Musical Mammals

This is my adorable Build-A-Bear Bunny Tina. She's a ukelele master! It's been a rainy/stormy couple of days in Bloomington, so I unfortunately don't have any awesome stories to share, as I've just been kinda cooped up. Just wanted to share the sheer cuteness =)

Hope you're having a wonderful Wednesday!

Mmm Mmm Mmm =)

So, I've recently found this lovely blog that I like to pour over and wish I could make everything on it. However, since I'm a poor college student, I have to pick favorites. I decided on some plain sugar cookies, because who doesn't love sugar cookies!??!

Doesn't take too many complicated ingredients, which the poor college student likes =)

Something that this recipe told me to do that I'd never heard before was, instead of scooping the flour out of the bag with the measuring cup, you spoon the flour into the cup, and then just scrap off the extra with a knife. I didn't compare to doing it normally, but they came out great, so I think it was a good idea.

What I thought was interesting was that this recipe only called for 1 cup of sugar, creamed with a cup of butter before adding the other ingredients. I might add a bit more sugar next time, or maybe just sprinkle some coarse sugar on the outside before baking.

Mix all the ingredients until it balls up and tastes awesome...I mean, wait, I have no idea what the raw dough tastes like, salmonella and all...yeah....

Something else awesome I found with this recipe was the concept of rolling the dough between two sheets of parchment paper before chilling it in the fridge. As you can see, I just used my fondant pin on the largest ring and flattened the dough out between the paper. Then just set in flat in the fridge for about half an hour.

After a half hour, just peel the paper back and start cutting. I only like to bake one pan at a time in my oven, since it's not that great, so I only cut out 6 circles, put the rest back in the fridge until the first set was done. Try to avoid mixing chilled and thawed on the same pan, or some will bake faster than others once they go in the oven. When you run out of space, just ball the dough back up, put the parchment paper back on top, and re-roll and chill. Continue until you use all the dough.

Bake them up (pretty fast baking time, only about 8-9 minutes a batch when the dough is chilled) and have at it. I love frosting and sprinkles cause they're so cute, but they would have been great just on their own. This will be my new sugar cookie staple in my baking arsenal. Hope you enjoy! =)

Multi-Colored Munchies

So, after yesterday's adventures with the white box cake from Kroger, I still had 2 boxes left that needed to be used up. After coming upon some awesome closeout priced (49 cents) princess pattern cupcake cups, I whipped up a batch of batter and 24 popped liners into the pans. Then it hit me, I've got to try rainbow cupcakes!

Luckily, it's really quite a simple process. Just separate the batter into separate bowls and color accordingly. I used gel food coloring, which is why my colors were so bright. Not sure if it would look as good if it were done with liquid food coloring.

Then it's just a matter of spooning it layer by layer into the cups. Hopefully in the future I can come up with a faster way to do this, but I'm not quite sure yet. Then just bake it up till it looks AWESOME! I wasn't too picky with making sure it was perfectly layered, mostly because I was lazy, but I like to say it's because I like to be different =P

Afterwards, I whipped up some buttercream frosting to top them off with. The recipe called for vanilla, but I couldn't find any, so I used some of the almond extract from yesterday's fondant recipe. It came out surprisingly well; I thought it tasted a bit more sophisticated, which is clearly important with rainbow cupcakes. My dear friend E topped them off PERFECTLY with sprinkles. She's an expert! When I was cleaning up, I could hardly find any left-overs sitting on the counter.

I love these so much and will most definitely be making them again =)

This was E's favorite one. I think it was mine too =)

I picked up this handy cake/cupcake/minicupcake carrier from Hobby Lobby. 40% off coupon made it only $12. I love a great buy. It says it only holds 12 cupcakes, but I easily make 23 fit =P

This was great fun, and I can't wait to get to my next baking adventure!

Making Miniatures

Today was the the day I took the first step into cake decorating. Oh my goodness. First thing I need to remember next time I make fondant/mix cake/bake cake/color fondant/decorate cake for 5 straight hours...WEAR SHOES! My feet are KILLING me!

Decorating was fun, but I definitely have a long way to go. I decided that since I was just starting out, and am pretty much teaching myself, I should start small, hence "Making Miniatures". Instead of trying to decorate normal sized cakes, I started with mini cakes. Essentially 2'' tall, 3'' across.

The only thing I made completely from scratch was the fondant, mostly because I heard the store bought stuff takes like plastic. Next time, I'm making the frosting and the cake from scratch. The cake mix I got from Kroger came out way too soft and airy and fluffy. Makes for nice cake to eat, not nice cake to carve and try to frost and cover in fondant.

Clearly I have a lot to practice and work on, but I'm having lots of fun already =)