CookieD-oh

Monday was the first day of Spring Break.  This is what we woke up to: The boy was less than thrilled. So we made an apple crisp.  It didn't feel like a pink lemonade cupcake kind of day. Since our apple crisp was unplanned, all we had in the house were Fuji apples, which really aren't the best for baking.  I nuked them for a couple minutes to soften them up first. My absolute favorite baking apples are Winesap.  But we can only get those at the local fruit farm, and they're not ripe until the end of the season.  So we have a while (about six months) until we can get them. :-( We used the Pioneer Woman's fruit crisp  recipe. Because it's yummy. I do make a few alterations. It's who I am.  I use 5 (at least) cups of fruit.  2 Tbs of cornstarch, a generous sprinkling of cinnamon, and, depending on the fruit, less to much less sugar. See all the cinnamon? Yeah, well, it turns out I had the "spoon" part of the lid open instead of the &

My coworker asked me to make a cake for her son's birthday.  Apparently he's quite the wresting fan.  She wanted a wrestling ring, so this is what I came up with. Nothing fancy.  She had some toys action figures she was going to put in it.  I hear he loved it. That's all for now. Enjoy!

One of the ladies over at  www.cookiedecorator.com , Tasha, is presently deployed in Afghanistan.  One day she posted to the forum and asked if anyone would be willing to send some cookies to her to pass out to her troops (I'm paraphrasing, bear with me).  Anyhoo, the response was quite favorable. Some members were going to send supplies so Tasha could do a cookie decorating demonstration. Many others were going to send cookies for the troops.   At first the goal was 1000 cookies.  People started referring to it, jokingly, as Operation Cookie Takeover. Then one of the other ladies set up a Facebook  page.  At last count there were over 11,000 cookies pledged.  Pretty cool, huh?  They're going to have media exposure, a cookie decorating contest and enough cookies to had out to troops in all of the outlying areas.  Cookie people are awesome! Anyway, I just shipped mine.  I went with an Hawaiian theme, in patriotic colors, of course! America! Flip flops and hyacinths...

Here they are!  My very first EVER set of St. Patrick's Day cookies. Why the first ever?  I don't know.  It's not really a holiday we celebrate, even though Hubby is mostly Irish by descent. Anyhoo, I will be linking this post up to LilaLoa's photography challenge.  Those of you who frequent this blog know how I feel about photography.  But in order to participate in the challenge, I CHARGED MY REAL CAMERA!!!! I know, right?  Actual photographers will probably take issue with my calling my little Olympus point-and-shoot a real camera. But it has settings.  That I can change.  Thereby making it more real than the camera in my iPhone, which is what I normally use to take pictures. Like this picture right here: Please note the yellow cast (which pervades most of the pictures in this blog).  Classic iPhone-in-my-kitchen.  The pics, by the way, are templates I used for the cookies.  I made the templates with card stock and an X-Acto knife.  The pots o' gold

This year, the boy wanted a Minecraft-themed birthday cake. And since I aim to please, he got one. We had the party at my brother's house.  He's got a lot more natural light than I do.  See how the picture isn't yellow?  He's also got more space, which is the main reason we had the party there, not just for the natural light. I really don't get the whole Minecraft craze.  But it's sweeping our part of the nation.  All the kids at school are playing it.  All the kids at martial arts class are playing it.  All the kids at my SIL's homeschool co-op are playing it.  I'm baffled. Anyhoo, Minecraft is incredibly pixellated.  I explained to the boy, that while I love him dearly, I don't have that kind of time.  So his cake was not going to be crafted of six million individually cut squares of fondant.  Being the rational young man that he is, he went with it. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Minecraft phenomena, the top tier i

I think I said about a year ago that I was going to post my recipe for buttercream frosting soon.  It's still soon, right? Anyhoo, this is the recipe I always use, and it can be adapted to do almost anything.  It's an American Buttercream, because I'm a simple girl with simple tastes.  And maybe a little lazy. The original recipe can be found  here.   Rick's Special Buttercream Frosting.  Rick is my hero. I have adapted the recipe for my use, and this is the basic formula I use. In this post, I'm making a double batch, so the pictures are going to show more that the text is telling you to use.  Sorry, last minute cake request.  It was unavoidable. Mix one cup of shortening (preferably not trans-fat free...that means no Crisco...use a store brand) and one cup of softened butter.  Now, it's February here in the Midwest.  I left that butter on my counter ALL DAY, and it was still a little cold. But it all worked out in the end. Mix that all up nice.