Visions of sugar cookies dance in my head...

I wrote this right before Christmas but I didn't get around to uploading the pics from my camera until this week. Anyway, enjoy some belated Christmas goodies!

Just like last year, I had to make some tasty, festive sugar cookies. Unlike last year, I didn't set aside enough time to decorate them with Royal Icing. Because, as well all know, RI takes about 24 hours to dry. And I only had a few!

So I kinda cheated. I used canned icing. I know, I know. If you're going to go the cake mix way, you still gotta use homemade icing. And normally, I'm all for that. But canned icing doesn't take that long to harden and "crust" and it's still soft when you bite into it. And unlike some recipes that I've used in the past, it doesn't need egg white powder. Something I have, but left in Florida in my apartment.

Anyway, if you melt canned icing in the microwave--but not overheat!!!!!!-- then it thins enough for you to "flood" the cookies-- just like royal icing. Beware, though, that the icing only needs to be heated 5-15 seconds, depending on how much you're melting at one time. If you over heat, it'll spill out of the piping bag too quickly, and it will separate, so you have to wait until it cools so you can stir it all back together. So be careful!!! And of course, use it at room temp for the outlines and details.

These may not be the prettiest cookies ever, but I will tell you that non-professional looking cookies can still taste delicious and professional. And I'll save all of my decorating juices for when I decorate the gingerbread house and make the red velvet cupcakes!

Holiday Baking Ideas

It's 3 days before Christmas (!!!!) and aside from the Christmas cookie tins that I made with my roomie, I haven't made any of my standard Christmas desserts. No sugar cookies, no gingerbread house, no Advent cake, no cute cupcakes!

I'm falling behind!!

So today I'm making some sugar cookies, which I'll more than likely take to a Christmas party tonight, if I have time to decorate them this afternoon. At some point, I'd like to go to the grocery store to get gingerbread house and red velvet cupcake ingredients. I don't know how I'll have time for all this before Christmas, so maybe I'll just wait until after, if I must.

Wish me luck with all my last-minute baking plans!! :)

And I HAVE to show you the Christmas ornament my aunt Jessica made for me. It is the cutest thing ever!

Chrismas Cupcakes

Mini Cupcake covered and decorated with fondant

Christmas Cookies

As you can tell, I made a lot of cookies this year for Christmas. Joy and I estimate that we baked over 300. And by we baked, I mean, I baked. Although, don't get me wrong, she totally helped. She just didn't actually put anything in the oven. =P

We make all these cookies (and cake balls) solely to give away to people as Christmas gifts. I think it's a brilliant idea because 1) I love baking and 2) I love giving gifts. I love how excited and happy people are when they receive a tin of homemade goodies. Delivering them is seriously the best part (and eating the extras is pretty awesome too).

We ran out of room to put them all, too. Our apartment has been a little crowded (messy) lately, because we've all been stressed and busy with exams...some things (like doing laundry), get pushed to the side. Oh, the life of college students.

Nifty trick: the sugar cookies are just dipped in canned icing. I melted it in the microwave so it would get runny and added regular ol' food coloring (all my awesome gel pastes are at home) to make it redish and greenish. After you let them sit for a couple of hours (or over night), they get hard enough to package, but the icing is still soft when you bit into it. So simple, so brilliant. :)

The cake balls are strawberry/chocolate and carrot cake/white chocolate. I LOVE the strawberry. Once again, I went with the convenience of box mixes and canned icing. But with all the hard work that went into them, I'm sure nobody minded.

All in all, it was about a 3 day process. Joy and I did this last year too, and I love that we make a yearly tradition out of it (although she's been doing this for years before she even met me). One of our friends said our apartment looked like a bakery and our roommates and everyone who came by loved that we had extra cookies sitting around to snack on. Merry Christmas everyone!

(Just a quick reminder to let you know that you can vote every 24 hours for the "Show Your Duff" contest, so if you voted yesterday, don't forget to do it again today! I noticed that my entry is on the 2nd page-- there are 10 pages right now-- of cakes with the most votes, so let's see if we can move on up to page #1! And to everyone who's already voted: Thank you! You have no idea how much this means to me! I wish I could give a Christmas tin full of cookies to every one of you, for voting, for telling your friends to vote, for liking me on Facebook, for reading my blog, for encouraging me to go after my dreams. I love you all! <3)

Christmas Treats 2010

Carrot Cupcake with cream cheese topping

Chocolate Cupcake with butter cream topping

$2.50 each

(Minimum order 8 cupcakes per flavour)

Chocolate Praline Log Cake

$50 (Approx. 800g)

Carrot Ring Cake

$36 (Approx. 1kg)

As we are home-baker and only able to bake a limited number of cakes

for this festive seasons, please place your order early to avoid dispointment. Thank You!

More Christmas Goodies

I am well behind on my blogging, as I am quite aware.  I made these treats a whole year ago!

The cake was for my brother's class party; I made it the same week that I made the cookies, blueberry muffins, and the mentioned-later-on cupcakes. It was a busy week for me, to say the least, especially considering it was my first week on holiday.

Unfortunately, I waited until the night before to decorate or even come up with a design plan, so this is the best I could come up with on the spot. It's not bad, though.

Oh, and I LOVE the super red icing gel that I bought a few months back- making red icing is way easier now. :D

And with the leftover red and green icing, I made these cute little cupcakes, originally for another class party, but my brother didn't know I made them for him, and since I slept in that morning, we just had a miscommunication. However, I did give them to the office staff at Woodland Elementary, and I'm told they were delicious. :-)

I'm not so good at the 2-color swirl deal, but hopefully that will change with more practice. Some of the cupcakes really popped with the color and I like that effect a lot.

Also, I should probably make these goodies more photogenic-- you can totally see the mess I made in the background. Not very professional with sprinkles and cooing racks in the background. Just something else to improve on in the future!

Ah, the Annual Gingerbread House

I need to get better at time management.  I waited until two days before Christmas to bake the gingerbread house AND I ran out of butter.  To be fair, though, it's been a busy holiday season for me, catching up with family and friends, in addition to all the baking and Christmas shopping and being lazy that I've done.

Anyway, despite my lack of time, I think I made a pretty cute little house... and it's actually bigger than the houses I normally make (but smaller than last year's castle). One day I still wanna make a gingerbread Hogwarts, but I have to convince my sister (who's taking an architectural class in school) to make some blueprints with me.

The best pictures I have though are of the house being eaten/destroyed. I think that was more fun than putting it together (especially considering that I was terrified that it wouldn't make it through the night while the royal icing dried).

Christmas Ring Cake

1kg Carrot Cake

Happy Logs!

500g Fresh Cream Durian Logcake and 500g Fresh Cream Strawberry Logcake

Blessed Christmas to all

6oog Carrot Cake and 12 mini Chocolate Cupcake

Logcake with Stars

1kg Chocolate Praline Logcake

Ho ho ho... Santa is here!

600g Carrot Cake

Christmas Treats

1kg Carrot Cake and 14 mini Carrot Cupcake and Chocolate Cupcake

Joyeux Noel!

1.5kg Fresh Cream Chocolate Logcake

Smiling Log

1kg Chocolate Banana Logcake

Merry Christmas!

500g Chocolate Praline

Merry Christmas Neighbors Vanilla Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting

These cupcakes are from the "Cupcakes from the CakeDoctor" book...she calls the recipe "The Best Birthday Cupcakes" but I think they are the best Christmas vanilla cupcakes...Other than Billy's Vanilla Vanilla cupcakes...and Layla seems to think so too!

Found the cute cupcake liners at Pier One...who would have thought. And, I'd like to give a shout-out to our cupcake-loving neighbors Arthur and Linda and a little further down our street Marie and Teddy (her doggy who is so cute!).

Merry Christmas, Everyone!! See you in the New Year!

CQ and Layla

Merry Christmas Neighbors Vanilla Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting

These cupcakes are from the "Cupcakes from the CakeDoctor" book...she calls the recipe "The Best Birthday Cupcakes" but I think they are the best Christmas vanilla cupcakes...Other than Billy's Vanilla Vanilla cupcakes...and Layla seems to think so too!

Found the cute cupcake liners at Pier One...who would have thought. And, I'd like to give a shout-out to our cupcake-loving neighbors Arthur and Linda and a little further down our street Marie and Teddy (her doggy who is so cute!).

Merry Christmas, Everyone!! See you in the New Year!

CQ and Layla

Christmas would not be complete without a

"REAL CHRISTMAS LOG CAKE"

These is the work of my students.

My dear sister asked me to bake her a simple cake for her Christmas gathering tonight. What is simple? Hmm...Let's repeat the same old thing..... My old time Butter Cake with Royal Icing glazing on top.