K's Baking Party: Cookies & Cake

I've said it before, but I'll say it again - no birthday party is complete without cookies! At some point in the planning process of K's birthday party, the cupcake started to emerge as a theme. As a result, I decided to incorporate cupcakes into the cookies as well. Unfortunately, I don't have a cupcake cookie cutter, so I had to make do with what I did have - a scalloped diamond and a ruler.

I started by rolling out my cookie dough and cutting straight edge. Using the more rounded half of my scalloped diamond, I cut out the top half of the diamond. In case you want to make your own cupcake cookies, I think the same result could be done with a circle or oval cutter instead of the scalloped diamond. It might even be a bit cuter.

Using the ruler, I cut another straight line, and then a second one about 3cm above the first.

I cut that long rectangle into smaller rectangles roughly the width of the top cupcake bit.

Then I sliced them inwards slightly, to make them look like the base of the cupcake (note: the one on the right had not yet been cut).

On the lined cookie sheet, I placed the top and bottom as closely together as possible, but they didn't connect perfectly.

No problem at all - I just used my finger to smooth out the line a bit.

They ended up looking like this before baking.

Look at the little army of cupcakes!

I mentioned before, that I really didn't have a whole lot of time to spend on this party. Cutting and piecing together the cupcakes took a good amount of time and I assumed that decorating them would as well. To save myself some time, after about 16 cupcake cookies, I just cut the rest of the dough into scalloped circles.

Once the cookies were baked and cooled I wrapped them up and put them in the freezer for about a week. A few nights before the party, I got them out, thawed them and got to decorating. Just like the real cupcakes, I only used white and yellow icing. This seriously cut down on prep time and kitchen mess. I started with the "frosting" part of the cookie. To reinforce the line I wanted to try to cover most of it with one color of icing. I did a little swirl at the bottom and then went straight up and over the top, to make a rounded, slightly wavy triangle. Then I filled it in. For the first few, I put the sprinkles on right away, but I found that it looked better if I gave the icing a bit of time to harden slightly before putting on the sprinkles.

Once the tops were done, I went to the bottoms. These were done in yellow - again starting with the outline and then filling them in.

 

Once they were completely dried, I piped on vertical lines to mimick the cupcake wrapper. For the scalloped circles, I did half of them in yellow, the other half in white. Half of each color got sprinkles, the other half got a "4" on them. In a final detail, I piped tiny dots around the edges of the circles to highlight the scalloped edge. (I did a really awful job of taking photos for this party. So, yes, this is the exact same photo from above, but I thought it would be easier to see the final details if I showed this photo again.)

Next up was the cake. Ahhh, the cake. I was so super dissappointed in it. I wanted it to be a huge cupcake, but it ended up looking like a pot of white flowers. Boooo. The good news is that once it was cut and plated, it looked adorable and tasted even better.

I don't have a giant cupcake tin, so I just did what I could with round tins and a knife. I started by making a full vanilla cake recipe and a half of a chocolate cake recipe. Then I sliced each of the cakes in half horizontally to give me six rounds to work with. I started with the bottom of the cake, stacking the layers one on top of the other, vanilla, chocolate, vanilla. Then I put a small bowl on top and using a toothpick sketched out a line about 1cm away from the edge of the bowl.

Following my line, I sliced down and out diagonally to give the cupcake base the correct shape.

Then I took the layers apart, separated them with the buttercream and re-stacked them, upside down. I did the same idea for the top of the cupcake, but I cut the shape so that it was rounded at the top and then went straight down. This was a mistake. In my head it was much better than the pointy cupcake top the pan bakes into, but I was wrong. The pointy top would have been way better. Live and learn, right?!

Then it came time for the crumb coats. I did the top and bottom separately since the six layers would have been too tall to fit into my fridge.

Once the bottom half's crumb coat was hard, I busted out the yellow buttercream for the base. I first just focused on getting a fairly even coat on the bottom.

 

Then I dragged an offset spatula from the bottom of the cake, up to the top to create something that looked like wrapper folds. As you can see, I left a tiny space between each vertical drag. I love how the bottom turned out.

 

Finally it was on to the top. :( After the crumb coat was dried, using the biggest star tip I own, I piped stars all over the cake. I left about 5cm from the bottom empty to make it easier to move the cake onto the base the next morning.

Instead of using the same white buttercream to join the top to the bottom, I made a delicious ganache. I thought it would add a bit of visual interest to the cut cake. I also thought it would kick up the tasty factor a bit - I was totally wrong on the shape of the cake, but I was so, so right about this decision!

 

Once I put the top onto the bottom of the cake, I finished up the piping. I didn't even take a photo of the finished cake. I totally forgot. I think had I been more proud of how the cake looked, I would have remembered, but what can you do? On top of the finished cake, I put a yellow "4" candle, but I moved it to K's cupcake for the blowing out of the candle bit. The main reason that I moved it, was because I knew the cake would take a good amount of time to cut - there were 17 adults to cut for. I thought it would be pretty lame to have K blow out his candle and then 30 minutes later, finally eat the cake. 

 

So, about 30 minutes before singing the old "Happy Birthday Song", I got to cutting the cake. I LOVE how it looks cut. I think the black and white stripes look so super cool. Good thing, because I was seriously bummed by how the cake looked pre-cutting. Many of the guests commented on how beautiful the cake looked (post-cutting), but even more commented on how good it was. Wahoo!!

 Seventeed slices of cake? Don't mind if I do!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Cookies

Earlier in the week I posted about the Very Hungry Caterpillar that I made for a friend's little boy. A few weeks before the party, my friend and I were talking about the party details and she texted me a photo of the cake/cupcakes she was going to make as well as some cookies that she loved, but wasn't planning on making. Good news for her, I was - what's a party without cookies afterall?! While we couldn't attend his party, as we were in Hawaii, I figured we could be there in Sugar Fairy spirit.

The cookies from the original photo were the fruits from the story - apples, pears, plums, strawberries and oranges with little holes cut out of them. They were really cute and something that totally looked do-able. The first step was to plan out how I would cut them since I don't have fruit cookie cutters. I figured I could start with a circle and cut from there. Here was my plan:

I started with the circle and then cut away. The first few I used the knife to cut out the shape as I had drawn it. This gave me ragged edges though and I wasn't too pleased. You can kind of see if you look at the strawberry cookie in the photo below.

After a few goes, I worked out that if I just cut straight lines, the shapes would be much easier to control and in turn look much better. After cutting the lines, then I just used my fingers to smooth out the edges. Here is the just-cut look.

Here is the post-massage look.

It worked for all of the shapes, excluding the orange which was just a circle.

Once I had it cut out, I took a small circle cutter and cut out a little hole in a corner. Then I popped them in the oven. (Apologies for the sideways photo - I don't know how I didn't notice that while I was taking the photo.)

Pulling them out, they looked like this.

I had a good amount of fruit shapes baked, so I thought with the scraps, I would try to make a little caterpillar. I started by cutting out the shape of the body and then with a knife I scored the details. I figured this would help when decorating it. I also made an oval and a speech bubble.

Then it came time for decorating. I wanted this task to be as easy as possible, so I lined the cookies up by color and tackled the project in batches. First up was red - apples, strawberries and the caterpillar's face. I outlined the hole in the cookie and then the shape. I found that my icing wasn't stiff enough, so if I got too close to the hole, it would drip in. I had to be a tad bit careful, but it all worked out. Once I had the outlines done, I went back and filled in each cookie.

I continued with all of the colors, one by one. Once the base color was done, I went in and added brown stems and a few green leaves, as well as the details on the caterpillar.

Eeeek! I love them!!! Although it's not in the photo above, once they were completely dry I also used a black food marker to give the strawberry some seeds. I was considering using my food colors to paint on each cookie so it would look more like Eric Carle's artwork, but that made me nervous and also, to be honest, I really had to get packing. While they are much simpler looking than the real images, I feel they are cute and recognizable.

The one I was most proud of was the caterpillar. To give him his segments, I started by outlining and filling in every other segment. Once they were pretty dry, I went in a filled in the rest of his body. Then it was just a matter of the face, antennae and feet. I love him.

The cookies were ready to send off to my friend. The only problem is that I had to get them to her nearly a week before the party, as we were leaving on our trip in a few days. Frosted sugar cookies can most definitely be frozen, but sometimes they get spots while they defrost. I looked into why this happens and it seems that no one can work it out - just sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. Frustrating. I did read that packaging them individually and then putting them in tupperware helps the situation. That is what I did, but in a photo from the party, you can see that some of them got weird. The good news is that the discoloring doesn't affect the taste. My friend said that they were a hit at the party and another friend, who had attended said the same. Perfect!!

Merry Christmas

Santa came!!! On Christmas Eve, I asked K what he wanted to leave out for Santa and he said, "two Christmas cookies, a slice of apple pie, orange juice and milk. And carrots for the reindeer." To which I jokingly commented, "Wow! That's a lot of food for Santa - he's going to get fat at our house!!" K didn't want Santa getting too fat and having to stop at the doctor mid-present drop, so he edited the apple pie of out the spread. He also insisted that we label the carrots for each reindeer. Silly Dasher and Vixen only ate half of their carrots.

K woke up on Christmas morning to find this:

He was so pleased that he had, in fact, been a good boy and that Santa had come. Gah, I love that little guy.

While that was our actual Christmas Eve and morning, our Christmas celebration started on the 23rd when we had two families over. These two families are so wonderful and I 100% consider them our family here. (That's not to be rude at all to Y's family, it's just that we don't live anywhere near them either.) This post is going to be kind of a long one, but it will have lots of photos of delicious foods.

As you may recall, up until a week or so ago, we were all sick. This put my dinner prep way behind given that I first had to catch up on everything else that I didn't do while I was sick. Last Friday, we finally went to buy the turkey and other groceries, but by the time we got home, put everything away, ate dinner, and put the boys to sleep, I was too beat to actually start cooking. This means that all of the foods you are about to see were made between Saturday and Monday - mostly Saturday and Sunday, of course. Y is a complete saint. He cleaned the house and took care of the boys so that I could focus on food. It was a ridiculous amount of work to be doing while sleep deprived and with a lingering cold and a 4-month old, but sharing a delicious meal and a wonderful time with our family was well worth it.

Here's what I made: Before dinner, we started with K's favorite Christmas cookies, as well as mint chocolate chip and M&M cookies, candied pecans, and some savory snacks - cheeses, veggies, crackers, and chips.

The ginger Christmas cookies (K's favorites) were delicious as always. I love how all of the spices meld together making this the most Christmas-flavored cookie.

The mint chocolate chip and M&M cookies were a new recipe and they turned out really good. In K's letter to Santa, he asked what Santa would like to eat when he stops at our house. K recommended "mama's M&M cookies" because Santa "would certainly like them." How could I not make some M&M cookies after that raving review?! That being said, I just recently made some M&M cookies and wanted something a little different. Mint and chocolate are another of my favorite Christmas combos, so I went with it. For the most part, I followed the recipe aside from the refrigeration bit - I was in a bit of a rush, people!

Also I used peppermint essence instead of extract. I don't know what the difference is, to be honest, but it did not have the disastrous results that the recipe's baker had. These were quite nice.

The other change was that, of course, I had to add in some M&Ms. I went with half chocolate chips, half M&Ms. Also, when I said they were quite nice, I meant to say they were awesome and I ate my weight in them.

I rolled them into little balls and baked for 8 minutes. Delicious!

The other new recipe that I tried were candied pecans. Holy moly, these were amazing. Unfortunately we have eaten them all. Fortunately, we are headed to Y's parents' for New Years. I think I need to make another batch for the occasion.

These were so super simple. Mix sugar, cinnamon and salt in a big ziplock.

Whisk egg whites, water, and vanilla in a bowl.

Stir in some pecans.

Put the pecans in the bag and shake. Then spread them out on a baking sheet and bake. The recipe says to bake for an hour, but mine were still slight sticky at that point, so I put them back in for 20 minutes. They were phenomenal.

 

 Dinner consisted of: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole (from the can, not that homemade business I usually slave over, thanks to my little brother who FedEx-ed me the ingredients!!),

 

 

 roasted brussel sprouts, applesauce with dried cranberries, carrot ribbons with cashews, and stuffing.

 

 

This little princess of a girl kept saying "oishii!!" (delicious) as she ate her dinner. Gah! Be still my heart! What a cutie pie!!!

 

 

 I wasn't going to make a pecan pie, but one of the friends who came over halfway requested it, so I threw it into the mix as well. As far as pies go, it's a pretty simple one.

 

I also made my favorite, apple pie. Turns out I am one of the only ones who actually ate it. Pecan pie for the win! (Note: the below photo was taken about 10 minutes ago, I didn't eat that much pie!)

 

It was a pretty mental three days in the kitchen, but I haven't cooked since, as we have been living on leftovers. I guess maybe it was worth it?? Who are we kidding? It was totally worth it! I love this meal!!!

 

As a final little story of from the evening, my favorite line of the night comes from our friends' 9-year old son, while playing MarioKart against K. K is fiercely competitive and if he is losing or loses at something, he generally doesn't take it well. This is something we are working on, but it's not going so well; he just hates losing. Naturally, he was losing. In the middle of a race, K goes, "Z!! Slow down!! I want to win." Without missing a beat, he replies "No way. I'm not losing to a 3-year old." Man, I love kids!