CookieD-oh

So it was my turn to work at the hospitality table at church this past weekend. I wanted to bake something special (of course), but  I also wanted it to be bite-sized.  Because not everyone likes to have sweets for breakfast. Weirdos. Anyhoo, I decided to make mini lemon meringue pies.  Because. Pie.  And since I have a love/hate relationship with pie crust, I decided to cheat and use my sugar cookie dough as the crust.  (The boy said that if I had added a layer of cake it would have been the perfect dessert.) After making the dough, I got out my mini muffin pan and my small Pampered Chef scoop and got to work rolling balls of dough.  My very favorite activity in the whole wide world! [Insert sarcasm font here] After rolling the dough, I used the Pampered Chef mini tart-shaper to make the balls into shells. Confession: I have had the tart-shaper tool for about 14 years and this is the second time I've used it for its intended purpose. The fir...

When I saw the Peeps cookie cutters at Michael's, I had to get them. I didn't even try to rationalize it.  They're Peeps cookie cutters for crying out loud. Who needs a reason? The boy, being a purist at heart just like his mother, refuses to eat the bunny Peeps.  He calls them impostors.  Somehow he learned that Peeps were originally chicks. He's my boy and I love him, but he's a little odd sometimes... I thought the pink bunny Peeps were cute. They're iced yellow or pink, and covered with regular granulated sugar.  Easiest. Cookies. Ever. That's all for now. Enjoy!

Two of my coworkers moved on to bigger and better things last week.  Jerks. Just kidding. I wish them all the best.  And to prove it, I made a cake. Whenever I decorate with buttercream, my cakes come out looking like grocery store cakes.  Oh well.  Lemon cake with vanilla buttercream. Good luck, guys!

Guess what the girl ordered for her special birthday dinner?  OK, you'll never guess. Toad-in-the-hole and macaroni and cheese from a box.  So much for healthy eating.  And all of the wonderful from-scratch macaroni and cheese I've made over the years. So, have you heard of toad-in-the-hole?  It's British.  Only I didn't know it was British when I first started making it.  The first recipe I found for toad-in-the-hole wasn't a really good one, but I knew it should be good. If only I knew what to do. So I did some digging and found out the "hole" is Yorkshire Pudding.  Seriously awesome stuff.  The toad is sausage.  I believe you're supposed to use something called "bangers", but that's not an item I can easily get here.  So Bob Evans bulk sausage it is! **If anyone reading this blog knows how to make real, authentic toad-in-a-hole, feel free to leave me some pointers.  But this is how I make it and it's the girl's favo...

So there is technically no Barbie on this cake.  In fact, to look at this cake you'd wonder what the heck Barbie has to do with it at all.  Let me explain. The girl has become enamored of "Barbie: Life in the Dream House" on Netflix.  There are 4-ish episodes available to stream.  We may have seen each episode approximately 32 times. But, getting back to the cake, in one of the episodes Chelsea is turning 6.  Chelsea gets a birthday cake.  My precious little princess wanted a replica of Chelsea's cake for her birthday. Chelsea's cake: The girls' cake: Here's the deal.  When I mixed the fondant and started decorating on the morning of the party, the fondant was the shade of pink in the first picture above.  By the time we got to the venue (ok, my brother's house), it had faded to the shade directly above. I was a bit annoyed.  I was out of Americolor Pink, so I used Wilton instead.  Never again. But, it still came out cu...