Spring Flowers

Even though our seasons are mild in SoCal, I still look forward to spring when the bulbs come up in the flower bed.  My iris' are very close to blooming, can't wait!  I wanted to make some spring like flowers to send out in Easter packages to my inlaws & friends.  I decided to do daisies.

I made some premade flower centers a few weeks before with some left over royal icing.  It's a great way to use up left over icing & also makes it really easy to get perfect centers on your flowers.  You can find out how to make your own on my previous post here.  I can't take the credit for thinking to do this, I owe it all to Sugarbelle for the idea.  You can also use the "dots" on top of cakes & cupcakes like confetti.  

First I piped the petals with 20 second icing.

By the time I was done piping all my cookies, I was ready to start filling in alternating petals

After about 10 minutes, I filled in the last 3 petals and then placed a flower center on the wet icing.

Hope you all are enjoying spring... Next up > Carrot Cookies for Easter!

Baby's 1st Easter

My nephew is only 11 weeks old so he is still too young to be able to eat a cookie but I couldn't resist making him his 1st Easter cookie.  I'm positive that his mom & dad will make sure it doesn't go to waste.  I gave them to my sister this week and she couldn't wait until easter to eat hers.

 

I used one of my favorite cut out cookie recipes by Sugarbaker for this set of cookies.  I was so happy to find a chocolate chip cut out recipe.  I've used this for over a year now and it comes out great every time. 

Sugarbakers’ Chocolate Mini-Chip Cookies
Print recipe here

1 c unsalted butter
1/3c granulated sugar
1/2 c light-brown sugar
1 large egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 ½ c all-purpose flour {I think they got a little overzealous with the flour…try 2 cups first, and work your way up}
½ tsp salt
1 ½ c semi-sweet mini-chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Sift together the flour & salt.   In another bowl, cream together the butter & sugars.  Slowly add the flour & salt unti it’s completely mixed in.   Add  1 ½ cups semi-sweet mini-chocolate chips to the dough by hand.   Chill your dough for at least 30 minutes.  Roll out dough and bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes.   Sharp metal cookie cutters work best with this dough.

Spring is here..Time for a facelift

My sister and I worked on Easter baskets last week

Happy Spring! Ok, so I'm a few days late with the greeting but I have a good reason... I decided that since my blog turned 3 years old, it was time for a facelift.  I've been working on it over the last week & with my sister's help finally decided on artwork by xosarah.com.  I wanted something fun and light, something that I felt represented what I do & what I love.   The colors in the header are some of my favorites.. and I love pennant banners so it's perfect. 

I'll be catching up some of my post this week now that I'm done tweaking the code to add back in some of the buttons that disappeared when I loaded this template.  

Hope you all are enjoying Spring so far... I have several posts with Easter & Spring cookies coming up!

Enjoy!

Rich's Chocolate Bettercreme

Have you ever heard of Rich's Bettercreme?

It is a non-dairy whip cream sold in the frozen section at Smart & Final

works great when you need a stablized whip cream type frosting

Nice & EASY!

All you do is pour it in your mixer and whip it until it forms peaks

Old Havana Nights

Such a fun party... Old Havana nights

Mojitos, Cigars, Fedoras and Guayabera shirts (pronounced “gway-ah-bear-ah,”)

How can your 40th not be fun with all that?

I set the cupcakes in empty cigar boxes that sat on top of burlap and burgandy tableclothes

The colors looked great, the boxes were perfect to set cupcakes in.

Happy 40th Poncho!!

I rolled the cigars, then brushed with brown petal dust to give them

some "highlights" then I made a label with brown royal icing.  Once the royal was dry, I mixed vodka & gold petal dust and painted a little on the label. 

The Fedora was really easy. I rolled out some ivory and cut a circle and set it inside my flower formers

then I rolled a ball and indented the top.  I used royal icing to glue this to the bottom of the hat.  Then I added a band of tan fondant.  I brushed a little bit of petal dust on the top of the hat for definition.

I made the shirt from the full body cutter set by Makin's Clay Cutters (#37007)

I cutt off at the waste and above the shoulders.  Then I used a knife to put an indention down the center. The collar was made with 2 small pieces of fondant cut in a triangle shape then glued down with vodka.  The white accents are royal icing.

Star Wars for Chaz

Chaz was all over Spiderman last year for his 5th Birthday..

This year instead of a party he went with his family to Disneyland and

he fell in love with Star Wars!  I went and bought Williams Sonoma's cookie cutters to make the toppers for his cupcakes.   They worked great on fondant.   Two days later I saw one of my favorite blogs,

Sweet Sugarbelle make Yoda cookies.   Of course, I have all the cutters shse used so I could have done it that route.  I'vd added Star Wars cookies to my "to do" list that seems to be getting longer and longer lately.

I used my black Americolor marker to add color

Darth Vader

Yoda

Available at Williams Sonoma

Cutters worked great... I wonder how long the push things will

continue to work.

They had Star Wars villians & space ships too.

The Space Ships were on sale last week for $9.95.

I'm tempted to go back and grab the box .. a girl can never have too

many cookie cutters.

Happy 6th Birthday Chaz!!!

Lil' Fireman Party for Zayden's 1st Birthday

Time flies...seems like this sweet boy was born a few months ago but a year has flown by.  It's been fun watching him and the milestones he's reached in the 1st year. His smile will melt you.  Zayden's dad is a fireman and it was a perfect theme for his 1st Birthday.   I made hydrants, hoses, flames, fireman suits,  a helmet & a firetruck for the birthday boy.  I'm sorry that we missed his party due to family business.. It looked like everyone had tons of fun.

The Birthday Boy's 4" cake

Banner for Zayden

I left the 4" plate up a little from the cake underneath so they could remove it easily for

Zayden to smash.  I tried to hide it with fire hoses all around.

Helmet with his last name

Due to time constraints I had to transport this cake stacked.

My husband drilled a hole down the center of the Wilton plastic cake plates for me that was the same diameter of the wooden dowel. I glued the bottom cake plate to foam core board so the dowel would have something to rest on.  The dowel was cut 3" shorter than the total height so it would not stick out of the top.

I put wooden dowels throughout each cake to support the upper level. I left the dowels 1/4" taller than the cake so the cakes never touched the plate above it. The pressure causes the icing to crack so I was trying to prevent this in transport.   It worked perfectly.

Happy Birthday Zayden!!

Happy Birthday Marina

Happy Birthday Marina

I think the 5 petal rose cutter is my favorite cutter.  I use it so much. The flowers work up very quickly and look so pretty.  I don't think I've ever used it to make a rose which is what it is intended to do.

Using Wilton's Bismarck tip #230 I filled each cupcake with

raspberry filling

Raspberry Filling : (printer friendly click here) 1 basket of raspberries 5  tbsp sugar 1  tbsp fresh lemon juice 1 tbsp cornstarch, disolved in 1 tbsp cold water Boil the raspberries, sugar & lemon juice until soft.  Pour raspberries through strainer and press thru to eliminate the seeds.  Put pulp back in pan, add the disolved cornstarch and simmer til thick.  Cool & then put in the middle of your cupcakes