Chocolate Sugar Cookies…

I saw a recipe for chocolate sugar cookies a while back and decided to give them a try yesterday.  I needed to practice designs for some wedding shower party favors I will be making next week so I thought I’d give this recipe a try.

I think I’m going to mix the chocolate and regular sugar cookies, so this cookie will have a regular sugar cookie heart on it next time.

The cookie isn’t overly sweet so the frosting goes perfectly with it. I always love sprinkles.

This design isn’t what it will look like in the end, but I love how the B turned out this way.

My kiddos love the cookies and my other taste testers have had all positive reviews so far.  I love trying out a new recipe and having it turn out well the first time.  I will have more pictures of the finished packaged product once Kelsey puts that together for me.  It is nice to only worry about the baking and not having to worry about the other details.

Beer Sprocket 2012…

I was asked again this year to have a table for Beer Sprocket.  Last year I made 400 mini cupcakes, this year I only had to make 300.  I’m not sure the exact number, but it was a little over 300.

So on Friday I got to work…

Jen loaned me her mixer this year.  I’ve actually had it for over a month since they moved the date of the event due to possible bad weather in April.

This is what 300+ mini cupcakes looks like when they are all boxed up and ready to go.  I didn’t get a chance to stop by the bakery supply store beforehand and so I had all different sized boxes to use to pack them up in.  Thankfully I had enough room and all of the cupcakes made it out to Choctaw unharmed.

My little table full of goodies.  I was smack in between my brother-in-law’s beer table and the beer table of another distributor.  What fun.

Last year I did four different flavors, this year I went with three.  Shawn asked me to try out some beer flavored cupcakes so I went with:

Red Velvet with cream cheese frosting

Raspberry chocolate chip with chocolate buttercream

Cherry with vanilla buttercream.

The Raspberry and Cherry flavors were from a couple of Fruit Ales that Shawn gave me.  I think they turned out pretty well.

Before I knew it all of the cupcakes were gone and I got to call it a night.

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Up next?

I’ve got two dozen red velvet cupcakes for a woman I meet at Beer Sprocket, and some red velvet whoopie pies for my friend Patti.  It’s going to be a good weekend.

Birthday Cookies for Avery…

I promised one of my favorite 2-year-olds that I would make her sugar cookies for her third birthday last week.  Her party was on Saturday so I baked up a batch of sugar cookies and tried to make them as cute as possible on Friday night.

Outlined them in green.

 

Flooded them with purple.

Added yellow polka dots.

And a number three.

After they set on Friday night I boxed them up and dropped them off before the birthday party.  I hear they were a hit.

There is nothing better than making cookies for kids. 

Baby Shower Cupcakes…

I got home from the Y this morning at about 6:20 and realized shortly after that that I was supposed to make cupcakes for a baby shower at Josh’s work today.  Sure I had cupcakes, but at 6:20 this morning they were still in the form of butter, flour, eggs and powdered sugar.  All in their original form.

So I decided that I could get myself ready for work and bake a couple dozen cupcakes so Josh wouldn’t look like he dropped the ball.  Lucky for me it doesn’t take that long to throw together a batch of vanilla cupcakes, and once they go in the oven I had 22 minutes to hop in the shower and get myself dressed.  While the cupcakes cooled off I made the orange butter cream and dried my hair and did my makeup.

All that was left was to frost them and box them up and head to work.  Josh came by my office to pick them up and he said everyone enjoyed them.  It’s always a good day when only one cupcake was left.

He even snapped a picture for me, since I forgot to.

 I’m not gonna lie to you, this really is a horrible picture.  Can you tell that these cupcakes tasted like a dreamcicle?  Yum.

Soccer Sugar Cookies…

Technorati Tags: sugar cookies,soccer,Ateco

I haven’t baked any sugar cookies since I baked dozens of holiday sugar cookies for a couple of our sales reps to give to their customers before Christmas.  I had been suffering a little burnout.

I also had some technical difficulties with my royal icing with the Christmas cookies.  I had run out of my Williams Sonoma meringue powder and it appears to be unavailable now.  In a pinch I went to Hobby Lobby and picked up the Wilton version.

Worst baking purchase ever.  I had all kinds of trouble with this.  While the icing still tasted good on the cookies, getting it on the cookies was a nightmare.  I had trouble with it piping, and even when I thinned it out for flooding the consistency was just strange.

I immediately ordered my second favorite brand Ateco from Amazon.com.

So much better!

I had a friend ask me about soccer sugar cookies.  I did a little research for pictures of soccer designs and thought “No problem!”.  After I committed to making two dozen I did a little more research and discovered that all the feedback on making soccer sugar cookies was negative. 

While they were a tad tedious, I was very happy that I decided to purchase some non-toxic pens to draw the pentagon on the cookies to begin the pattern.  If I hadn’t done this I would have been in big trouble.

Pentagons are not easy.

The birthday girl is number eight on her soccer team.  I just love what the black icing does to kids when they eat it.  Overall I think they turned out very cute.  It was good to make sugar cookies again.

Up this week?  Cupcakes for a wedding shower on Friday and a baby shower on Saturday.

My New Toy…

It’s funny how excited a new cookbook can make me.  I happened to run across some information about a new Cupcake cookbook that one of my favorite bakers contributed to.

It was a bonus when I ordered this from Amazon and I had a free trial subscription for Amazon Prime because of the girls’ new Kindles they got for Christmas.  Free 2-day shipping was icing on the (cup)cake.

I can’t wait to try out some of the recipes and tips that are contained in this big awesome book.