MORE copy cat cookie cakes

The Cake

And the Cookie. Obviously the color is a little bit off but seriously I was only going to make one blue and that was it.

The Cake

My desire to match things exactly had expired by the time I got to this cookie. but the resemblance is there...

Copy Cat Cookie Cakes

I realized recently that I have done TONS of baby shower cookies, but I have very few wedding or shower cookies on here. SOOOOO I spent some time (a LOT of time) surfing the web and picking out pretty wedding cakes to turn into cookies.

I mentioned these guys last week, and really intended to get them all decorated last week, but sometimes life just gets in the way! So its now 7 days after I baked the cookies (thank goodness they freeze really well), and they are finally decorated!!! I am (shockingly) really happy with all of them. Sadly, today is the fist time I've been less impressed with the pictures than I am with the cookies. they just do not do them justice :(

The REAL Cake.

The Cookie Cake

And I really liked those scrolls, so I did a few others...

First I stayed pretty traditional except with blue and black.
And then I added some accent dots.

And then I went all traditional with some white on white...

More copy cats coming tomorrow.

You learn something new every day!

So 2 weeks ago I did cookies for 2 showers. I did my baking on Wed. night and my decorating on thursday. I did this set, in the morning and delivered them at lunch, and then decorated this set thrusday night because they were being picked up friday morning. Well... since they were both for boy showers, I thought I'd get some extra use out of the light blue and brown piping consistency icing I'd made.

NOT! Apparently royal icing can loose is stiffness when sitting for long periods of time. When I went to use them 7 hours after making them they kind of spilled out of the piping tip and were essentially useless. So last night when I got distracted from decorating cookies I stuck the icing in the freezer and we'll see how it goes tonight.

UPDATE: took the piping bags out of the freezer, let them sit about 20 mins and piped away quite sucessfully. I had quite a bit of icing left over so I threw them all back in the freezer to hopefully use on another day.

Puppy shower update.

Well here are just a few pics of the dog bone cookies all set up at their shower. See the little puppy blanket.. cute huh?

Vanilla, the end

You may have noticed by now, but I have managed to turn my quest for vanilla into 4 seemingly inconsequential posts ;) But I am a baking nerd and I wanted to follow this through to the end. So here are my actual products. The extract and the bean paste.

And hopefully you can kind of get an idea of what the bean paste looks like. Its literally thousands of tiny vanilla seeds suspended in a vanilla syrup. It really is the consistency of maple syrup. And I did dive in, and lick the back of that measuring spoon. It definitely tastes a little better than straight up extract... lower alcohol content, higher sugar content and what not. But there are obvious limitations, I don't think royal icing would look very appealing with tiny vanilla seeds in it. And I suspect that the actual flavor effects are a bit stronger with the extract.

And here's the beautiful dough, with its saran wrap wrinkles and tiny flecks of vanilla bean seeds. Yeah adjust your focus, can't you see that gourmet goodness in there?? no, no? Maybe you can see it once the cookie is baked...

And here's a cute little wedding cake, wait you can't see the gourmet vanilla bean seeds in the baked cookie either? I think you'd need a LOT of the paste to really see the gourmet seed goodness in there, but that's not at all what I was going for. Anyway, these puppies are gonna get covered in luscious coat of royal icing tomorrow.

Promise to get some pretties up here soon!

All kinds of not the post I wanted today...

Okay folks, I made cookie dough with my awesome new vanilla at lunch yesterday and I even took some great pictures. The problem was, the memory card for my camera was still stuck in my computer in my office. I didn't realize it until I'd taken about 10 pictures. Long story short on vanilla, I think I like the bean paste better because it has a lower alcohol content and smells better than pure extract. Which isn't a fair test because it should be about taste right? more on this later.

I was gonna make some cookies today... but instead i drove my mom and grandma up to a tiny town in east Texas called gilmer (where my grandma is from). We literally left home at 9, got to gilmer around 12:30, ran some errands and drooped Memaw off at her 90 year old friends house and hit the road again. On the way home, my mom and I stopped an awesome little garden store and she got a wirly gig for her vegetable garden. We had a long but great fun mommy daughter, and granny day. No cookies baked.

Unless you count the chocolate chip cookie I'm eating, made from frozen cookie dough purchased from a co-worker's kid's fundraiser. And man is it awesome. Gulp, guilty pleasure.

And since I haven't posted ANY real pictures lately and things are getting pretty visually boring, I'll post this... a picture of the pirate cookies in the party setting.

Vanilla Continued

I am happy to report that Neilsen Massey Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Extract was located and purchased in the town of College Station yesterday. Ironically at the store (Specs for those of you in Texas) where I "thought" I might find the Sonoma Syrup version. They did not have the Sonoma Syrup, but they have many options of Neilsen Massey Extracts. I actually bought 4oz. of extract and 4oz. of vanilla extract paste, which essentially just has the tiny seeds from vanilla beans in it. I don't think this really adds to the flavor (but it might, I haven't opened either yet) literally everything I read about it says it gives a gourmet appearance... you know like you bought a 12 dollar vanilla bean to steep in your baked good... but not really. To be honest I am not entirely sure WHY I bought the paste considering what i just wrote, but we'll see. I have butter sitting out to make some cookie dough this afternoon. I will report on any flavor enhancements if they materialize, and hopefully post some pictures of my new purchases!

Also, I realized yesterday that you might be interested in reading about the 10 top Vanillas I read about, and that it was very selfish of me to only highlight the ones available in my small town. I mean chances are YOU might have access to more wonderful varieties of vanilla than me, and will want to make an informed decision too.

PS- The vanilla I bought was considerably cheaper than the article suggests... maybe thats a plus for my little city.

Vanilla Crusade

Today, ladies and gentlemen, I am on a search for high quality vanilla. I ran out of the last of my moderate quality vanilla this weekend, and all I have left is a big bottle of Wilton's clear vanilla... which I cannot imagine is the highest quality. In fact, I made some cake mix cookies yesterday and added some of that clear vanilla and I don't think it tastes very good. Sooooo since what I make most often is sugar cookies and in and of themselves they are pretty simple, I think having a high quality vanilla is pretty important. And I don't mind justifying the expense since so little of it goes into each batch of cookies.

I did some research yesterday and here is what I am thinking/hoping to come home with today...

Nielsen Massey Vanilla

and/or

Sonoma Syrup Vanilla

Why these 2? Well honestly I am all about cooking with things that are high quality, but readily available and affordable. So if YOU want to imitate what I'm doing, you can without too much hassle. And when I researched it yesterday these 2 vanilla's came up as top 10 recommended extracts for quality and price. AND they are potentially available in College Station. And if I can find them in College Station you can find them anywhere! Now if you don't feel like going out and doing the legwork to find these items, they are readily available online, but I think I've mentioned before that I am all about instant gratification so I am crossing my fingers that I will come home with vanilla in hand this afternoon.

And now, a little bit about vanilla:

For all intents and purposes vanilla is sold in 3 "pure extract" varieties. Most grocery store vanillas are blends and/or imitation... And there's definitely nothing wrong with them. Heck I've been baking with them for years and may go back to the grocery store again if i don't notice a difference after today's experiment. ANYWAY 3 pure extracts... named for their origin, but each have specific flavor profiles... and thus recommended uses

Madagascar Bourbon - Named after the Bourbon islands NOT the drink... is the smoothest and probably most versatile flavor. This is the best bet for baking cookies and cakes and thus, what I am hoping to come home with today.

Tahitian -Has a comparatively more fruity flavor, and is recommended for fruit desserts. go figure

Mexican - I've heard this described as spicy, and is best for chocolate and cinnamon dishes. And I'd imagine its pretty good in savory dishes... if you like that kind of thing!

More baby boys

Here's some kind of mod (at least in color combo) onsies and duckies for another baby boy shower this weekend. And just to clarify, because it appears I was a little bit confusing. The bones below are for a puppy themed human baby shower ;) I'll have some pictures of the whole spread on monday.

When I started to take pictures, I realized that I had several pairs of matched onsies and duckies

These are actually orange and blue (its reading a lot bit brown on my screen right now).


And these are a much more limey springy green than camo green.

same green as above. i guess the blue makes them appear lighter.

Throw me a bone...

Shower that is. Well its ACTUALLY a puppy shower for a baby boy, but the cookies are bones, and I am kind of in love. I wasn't quite sure how these were gonna turn out, but its hard to go wrong with cool blue and chocolate brown. Is there anything more appealing than that?

I think there were about 35 cookies and I only had to make 2 colors of icing... which is AWESOME. Half started out blue with brown outlines. For the blue I used wiltons cornflower blue with a tiny bit of teal to brighten it up.

The other half started out brown (made using standard royal icing plus coco powder) with blue outlines.
And then they got all dolled up with some spots, stripes, and paisleys.

Heres a closeup with their "super pearl" luster dust.

Oops

I know these might look like yummy chocolate sugar cookies. But I've never made chocolate cookies. This is what happens when you put your 3 last cookies in the oven, forget to set the timer, wash the dishes and then sit down drinking a gin and tonic.

These will be the death of me.

I made TONS of cake balls, and if they weren't for someone else... I would eat them ALL. I did make some extras for us, which in hindsight was a bad idea. This morning there were 15 and now there are 12 :0)

These are the naked ones before they get their chocolate coating. I could eat them just like this.... and might have sampled a few. The more of these I do, the less frosting I actually use. In fact, I tasted some where I had WAY over done the frosting and they were super gooey and almost gross. I think this might be why some people have trouble dipping them in chocolate. I would say, for each 9x13 cake I use about 1/2 can of frosting. (that means they're better for you right??) It takes some time to get it mixed in and consistent, but if you made sure your cake was well cooled and crumbled before you add frosting, you can get a really good consistency with less frosting.

Mmmm, nice and smooth melted milk chocolate with some paramount flakes to thin it out some. I am nervous to melt chocolate in the microwave so I do it over the stove, but the steam can cause real problems if you let any water sneak in. I think for the next go round I might test the microwave method. I am pretty sure I got some water in my white chocolate and it wasn't nearly as smooth as the milk chocolate.

These are said paramount flakes. I have no idea if you can get these in stores, they were definitely an online purchase for me, but I had never heard of them before I started shopping online. I never even looked in the store for this stuff. They are pure shortening that help thin the chocolate out without interfering with the overall consistency or the set up.

This is what they look like, there's obviously not a lot of perspective here... that pile is about the size of a quarter. I only add about 1/3 or 1/2 that amount to my chocolate.

Ahh and here are the fancy ones ready to go to a baby boy shower. YUM. Had to pack them up quick so Sean and I didn't polish them off last night!

Bread Pudding

This might be our favorite dessert. Its hard to find something we both really enjoy, but a good bread pudding will definitely make us happy.

This is a recipe I adapted to make perfect for us.

1 loaf white bread (I use hearty white or country white)

2.5 cups whole milk (I substituted 1 cup skim)

2 Eggs

1 stick salted butter

4 0z Cream Cheese

3/4 cup sugar

2 tbls cinnamon.

Remove the crust and roughly cube the bread. Cream the butter and cream cheese well then add sugar, eggs, milk, and cinnamon (it helps if all the ingredients are room temp). Should be a thick creamy liquid. Pour liquid over cubed bread and let it soak in for a few minutes. Spray an 8x8 or 9x9 baking dish and add the soaked bread and spread evenly. Bake at 350 for 45 mins to an hour. It will rise as it bakes and should be firm, not soupy in the middle when its done. Let cool at least an hour before serving.

We usually cut slices and reheat in the microwave and pour a sauce over it. This weekend I made a chocolate sauce from allrecipes.com, but neither of us were 100% thrilled. I think we both prefer a vanilla cream sauce, I just haven't found a favorite yet.

Sometimes I don't pay attention aka The Food Coloring Post

So I planned to write this up earlier today, but the circus made its way to College Station and I pretty much begged my sister to take Connor and bring me along. He cried at first, but once the show started he was "Wooooo"ing and clapping the whole time. I really enjoyed it. And I wonder if I had a hobby other than baking, like say... climbing and spinning in ropes if I would feel comfortable wearing spandex in front of thousands of people instead of sweats. Hmmmmm food for thought.

Back to food coloring... THIS is where i store all my food coloring, sprinkles, and piping tips. The big containers are sprinkles and sanding sugar that rarely get used. And since I think I'm about to outgrow the container with colors alone, they will probably get booted. But for now... this is where my supplies are kept.

Yeah its as bad as it looks, I'm super organized... I like it that way

Okay, here's the run down, below is my box of Wilton's gel icing colors. Its a 12 pack starter kit and a GREAT place to start if you don't want to buy a bunch of individual bottles. The ones that come in it are short like the bottle on the left, and if you buy them individually you get the bigger size. But I've had these since sometime in college and they have not run out yet. In fact, they are starting to go bad and goopy instead of smooth so I am thinking about chucking them and replacing them with a different brand. The main point here is that you want to buy gel food colors. They are relatively inexpensive (I think this set cost around $12 at walmart, and the larger bottles are $2.50 or so) and designed specifically to color frosting and batter. They wont thicken or thin out your icing at all. Perhaps the best benefit to gel colors is that they are HIGHLY concentrated, thus you do not have to use very much... I usually use a toothpick or a knife to dip in and slowly add color. I mean, I make lots of cookies and even more icing and I've had this 12 pack for at least 5 years. The downside? Even with "Christmas red' its hard to make a vibrant red, AND the red tastes bad (but that's a common problem not just with Wilton's). I find that if you add a little extra vanilla or orange extract you can combat the bad taste.

And on the topic of red, I am slowly starting to build up a collection of powdered food colors because my sister tells me they are even more vibrant than gel colors. So far I have 2 shades of red, a burgundy and white. White was the first color I bought because I had some trouble with my vanilla turning my icing kind of brownish. It works like a charm and is also great for toning down a color that accidentally goes too bright (intend to post about this with pics). So based on my satisfaction with the white powder, I recently ordered the reds... I haven't tried them out yet, but I promise to update with commentary on both color and taste once I've tried them. Sadly I don't have too much first hand experience with the powders yet, but the other reason they are appealing to me and will probably gain popularity in my color repertoire is that you can use them to color chocolate. See you can buy chocolate in EVERY color of the rainbow, but it goes against my storage sensibilities. If I can buy dark, milk and white chocolate and keep colors on hand it just makes more sense than finding a place to keep giant bags of pink, purple blue, green yellow, red chocolate all at once. The downside? The only one I have found so far is that its not readily available in College Station. There's a great resource in Houston, and tons of places to buy it online, but that doesn't really satisfy my needs for instant gratification.

These guys (below) are making a strong showing in my color box lately. The primary reason is that you can get them in the grocery store, even our local Kroger with a meager decorating section keeps them well stocked. I feel like, I've been grabbing a set every time I go in and at $2.99 for a four pack they are very easy on the wallet. Today, however, the grocery store was a ZOO and I WAS NOT PAYING ATTENTION, and purchased a lovely four pack of ICKY neon colors instead of the standard red, blue, yellow, and green I was going for. Oh well, I don't think all is lost and will post soon about how to salvage these otherwise offensive colors. Another HUGE plus for these guys is they they come in a squeeze tube, which makes it really easy to use and I don't end up making nearly as big of a mess with them(In fact the reason I am considering another brand other than wiltons to replace my 12 pack is the availability of squeeze bottles). The primary drawback is that you have to buy the 4 pack. I've gone through 2 tubes of red trying to make maroon, and now am the proud owner of 2 completely full sets of yellow, blue and green and I still don't have any red! If I could buy these individually at the grocery store, they would be my all time winner. PLUS, I used a ton of red (like the whole squeezy thing) in the maroon and did not notice an offensive taste. Score for Betty!

Well, that's a much longer general rundown than I expected. And there's definitely more to say on the issue, so if you have any specific questions ask away and I'll do my best.

PS-I just remembered another benefit of the gel colors, and probably the reason they are so good for consistency... The primary ingredient is corn syrup. I am pretty sure thats NOT the primary ingredient in those liquid jobbies my mom used to have. Do you remember the ones that looked like drops of liquid? I don't even know if you can buy these anymore, and I wouldn't cause I'm a gel girl, but they sure are cute.

Rollin' rollin', rollin'

Because I like photo instructions, I thought I would take some step by steps of the rolling/baking process. I have yet to master the art of taking an action shot of myself however so these are all stagnant and probably don't provide too much help. What might really be helpful is the list of things you need to get started...

• Cookie dough -- these instructions work for any dough but you can find my recipe here.
• Flour -- You will want plenty of flour. I put a pile directly on my rolling surface, but keep the canister close by as well.
• Rolling Pin -- Any old pin will do, but the type you use will dictate the amount of flour you use. I use a nonstick rolling pin, and don't really need to flour it at all.
• Cookie Cutter -- Well this is the fun part isn't it. For the eggs I bought a round cookie cutter and just kind of bent it into an egg shape.
• Cookie Sheet -- I definitely prefer air bake cookie sheets, but I always line them with something so I don't have preference on whether is non-stick or not. In fact I have a whopping 2 sheets and one is and one isn't.
• Silpat/Roulpat -- These are possibly the BEST cookie tools I ever invested in. Cookies will NEVER stick. i also own a roulpat which I use to roll my cookies out on. Its just a big silpat
• but has the same amazing non-stick qualities. I still use flour, but not nearly as much.

Optional Items

• Helper Monkey -- This is only beneficial for hiding Milky Ways in our house, but he sure is cute!
• Stacey and Clinton -- Husband got me a TV for the kitchen and I love it. I almost always have that on or an audio book playing on my ipod. Its the next best thing to baking WITH someone, which is really still the best in my book.

Then you just want to roll to about 1/4 inch thickness. Sometimes if the dough is too cold it will crack, but you can mush it back together and keep rolling without too many issues. I have a problem getting mine too thin sometimes and I think its always better to be a little bit thick rather than thin and brittle.


Then just cut away, but try to transfer them to the cookie sheet pretty quickly because when they are this thin they get HOT really quickly and tend to rip. A lot of times I transfer them as I cut them, but since the egg is a pretty large cookie cutter and very simple I didn't have any problem transferring them.

There they are all lined up and ready to go in the oven. You can see some "freckles" in these guys... that's just molasses from the brown sugar. Nothing to worry about.

Then I bake. I always start with 7 minutes on the first batch and increase the time from there. They shouldn't take more than 9 minutes to get just a little bit brown on the edges. If you never achieve browning, up your temperature a tiny bit. I have a VERY unreliable oven... this helps me make sure they don't burn. You can see that they actually get lighter as they bake. (near: baked, far: unbaked)

Then let your cookies cool sufficiently and DECORATE!

Tiny Pink Cakes

These are the same cream cheese pound cake as the tar heel cake. I thought I wanted to swirl in some pink to be eastery and festive. Overall it was kind of a flop. I used wilton's burgundy (imagine how much color it would take to turn that pink into true burgundy) to to color the pink part of the batter, and trust me, the pictures do not do the heinousness justice. Don't get me wrong. I ate the cake and it was fine, but I think I could taste some of the pink coloring which is never cool, and I generally just got the proportions wrong. Of the five cakes I did, only one had the kind of swirling I envisioned and one cake was almost entirely pink. I wish I had just done them plain and let their size and cuteness speak for themselves.

Note: I halved the original recipe and was able to sufficiently fill 5 of my 6 tiny bunt pans. I also used Pam for baking... which is awesome to spray the tiny bunt. I've never had a cake stick to it, and its so much easier than greasing and flouring pans.

They all looked pretty well swirled and balanced from the top. But looks can be decieving.

the brown edges on these cakes are my FAVORITE.

I whipped the heck out of butter, cream cheese and sugar, and it actually had a souffle effect. But I wanted to get a good picture of the raised centers. Thats how I knew they were done. I probably could have let them bake a little longer, but I love the gooey bottom part of this cake.

You can kind of get a better idea of the actual pink color. It was not nearly as soft as I planned, but thats life.

Tar Heel Cake (aka National Champion Cake)

Well its really just cream cheese pound cake. Which is the favorite thing my momma makes. And perhaps my favorite cake EVER! My freshman year in college (which I cannot believe was nearly 10 years ago) my mom shipped me a cream cheese pound cake, an awful nightshirt thingy, and a Kate Spade purse... I still carry that purse. There have been some others in between, but ultimately its black, its small, it zips closed and fits everything I want to hold with a little bit of extra room. Its hard to find a perfect purse.

But back to the cream cheese pound cake or tar heel cake as it was this weekend. It was my contribution to our final four party, and I will go as far as to say that it helped the heels WIN the national championship last night!! Long story short, my BIL is a tar heel, and when Wake played in the first round he was a real trooper and did car bombs until he puked in an effort to help us win. So this was the least I could do for his team (archenemies or not).

Recipe
3 sticks butter
80z. Cream Cheese
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
3 cups flour
flavoring

Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar. Add eggs one at a time and then add flour and mix until just combined. Pour into well floured or pam'ed bunt pan and bake at 325 for and hour and 15 mins or so.

For tar heel cake I tinted half of the batter carolina blue. Even though I'm a Deacon through and through I LOVE this color.

Then I alternated it in my bunt pan (which was a little bit too deep to bake properly but it worked out okay) and swirled with a knife.
And Voila, Tar heel swirls

Now I realize that dying food for no particular reason offends some peoples sensibilities, and I honestly felt a little bit guilty about it, but it was for a good cause. I like it so much I halved the recipe and made tiny pink and white ones the next day. Didn't love them as much. The pink was a bit intense, and I the ratio of white to pink batter was off, but I got a chance to try out my tiny bunt pans (baked about 30 mins). Pictures tomorrow I think.