33 and 5 and 1 to grow on...

December has been busy! Lots of baking but not lots o' blogging.

Note: What cha' missed...

1. Totally exciting news! First official "I don't know this person" cupcake request. Easy breezy half chocolate and half white with buttercream icing. I used this as a time experiment, exactly 1.5 hours to bake, decorate, and deliver 36 cupcakes (12 stayed home).

2. Soccer ball Christmas party for Karen's girlie. Chocolate soccer ball in white and red AND 36 sugar cookies to decorate. 18 snowmen and 18 gingermen.

3. Eggnog cupcakes. My b-in-law and I were at the store getting some last minute Christmas eve needs for Gorgeous. We decided I definitely needed to make some cupcakes (a dangerous move to make in G's kitchen on Christmas eve... but we are sly!) The doorbell rang just as Gorgeous took the last dish out of the oven, we had a solid 5 min distraction and the oven set at the right temp! Bwa-ha-ha-ha. Made the eggnog-cream cheese icing after dinner and voila!

Now that you're all caught up... 33 and 5. Two birthdays in December; my sister turned 33 and her oldest girlie turned 5.

My sister is a much more disciplined diner than I am... or anyone I know. She said to make whatever cake everyone else would like because she probably wouldn't have any... So I made what I (that's a capital I for emphasis, not for grammar) wanted: angel cupcakes!

Yummers! Even my sister could not resist the evil draw of angel cupcakes...

And who could resist the candles I found on clearance... (The "33" didn't come with the set...tehe... it came with a "1st")

For my niece's birthday, her actual birthday, we decided to celebrate princess style. At her party earlier we celebrated P-Leia style and now we'll celebrate Purple Princess style!

My niece is 34 going on 5. It's very hard to remember she's a child when you are speaking with her because she is SUPER smart. But she really IS a child... she just has an SAT vocabulary that is off the chart. Anywho... she loves purple.

My original plan had been to create a purple princess in the wonder-mold (yes, by Wilton) and then 4 mini princesses in the mini wonder-mold (yes, also by Wilton). Chocolate for the main princess and white for the mini princesses... Chocolate dress was cooling and I was half way through mixing the white cake when I fell one. egg. short. Coulda really used a "baker's dozen" here. No mini princesses.

I wish I'd taken a picture of how the cake baked... not even. Anyway, we had a short princess by the time I leveled the cake. I played this very safe. No fancy icing, just some "flower petals" for ruffles and pearls for the bodice.

My youngest girlie has asked for one for her birthday... So I'll count it as a success.

10 lbs of buttercream and a Ho Ho Ho later...

It's 70 degrees outside and my girlies keep trying to wear shorts and flip-flops even though I have told them it doesn't matter if it is 100 outside, it's December and we're going to dress like it!

All this drama while creating Santa and Sir Elf... 2 of my 10 lbs of buttercream needed to be red for their hats. I usually just use Wilton's tubed red icing when I need it for accents, but I needed a LOT of red for for this project and I wanted it to taste good. I put a whole container of red into the buttercream, and it looked pink... but it was going to have to do. I had read on another blog to let the colored buttercream set because the color would continue to change and it did! I ended up having a nice red for the hats.

I had way more fun with Santa, I loved piping his beard. And I used the "grass" tip to put some texture on their hats. I'm still not good at smoothing buttercream... The Elf was supposed to be smooth buttercream, instead he looks like he suffered from severe acne as a teen elf (I see a Christmas movie here...)

We're bringing in the season with butter and sugar. In icing alone, 5 lbs of powder sugar and 5 lbs of butter. Wowsa!

Secret Santa

My week started out a "bit" rocky... and in the middle of these rocky waves of nerves a Secret Santa brought me the most beautifully wrapped tower of Wilton wonders. My friends in the OP are the BEST Secret Santas EVER! I wish I had taken a picture before ripping into the gift... but I didn't, I was too excited.

I decided to bake them a thank you cake.

Cake 1 (monday night) cratered. I would have taken a picture, but it looks just like this one. I don't know what the deal is. Sometimes the white cake just gives up on me... I might start suspecting my girlies, who are the ones to gain in this situation.

Cake 2 (tuesday night)... my rocky week was starting to smooth out so I was up for another go and I made a chocolate cake. Great bake although it did rise a good 2 inches over the pan, perfectly flat, just high. So I took my wire and and cut the overage,which my children also enjoyed, and set my alarm to decorate it in the morning before work.

I had grand decorating plans. Yellow icing, pink flowers on top and white flowers around the bottom.

I WOKE UP LATE!

Grand plans gone. Need new plan. Need new plan fast. Need new plan before my kitchen aid is done mixing my buttercream icing!

Needless to say, my decorating was a bit organic.

I did use a new tool, the decorating triangle, to make the lines around the cake. It was fun, and the girlies thought it was cool, but I definitely need to practice. A star here, a scallop there, sprinkle with candy pearls... and the no-plan cake is done. It looked cuter than it does in the picture... or maybe it just smelled so good it didn't matter.

Anyway, the cake was well received and OP sent the best note back. The highlight of the note, "If an urge should overcome you to indulge us once again with another of your baked masterpieces, please know we would certainly welcome it with open mouths."

Ahhh, words to make my little baker heart pitter-patter!

The Force...

My sister is the hostess with the mostest! E, my niece, insisted on a Star Wars themed birthday party. She is the REAL Princess Leia! Sarah created fabulous birthday invitations and decorations and gave me the baking order... I know it's my sister, but I am still counting this as my 2nd official birthday baking order!!!

William Sonoma has a cute Star Wars line and Sarah purchased the cupcake packages and the cookie cutter package. Really nice. So all I had to do was make the cookies and cupcakes.

Let's start with the cupcakes. Didn't even need to think about them. Sarah wanted white cupcakes, white buttercream, and clear sprinkles. Easy breezy.

The cookies were an entirely different matter. I've never made cookies before so Sarah and I got together (weekend before the party) to practice. I THOUGHT the "practice" would be in the icing... noooooo (well, yes, but thats later)... the practice that night was just in BAKING the cookies. I picked up a tube of Pilsbury sugar cookie dough. The box cakes work for me, why start from scratch with cookies?

I don't know the scientific reason, but I do know that the Pilsbury sugar cookie dough DOES NOT roll out. No matter what we tried. I fortunately had all the ingredients in the kitchen to make the recipe on the box of cutters from WS. Did you know you have to chill cookie dough for two hours? Fortunately we had plenty of things to talk about while we were waiting on the dough to chill.

Note: Kitchen Aid mixer is a dream with the dough! Also, I have a new appreciation for parchment paper!

The cookies cut perfectly with this dough recipe and they imprinted perfectly. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Round 1-4 of decorating attempts. Here is what the cookies are supposed to look like decorated:

We tried Wilton's Color Flow icing... at three consistencies. I think the last consistency was the correct one. Sarah was actually really good at the piping. The taste wasn't great... but with a lot of practice I'm sure I could have made it work. As the birthday grew nearer and my work schedule more demanding I thought the odds of attractive eddible cookies looked pretty bad.

So then I though we could use candy melts instead. They taste better and dry faster, the color flow can take up to 2 days to dry, candy melts dry right away. By Thursday this looked like my best option. Candy Melts are easy... just melt in the microwave and pipe with icing tips. Friday morning I got up early to test this theory. Yes, it will work. But no, my piping skills weren't going to pull it off. Worst case scenario we just have plain sugar cookies. I had 30 sets of good looking cookies, each set with a Star, Darth Vader, Yoda, and a Storm Trooper. Plus I had about 40 cookies that weren't perfect but could be used for testing icing.

By the time I'd arrived at work (1 hour drive) I decided that a half dipped cookie in candy melts was the best and tastiest way to go. So imagine yoda, half his face plane cooke and the other half (vertically) covered in green candy melts. Totally cute! Chocolate for Darth, white for the Storm Troopers, and multi colored for the stars. Sarah approved... in theory.

Hubby "didn't get it". THis was enough to bail on the half dipped. I don't think he should have been our "voice of the people" but we also didn't want to spend valuable time on something that might not work. But the candy melts were REALLY good on the cookies. Really tasty. So I thought, what about covering the backside of the cookie? Which we were able to do very quickly. Not perfectly, infact, I was quite depressed after we finished the 120 cookies because I thought I had totally ruined them. But now I'm happy with them and would do it again. My sister provided the ribbons and bags and I had them packed up in no time:

as presented at the party:

And the cupcakes were cute too, because of the William Sonoma items:

and, finally, the glamour shot...

Plus!!!! One of the mom's asked for my number and wanted to know if I did cakes for other people. If she calls that will be THREE official birthdays!

May the Force be with you!