Adjusting the Original Nestle Tollhouse Recipe

Today was a return-to-the-original baking day.  Today we rocked the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.

While I stick pretty closely to the recipe, I do make a few adjustments.  One, I double the vanilla.  The recipe calls for one teaspoon, but two is twice as wonderful!  Second, I use Crisco.  I'll be honest, the idea of Crisco grosses me out.  I don't exactly know what's in it, and that's probably for the best.  I like how fluffy the cookies become when using Crisco.

I'm sure I'm not alone in my slight twerking of the traditional recipe.  What are your adjustments to the original?  

Popsicle Making with the Zoku

Have you seen this yet?  It's a Zoku, a super speedy popsicle maker.  I received one for my birthday, and the girls and I are loving it!  Like an ice cream maker, you it in the freezer for 24 hours.  Once frozen, you add your yummy ingredients.  The popsicles freeze in around 7 minutes.  Soooo much better than waiting for hours and hours.  The recipe book I received shows some incredible popsicles, like art in frozen form.  

We went for something a little bit more low-key and made lemonade popsicles using lemons from our back yard.  Such a fun treat for a hot summer day.  

!Pinata Cookies!

Are you kidding me?  How insanely adorable are these Pinata Cookies from She Knows?  The tutorial makes it sound like a piece of cake (or piece of cookie?).  I'm going to attempt to make these for my nephew's birthday party this weekend.

Since it's so close to Cinco de Mayo, I knew I wouldn't have time to order a donkey-shaped cookie cutter online (without paying undesirable overnight fees), although Amazon had these available.  I recruited my dad to go to the local cake supply store that confirmed they had them in stock over the phone.  Double whoop for retired parents!

Maybe I need an elephant cookie cutter also so I can rock some political cookies when November is a little nearer.  :)

I'll let ya know how they turn out.  !Viva la fiesta!

iPhone Cake

iPhone cake

How fun is this homemade iPhone cake?!?!  It was made by my awesome friend Chris French for his 12-year-old daughter Sarah.  Let's start with why this is so rad.  Reason #1:  It was like a month ago that Chris told me he made his first layer cake.  Reason #2:  They came up with the idea yesterday and executed it immediately.  Reason #3:  He made it with his daughter.  

So how'd they do it?  They made a double layer sheet cake and frosted it.  Simple enough.  The apps were all made by using sugar paper from ABC Cakes in Orange, CA.  They are also available from Wilton.  Sugar paper is exactly what you'd think it'd be...edible paper.  Using Wilton FoodWriters or a similar edible marker, they drew the various apps from Sarah's new iPhone.  

Super rad cake for a super rad girl (made by her super rad dad).

Little Heart Cookies

Happy Valentine's Day-Eve! I am baking the "smallest heart cookies ever" as instructed by Georgia's preschool teacher. She didn't say that I couldn't make seven million of them!

I am kind of relieved at the simplicity of this project. What was I thinking giving my kid such a long name? I doomed myself to a weekend of making a four-year-old write her seven-letter name twenty times. I have several Valentines with "Geor." is it horrible that I wrote the remaining letters left-handed so it'd look more uniform with her actual printing?

Once the cards are done, I'm pretty much ready. Such a nice idea to be able to spend Valentine's Day loving on my valentines rather than scrambling to get projects done.

Happy New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year!  

Tet/Chinese New Year is today so the girls and I got our bake on to help celebrate.  Special shout out to all of you born in the year of the dragon!

Neapolitan Cupcakes

I heart Pinterest...like would get a temporary tattoo of it's logo love.  So I found this recipe for Neapolitan Cupcakes and knew I needed to eat them.

I'll admit that I totally cheated and used cake mix and brownie mix.  I made myself feel better by buying low-fat versions of each.  So this is basically health food.   

Basically, it is a brownie on the bottom, strawberry cake in the middle, and vanilla frosting on top.  We put pink chocolate hearts on top because of the three flavors, chocolate is my favorite and I want as much of it as possible.  I like how uneven Georgia and I made the hearts.  Love ain't perfect, right?

 My baking assistant.  She took over frosting the cupcakes.  

She also helped my deliver the final product to a couple of houses.  A couple dozen cupcakes wouldn't last long at my house because I'd pretend to need to feed the dogs and eat one in the garage (so I wouldn't have to share).  Since I'm not totally abandoning my New Year's Resolutions yet, they needed to get outta here.  

Ugh.  Third broken cake stand in three months.  It's an epidemic now.  

Dia de los Muertos Marshmallows

Tomorrow's the Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos.  Sugar skulls are more traditional, but I'm making a marshmallow version.  I bought the jumbo marshmallows, and they're JUMBO.  My original idea was to stick them on cupcakes, but considering how much sugar we've consumed recently I may just skip the cupcakes.

I used Wilton's Food Writers.  They're edible color markers with a relatively fine tip.  I'm thinking I need to bring them around more often to try to encourage my children to eat new food.  You color it, you eat it.

Build a Bear Party Treats

You know how the party's done, and then you've got hours of clean up to do?  Not for everyone.  Some people are smarter than I am and have parties outside of their home and let someone else do the work.  Build-a-Bear, Chuck E. Cheese, Scooter's Jungle...I'm talking about you.

Happy Birthday, Little Dude!

My sweet nephew just had his 4th birthday party at Build-a-Bear.  I made these teddy bear cookies as favors for his guests to take home.  

The cookie post-decorating.  

I used Wilton's Stackable Cookie Cutter to make the cookies.  The three cookie cutter-set is $3.99 on their website.  Super hot deal.  

  If you doesn't come across in the pictures, this sucker is huge.  I cheated a little and used pre-made cookie dough to make the cookies.  With each tube of cookie dough I made 6 bear cookies.  You could probably stretch it a little by making thinner cookies, but I'm trying to ensure my sweet tooth gets passed to the next generation.