and baskets in the bathroom.

We also put shelves in the pantry a short while back, but the pantry is not very organized right now... that's probably our next project.

Now I'm going to go bake some Easter cookies for my Kindergarten Sunday school class! Pictures will be coming on Sunday!

Birthday Stuff

2010-04-03T14:49:00.005-04:00

Andrew's birthday was a couple weeks ago, so we had some friends over to eat cake and play a very confusing board game.

I baked a couple of goodies for Andrew. He'd been requesting chocolate, cherry, oatmeal cookies, so I finally located some dried cherries and made them for him.

I am not a fan of raisins, so dried cherries are my raisin alternative in cookies. We like them a lot around here.

For Andrew's birthday cake, I made a layer cake version of the homemade hostess cupcakes I baked at Valentine's day. I used a different cake recipe that we liked better, but I put the cream filling between the layers and covered the whole thing with chocolate ganache.

It tasted pretty good, but I can say it looked pretty. I'd never covered anything with ganache before, and I think I need a bit of practice.

We played a game called Settlers of Catan with a bunch of friends. We'd heard good things about and and since Andrew got it for his birthday we thought it'd be fun to play. It was, but it was rather confusing to learn at first. Andrew an I were the only ones who had never played before, so we had lots of help learning.

I think the birthday boy had a fun day and enjoyed his birthday treats.

Excuses & Elephants

2010-03-30T17:51:00.009-04:00

It's been awhile since I've updated, but I have an excuse! I've been really, really busy - much busier than normal. I just started a new job last Friday, and the process of getting and beginning the job required several trips across the county, interviews, paperwork, orientation, and a TB test! Finally the paperwork is done and the job has begun.

I should be able to get back to cookie decorating this weekend. Easter is coming up, and I plan to have Easter cookies to hand out to my Sunday school class. Until then, I leave you with a few cookies I worked on before my hiatus.

Butterflies

2010-03-14T16:31:00.004-04:00

It was a gray, cloudy morning this morning, so after church I decided to decorate something bright and cheery.

Butterflies are fun to decorate because they can be iced in a wide assortment of colors and patterns. I went with pink, blue, yellow, and black

I outlined the cookies with black, then let them sit and dry for several hours. The black shows up much better on sugar cookies than chocolate cookies, but I was in a chocolate cookie mood.

I started with the top wings and let them sit for a little while before I did the bottom wings to try to prevent the sections from blending together. I wasn't patient enough, though, so they blended a bit. I think they still turned out fine.

To add the details on top, I added lines and dots of different colors while the icing was still wet. The details will smooth out and the icing will dry flat. The zigzag pattern on the top wing is made by dragging a toothpick through lines while everything is still wet.

I'm happy with the way the butterflies turned out, and making bright, colorful cookies was just what I needed for a gray, rainy day!

Early Cookie Decorating Attempts

2010-03-11T21:27:00.005-05:00

I'm not feeling well today; my stupid sinuses causing me problems, so no new baking or decorating projects to showcase. Instead, here are some of my first attempts at cookie decorating from when I started in June.

These are the second batch of cookies I decorated. They don't look awful, but the piping is pretty bad (I can't say my piping is wonderful now, though. That's something that takes lots of practice).

What I remember most about these cookies is the intense almond flavor of the icing. I didn't have any clear vanilla at the time, so I used almond to flavor my icing and my hand slipped, spilling about a quarter of a bottle of almond extract into the icing.

This was the only successful product of my very first cookie decorating experiment. The others look pretty unappatizing. Trying to figure out the proper icing consistancy as well as a failed attempt at mixing food coloring to get purple resulted in this mess:

They looked gross, but they tasted fine.

I learned a lot from my mistakes in both these early batches. I think my third cookie decorating project was much more successful. It produced these cookies

I'm really loving this new hobby. I'm so glad a ran across a few really helpful blogs that gave me the confidence to try this myself!

Comic cookies

2010-03-10T16:16:00.010-05:00

Comics are fun to make into cookies. They usually have simple shapes and just a few solid colors, which makes them easy to outline and flood.

Plus, they're fun!

I used black icing and a small icing tip (#1) to outline the characters. Then, I filled in the spaces with the appropriate color. I waited about 30 minutes for the outline to dry and at least 10-15 minutes for each flooded section to set before I filled in the adjacent section. If you don't wait long enough, two adjacent flooded sections can sometimes blend together over the black line, and I wanted to make sure the black lines showed just like the do in the comics.

I let the flooded icing dry about an hour before I put on the facial features.

The longer you wait for icing to dry the less likely you'll end up with bleeding. This waiting is especially important with black icing. I didn't wait long enough for these to dry. Next time I'll let the cookies sit overnight instead of just 30 minutes. You'll notice that Charlie Brown looks normal here:

But in this picture, taken the next morning, he looks like he has a beard:

That was definitely not intended.

Luckily, Snoopy did not suffer the same fate.

The Dilbert cookies have a little color bleeding, but it didn't ruin them.

I learned a few important lessons from this experiment.

1. Let black icing dry overnight to prevent bleeding.

2. Get a square cookie cutter. Using a pizza cutter and eyeballing it doesn't have the most even results.

3. Skin color icing needs white* added to it first to make it more opaque. The skin looked a bit greenish because the blue background showed through.

But over all, I'm happy with the comic cookies. Especially Snoopy. He makes me smile.

* Yes, they have white icing color, and I've learned that it's really important to use it. It makes the white brighter and more opaque so the background color won't show through. It's also handy if you want to lighten a color.

Birds, polka dots, and more gnomes

2010-03-08T16:31:00.007-05:00

I've never seen a red and white polka doted bird. For some reason, I still felt the need to put a couple on a cookie the other day. I love putting polka dots on cookies, so why not add a few spotted birds?

I like how the white and red contrasts with the blue on the gnome cookies, so I put them together. Birds and mushrooms kind of go with gnomes, right?

I'd like to get a mushroom cookie cutter if I make more mushroom cookies. A gnome cookie cutter would be nice too. (If i don't watch out I'll be overrun with cookie cutters. I don't have enough space for the ones I have now...)

Comic strip cookies are coming tomorrow!

Gnomes

2010-03-07T16:46:00.007-05:00

I'm not completely sure what compelled me to make gnome cookies. Maybe it's the whimsical drawing I found online with curling branches and cute little mushrooms. Or it could be the fact that gnomes are cute, but usually simple shapes with just a few colors. More likely it's the random assortment of gnomes in our house that I see on a regular basis.

I don't think my husband ever meant to start collecting gnomes - in fact, I doubt he'd admit he has a gnome collections now (but trust me, he does). A few years back his mom was asking him what he wanted for his birthday or Christmas or something. He was being difficult and gave her very few legitimate ideas. In his list, he jokingly included a lawn gnome and so he got one, then another, and another, and another. We even had a couple at our wedding on the groom's table.

With gnomes all over my house, I had a lot of inspiration for these gnome cookies.

I started with chocolate cookies iced in solid colors and left to dry overnight.

I used back icing and the smallest tip I have - a #1 tip- to outline the design.

I let them dry for about an hour. I learned later that I should have let them dry overnight, but I'll talk more about that in a future post.

I filled in each section carefully, letting it set for a few minutes before filling the adjacent section.

The tooth pick helps push the flood icing into small spaces.

These pictures were taken at night, so the color is a bit off.

I added the top details like the eyes and the lines on the trees after the flood icing dried overnight.

The whimsical curly trees and tiny spotted mushrooms are my favorite.

I tried several designs to see what worked best, but next time I'll probably pick just one design and focus on making them uniform. These take a long time because of the details and the waiting between steps, but I'm happy with how they turned out.

Painting on Cookies

2010-03-06T11:39:00.005-05:00

This was a total experiment. I've seen people paint on cakes, and I realized my gel icing colors are a similar consistency to paint, so I thought I'd give painting cookies a try. I'm definitely not the first person to do this; I've done some searched online and found many gorgeous pictures of hand painted cookies that are much more impressive than this one, but it's my first attempt.

My canvas is a chocolate cookie with smooth white flood icing that I let dry overnight.

My palate is a clean white bowl with gel paste icing colors. I use wilton brand that you can find at the craft section pretty much anywhere. The tooth picks are what I use to get the icing out of their containers; just a tiny bit of icing color goes a really long way. I used pink, red, purple, and white for the flower.

I also had a tea cup of water and an assortment of clean paint brushes that I only use for cookie decorating. I've realized I need some smaller brushes if I want to paint precisely and with more details.

I had fun painting these flowers, and I'm excited about the possibilities this opens up!

Flowers for a Friend

2010-03-05T13:24:00.008-05:00

I made more flower cookies for a co-worker yesterday. I meant to start them Wednesday night, but Andrew and I were exhausted, so I didn't start until Thursday morning.

She wanted 10 cookies, but let me choose the style and color. I picked blue, light blue, and white flowers.

I had a few extra, so I've been playing with taking pictures of them on different surfaces.

I also made a bunch of letter cookies, too.

I spelled stuff. Like my blog name.

Baking Bagels

2010-03-05T10:31:00.005-05:00

I used to be scared of yeast. Not in a run screaming sort of way, more in an I'm-too-scared-to-use-it-because-I'm-going-to-kill-the-little-yeasty-beasties-and-ruin-my-bread way. It seemed so difficult to get the liquid to the right temperature, warm enough to make it bubble but not hot enough to kill the yeast. Then I found recipes that called for instant yeast, and they seemed way less complicated.

With instant yeast, you just add it straight to the flour. I love it - one less bowl to wash and no sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to see if the yeast and liquid mixture bubbles. You can find instant yeast in some grocery stores, but if yours doesn't sell it, you can always order it online (KingArthurFlour.com sells it).*

These bagels are so easy to make, they always turn out great, and they don't take long at all (at least they don't take long when compared to other bread recipes). I got the recipe from KingArthurFlour.com

To make them, you combine 4 cups bread flour, 1 tbsp instant yeast, 2 tsp salt, 1 tbsp brown sugar (or non-diastatic malt powder - but I don't know what that is or where to find it in the store, so I use brown sugar), and 1 1/2 cups luke warm water.

Knead the mixture by hand or with a mixer until it's smooth. If you have a stand mixer and a dough hook, just throw everything in the bowl of the mixer, turn in on low, and just let it mix for about 10 minutes.

To knead by hand, first stir ingredients together, then turn out onto a clean surface. Fold dough into thirds, turn 90 degrees and fold into thirds again. Continue about 10 - 15 minutes, or until the dough is smooth. The bread flour keeps it from being as sticky as white sandwich bread, so it's not too messy and doesn't coat your hands, but it does require more effort to knead.

Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover with a clean towel, and let it sit and rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Separate the dough into 8 sections and form into balls. Cover those and let them sit for about 30 minutes.

While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to 425 degrees and prepare a cookie sheet by covering it with parchment paper or lightly greasing it.

Then, prepare the water bath. Combine 2 quarts of water, 2 tbsp brown sugar, and 1 tbsp granulated sugar in a wide diameter pan. I use a high sided wok. Bring it to a boil.

Poke a hole in each piece of dough with your fingers and gently stretch out the dough. I use the handle of a wooden spoon to transfer the bagels to the water bath.

Boil the bagels for 2 minutes on one side and 1 minute on the other side. Then transfer to the cookie sheet. Put the prettiest side facing up if you care about how they look.

Bake for 20-30 minutes at 425 degrees.

We use these for sandwiches, for breakfast smothered with cream cheese, and just as snacks. They don't last very long here.

They take a total of 2- 3 hours to make, and most of that is just waiting for the dough to rise. I love how easy they are to make and how they always turn out right.

*Rapid rise, or bread machine yeast, is easier to find in stores and I've used it in this recipe with no problem, but it can't be substituted for instant yeast in every recipe. Rapid rise yeast works only for recipes that just have one rise; if the recipe has multiple rises, you need instant yeast

Bake Sale Cookies

2010-03-02T10:46:00.004-05:00

I haven't had a chance to bake recently, so here are some pictures of cookies from the november bake sale.

I looked at a picture of the globe to pipe the world cookies. Each cookie looked great by itself, but their lack of uniformity was extremely obvious when they were all together. Also, my hand was killing me by the time I finished piping the last one!

I packaged each cookie individually and tied a ribbon at the top.

When the flood icing is too thin, it can leak over the outline like the tulip in the middle. I used meringue powder as a "glue" to get the sprinkled to stick to the outline.

I'll have new stuff to post later this week!

Royal Icing

2010-02-27T08:17:00.009-05:00

Royal Icing Tutorial

To get the flat, smooth icing that dries hard enough so you can stack, package, and mail cookies, royal icing is the way to go. To make royal icing, you use powdered sugar plus either meringue powder (they have it in the baking section at craft stores or you can order it online), egg whites and lemon juice (use pasteurized egg whites because they won't be cooked), or corn syrup and milk (not exactly royal icing, but it yields similar results).

I add clear vanilla extract or almond extract as well.

Figuring out the right consistency of the icing is the key to getting smooth, yet easy to control icing. The trick is to run a spoon or knife through the icing and count how long it takes for the surface to smooth out. If it's less than 5 seconds, add more powdered sugar or whip the icing more until it's thicker. If it takes longer than 10 seconds, add water a drop at a time until it's thinner.

For a simple design like the flower, I use only this consistency icing. If the design is more complex, I use a thicker icing to outline the cookie and this thinner icing to fill the inside.

To color the icing, gel past food coloring works best; it won't water down the icing and you only need a tiny bit to dye a lot of icing.

I add the dye with a tooth pick.

Then mix it in gently with a spoon; stirring gently helps pop any bubbles in the icing.

I added just a touch of pink to one bowl, a lot of pink to another bowl plus a touch of purple. I dyed the icing in the tea cup orange and didn't dye the white icing at all.

Set up as many pastry bags as you have colors. I put them in glasses to hold them up while I fill them. You can get pastry bags, couplers, and tips at walmart or the craft store. I mostly use round #2 tips. Couplers allow you to change the tip out without having to get a new bag.

To make the flowers, I first outline the shape of the petal.

Before the outline dries, I begin filling the inside of the petal.

Outline and fill all the petals.

After the petals set for a few minutes, add a white dot for the center.

All the icing will dry flat and smooth. Wait 24 hours before stacking the cookies.

Ethan's Birthday Cookies

2010-02-26T08:46:00.006-05:00

I made cookies to send to my brother-in-law for his birthday this year. He's very interested in Russia, so I made the Russian flag in cookie form.

I made cakes with blue stripes and dots because I had extra blue icing after making the flag. I always get worried about making cookies for guys because most of the cookies I usually make are brightly colored and girly or more suited to younger boys (dinosaurs, cars, etc.). Unless the guy is into sports or cars, I have a hard time deciding what to make.

I've been learning, though, that when it comes to food, most men don't really care if it's a pink and girly as long as it tastes good. I do think these cake cookies turned out festive and appropriate for a guy.

I packaged them in individual bags and put them in a box with bubble wrap to mail. Ethan's birthday was last Saturday, but the cookies didn't get mailed until Tuesday... oops...

Ethan got the cookies yesterday, but I forgot to ask him if any of them broke. He didn't mention it, so I'm going to assume they got their in one piece. He did say he liked the Russian flags.

I'm really enjoying making cakes. I can't wait for Andrew's birthday! I already have some ideas.

Owls

2010-02-25T10:24:00.007-05:00

I made pink owls and flowers to bring to my church small group last night.

For the owls, I drew circle with pointy ears on top, filled it in, and let it dry for about an hour.

I added white eyes next and let them dry for about 15-20 minutes.

Then, I put a light pink circle under the eyes and added dark pink U shaped onto the wet light pink icing. When you add a different color to icing that is already wet, it dries flat. I let that sit for about 30 more minutes before putting the blue pupils on the eyes and the orange beak, feet, and wings.

I got the design for these owls from the site sweetopia.net, I just changed the colors a bit.

I also made dark and light pink flowers to go with the owls. Tomorrow I'll post a tutorial about royal icing & making the flowers.

Pink, Polka Dots, and Flowers

2010-02-21T16:11:00.007-05:00

Thursday was one of my friend's birthdays, so I decided to try out my new cake cookie cutter and a chocolate cookie recipe I've been experimenting with.

I made pink cake cookies and pink flowers to go with them. The colors didn't show up perfectly in the photos because I finished them up after the sun set. I used Wilton's gel icing colors: just a touch of rose color for the light pink and a lot of rose plus a touch of purple for the dark pink.

I outlined the cake cookies in white icing and added candles at the top. The bottom and top layers are just light and dark pink with dots. The middle layer is white with dark pink flowers. The flowers are made by putting five dark pink dots close together, then adding a light pink dot in the center.

I added the yellow candle flames last, then let them sit out and harden a bit before we took them over to the birthday girl.

I made the flowers to make the cakes. Because of the simple shape, I didn't bother to outline the petals. The flooding icing I use is on the thicker side, so though it dries flat, it keeps its shap pretty well.

I made some other birthday cookies this week that we're mailing out tomorrow, but I'll wait until they have been received to put pictures up here.

Flour and Flowers

2010-02-20T09:26:00.008-05:00

We don't usually do much for Valentine's Day around here. Christmas & Birthdays are where we buy gifts; instead, we make something or go do something together in celebration of Valentine's Day. This year Andrew and I went out to eat and went out shopping the Friday before Valentine's because he had to work on Sunday. While we were out he bought me an apron I'd had my eye on for awhile.

I love it! Now I don't get covered in flour and powdered sugar while I bake. I really like the ruffles on the bottom.

Andrew then surprised me with flowers on Monday. They have really brightened up our living room.

I love when he surprises me with flowers.

These flowers and the apron inspired me to make some flowers of my own yesterday for a friend's birthday. I'll post about those tomorrow, but here's a preview:

Sugar Cookies

2010-02-19T19:12:00.008-05:00

I've played around with a bunch of different sugar cookie recipes ever since I started decorating cookies. I like the artistic aspect of decorating with royal icing, but I've always thought it's more important for a cookie to taste good than look good. I mean, royal icing it basically just sugar, so a decorated cookie could end up being sickeningly sweet if the cookie is too sweet by itself.

The sugar cookie recipe I finally settled with is a slightly modified version of one I got off of a Wilton cookie cutter. I like it because it's not overwhelmingly sweet, so the royal icing balances it out nicely. It's sturdy enough for icing without being rock hard, it holds it's shape relatively well, and, most importantly, it tastes good.

I start by setting my oven to 400 degrees.

(My cute little chicken timer is only a pointless decoration. I thought it was cute, so I got it, but it doesn't work well at all, we use the microwave timer instead.)

I gather all my ingredients because I've had the oh so fun experience of getting half way through a recipe before realizing I was out of eggs.

For this recipe I use:

1 cup unsalted butter, cut up

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1-2 tsp vanilla extract (I use more if I leave out almond or want a more subtle almond flavor)

1/4-1/2 tsp almond extract

3 cups all-purpose flour (with the last cup, I add it slowly until the dough is the right consistency. If it's a humid day, I usually use the whole thing, if not I use less.)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

I sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together - biting into a chunk of baking powder in a cookie is gross. Mixing it with a fork would do the trick, too.

I cut the butter into pieces and throw it in the mixing bowl. It works as well for me as using softened butter and takes less planning ahead.

I begin mixing the butter, then add sugar, egg, and extracts, beating until combined after each ingredient.

I then add the flour mixture slowly and beat until combined.

I form the dough into a couple disks and roll it out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch think.

I cut out the cookies and place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (you don't need the parchment paper, but it makes clean up easier and helps you move the cookies to the cooling rack). I then stick the cookie sheet with the cookies in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. That helps them hold their shape as they bake.

To use the scraps from cutting out the cookies, I knead them together thoroughly, then roll them out again. The extra four that is added when you use the scraps can make the cookies tough, so I only do this once or twice and I try to cut the cookies as close together as possible.

Then I bake them in a 400 degree oven for 6-10 minutes. The time varies a lot depending on the size and thickness of the cookie, so I check them and rotate the cookie sheet at four minutes to see how much time I think they need and I check every couple minutes after that.

They need to cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes until they are set, then they can be moved to a cooling rack. They must cool completely before they can be decorated, or the royal icing will be melty and messy.

These cookies are buttery, flavorful, and just sweet enough, perfect for royal icing decorations.

Butterfly Cookies

2010-02-18T17:47:00.013-05:00

I made these butterfly cookies for the Seminary bake sale last November. The colors aren't my favorite, but the pinks, purples, and sprinkles turned out to be very popular with little girls.

To get the flat, smooth surface on a cookie like this you have to flood the cookie. To flood a cookie, you first outline it with royal icing, as I did with the pink icing.

Then, you thin out the icing you want to fill the cookie with. I used a light purple icing for this cookie. If you use the same color as your outlined icing, the outlining won't be very obvious. I wanted it to stand out with this particular design.

To make sure you have the right consistency for your flood icing, run a spatula through it and count how many seconds it takes for it to smooth out. If it takes more than 10, add a couple drops of water & try again. If it takes less than 5, add more powdered sugar.

When piping in the flood icing, use your piping tip or a tooth pick to spread the icing. It should even out and dry flat when you are done. Also, look for air bubbles and pop them with a tooth pick. The icing will fill in those spaces if you do this before it dries. If you wait, it will leave holes.

If you want to add dots or other designs to the flat icing, use another color of flooding consistency icing and pipe in those designs after the original color has had a few seconds to set.

Anything you pipe onto the flood icing before it while it is wet will dry flat.

For the butterflies, i used a toothpick to make the design on the wings.

Let the cookies dry about 24 hours before you package them or stack them (I've ignored this and put them in plastic bags after they felt dry, but my colors bled into each other and it wasn't pretty.)

Macarons

2010-02-18T06:30:00.009-05:00

These are macarons, not to be confused with macaroons or macaroni. They are a light, cake like cookie usually sandwiched together with some kind of filling. I had been wanting to make them for a long time, but couldn't find almond flour. I finally found some at Kroger in the health food section, so this is one of my first macaron attempts.

To make these cookies, I first had to separate 4 large eggs and keep the egg whites covered in the refrigerator overnight. I then let the egg whites get to room temperature before I started baking. I made a meringue by beating the egg whites until foamy then adding 1/4 cup of regular sugar to the egg whites & beating that until it was glossy, white, and could form stiff peaks on the beater.

I folded in a cup of almond flour and 1 and 1/4 cups powdered sugar. I also added the zest of one lemon here to make lemon macarons (I later found out I should have dried the zest out overnight first, but it seemed to work fine without that step). The mixture had to be the consistency where it flowed slowly and looked glossy. I put it in piping bags with a large round tip and piped circles on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper.

I baked them at 325 degreed with a wooden spoon propping the door open for 10 minutes (turning the pan at 5 minutes). They should be firm, not too brown, and have developed "feet" (a little skirt looking area at the bottom of the cookie).

I let them cool on the cookie sheet and slowly pealed them off. I had heard to put water on the cookie sheet between the parchment and the hot metal to steam them off, but it was messy, difficult, and no easier than pulling them off after they cooled.

I filled them with lemon buttercream icing and lemon curd. Andrew and I loved these cookies. When you bite into them the shell melts in your mouth and the flavor of the filling mixes with the flavor and texture of the cake-like cookies. They really were delicious and I plan to make them again in lots of different flavors and colors.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup almond flour (or finely ground, dry almonds)

1 1/4 cup powdered sugar

the whites of 4 large eggs aged and room temperature

pinch of salt (add to eggs)

1/4 cup granulated sugar

the zest of 1 lemon

powdered food coloring if desired.

Mix almond flour and powdered sugar and sift; set aside.

Beat egg whites & salt until foamy. Add granulated sugar slowly while beating egg whites on high. Beat until the mixture is white and shiny and can form stiff peaks when you lift the beater out if the mixture.

Fold almond mixture into egg mixture and add zest and food coloring. Fold until the mixture flows, but stop before it gets too thin. Place mixture in piping bag with a large, round tip (you can substitute a plastic zip top bag with the corner cut, but it will be more difficult to handle). Pipe circles onto parchment paper lined cookies sheets.

Bake at 325 degrees for 8-10 minutes, turning the pan after 5 minutes. Prop over door open with a spoon while baking.

The death of a snowman

2010-02-15T20:17:00.007-05:00

Our gravity defying snowman this morning. His eyes, nose, and buttons are scattered on the ground.

This is what I found when I came home from work. Poor frosty...

Valentine's Day Cupcakes

2010-02-14T08:24:00.005-05:00

Homemade Hostess Cupcakes

What food says "I love you bunches!" better than chocolate? When I decided to bake something for my sweetie for Valentine's Day, I knew it had to be chocolate - and it had to be cake. Andrew loves most everything I bake, but if I bake something just for him, I bake cake.

I don't exactly dislike cake, but it's not my favorite way to consume sugar. If I'm going to eat something unhealthy and sweet, it'd be rather have cookies, pie, ice cream, or plain old, delicious chocolate.

But my apathy towards cake should not deprive my wonderful husband of one of his favorite desserts. So I decided to bake cupcakes for Valentine's Day. Chocolate cupcakes filled with vanilla cream and dipped in chocolate ganache.

If it weren't for the insane amount of dirty dishes I was left with at the end of this 4 part recipe, I'd say making these homemade hostess cupcakes was pretty easy. If you have a dishwasher at your house (or a someone willing to help with the dishes in exchange for food) this is a fun, tasty recipe.

To make them more fitting for Valentine's Day, I wrote love in cursive on some of them instead of the loop design normally found on Hostess cupcakes.

Andrew loved them - especially the filling - so I might be making a version of this for his birthday.

The recipe is at bakeat350.blogspot.com. I dipped the cupcakes in the chocolate instead of trying to spread it on with a knife, and the chocolate turned out really smooth with just the right thickness. I might use a different cake recipe next time; the cake was a bit dry (but the filling hides that). My oven runs hot, so the dryness could have come from that. We think they are tastier than the Hostess version, and I love that they can be personalized.

What did you make/buy/do for your sweetie for Valentine's Day?

It Snowed!

2010-02-13T10:20:00.007-05:00

It's a winter wonderland here in NC!

The only time it snowed significantly in south Alabama when I was growing up, I was 6 years old. Unfortunately, it was the wrong kind of snow for snowball fights and snowman building. Andrew grew up in Ohio and he is very familiar with the finer aspects of snowman building, so I asked him to teach me to build my first snowman!

Because we only had a couple inches of snow on the ground, we used the snow on our cars to form the snowman parts which we then assembled by our window.

We added a scarf, a carrot, a few coals for buttons and eyes, and Andrew added the his hippy wig from Halloween. We decided it looked better bald.

The wig looks much better on Andrew, doesn't it?

It was fun building the snowman, but I think I'll stick to cookie snowmen from now on. They are easier to make, and I get to stay warm and dry.

Recent Cookie Escapades

2010-02-12T19:31:00.002-05:00