Sugar Cookies

I have a *NEW* favorite sugar cookie recipe!
I found this over on my favorite recipe site, www.allrecipes.com
It's called Delilah's Frosted Cut-Out Sugar Cookies, and they are YUMMY. You do need to chill the dough so that you can roll it out and get your cut outs, and don't bake them any longer than 7 minutes because these are a soft cookie. Did you know cookies still bake on the pan even after you take them out? Learned that from back in the day working at the good ole' IGA bakery. Even the frosting is yummy and you can STACK these cookies! Finally, a good cookie AND frosting recipe!! It's a keeper!
{Did you notice Brock eating the frosting like ice cream up there... it's that good...}

Brock's Monster Truck 4th Birthday Party

My sweet little guy, Brock, turned 4 years old on Friday! He has been fascinated with Monster Jam for such a LONGGGG time that I thought for sure it would have worn off by now, but no. So, I shouldn't have been surprised when he told me he wanted a Monster Truck birthday party. And ya know, there isn't a whole lot out there online for Monster Truck parties. So, I first had to pick which monster truck we'd go with, and being that I like green and purple, we went with Grave Digger. I made two different types of cupcakes. Brock said he wanted chocolate so I made a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting and for the other one I went with my stand-by, brown sugar cupcake, cookie dough filling, with a cookie dough buttercream frosting. Then I had my friend, Brittany of Fairytale Sweets, make the Grave Digger cookies. They turned out BEAUTIFUL and tasted so stinkin' yummy!!! You should totally go check her out! I got each of Brock's little friends their own monster truck to take home and attached a tag with a cute bow saying, "Thank You! Love, Brock." For our "older" friends, I bought pre-packaged donuts and attached a tag saying, "I'm so excited you came, I'm doing 'donuts!'" (Ya know, since monster trucks do donuts... get it?) *hee hee
Everything turned out so stinkin' cute, and made all that rushing around minutes before the party all worth while. {Bless my sweet husband's heart for putting up with me!}

Thanksgiving Treats News Segment

{Oreo Turkeys}

I first started making Oreo Turkeys when I taught 2nd grade at South Euless Elementary School down in Texas, so I know they are kid friendly. My BFF, Jennifer, taught me how to make them. These are modified just a little bit from my teaching days, but they are pretty easy to whip up. They do take a little bit of time because you have to let the oreos set up so they won't topple over, but if you go here, they'll give you a tutorial on how to make ones very similar to these ones. A BIG thank you to my sweet friend, Kristen, for making these for me during our bake fest trying to get all of these goodies together for the segment!!! She did an AWESOME job!

{ Sugar Cookie Pumpkin Pie}

I got these adorable printable cupcake toppers from Amanda Parker over at Shindig Parties. I got them for being a Facebook fan. Go check out her blog, her stuff is AMAZING and UBBER CUTE!!!

These Fudge Stripe Cookies topped with a chocolate dipped marshmallow are also from the same site as the Oreo Turkeys. SUPER EASY!

And here are my Martha Stewart Turkey cupcakes I demonstrated on the news. SO cute. I used Martha's One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes and they turned out VERY YUMMY! To make the turkeys, here's a link to Martha's recipe HERE. Some advice... the recipe says to cut a gummy fish in half and insert it into the marshmallow for the beak. What they don't tell you is that you can't just "stick" a fish into a marshmallow and expect it to stick. I used my kitchen scissors and made a little snip and then inserted the gummy fish. Well, then they started falling out after a few minutes, so I stuck a toothpick up and through it to hold it in place and that worked much better. You need to do the same thing running a toothpick up and through the fish for the feathers or else they'll fall out, too, and completely ruin one side of your cupcake breaking apart your cupcake. So, toothpicks will save the day on these cupcakes! (Just make sure to warn your guests!) Toasting the coconut was really easy, too. Just bake at 350* for about 1o minutes, and it's brown and toasty. These will make a cute addition to all of your Thanksgiving goodies this week!

***For those of you not in my viewing area, here's the link to my news segment I did tonight!***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sLxdARNUNg

Valentine's Day Cookies - Take 2

Well, I tried allrecipes.com Best Rolled Sugar Cookies, and well, they just didn't turn out like I was hoping. Tasted good, but expanded super big in the oven. Did not hold their shape at all whatsoever. So, I went back to the Bake at 350 recipe, and they turned out great. I also figured out how to get rid of the air bubbles!!! After you flood the royal icing, let it sit for a good 15 minutes or so covered with a damp paper towel. Then after it's sat for a little bit, gently stir with a spatula and it's ready to go. I think they turned out pretty cute.

New Cookie Recipe

So, after doing lots of research looking for how to make cute cut-out cookies, I came across the blog, Bake at 350. She makes ADORABLE cookies and has lots of instructions on how to ice and bake cookies. I tried her sugar cookie recipe and royal icing recipe today, and I must say, they were the easiest cookies ever to cut out and then transfer to the cookie sheet! I learned that first you pipe the icing on, then you have to "flood" it to fill in the rest. So, this was my first attempt at flooding cookies, and it went OK. I don't get quite yet how to get rid of those air bubbles. I'm hoping after they dry for 24 hours they look differently, but my hopes aren't too high! As far as taste goes, they're pretty good. I think I'll stick to my butter cookie recipe though, I like it better, just wish it cut out cookies as well as this recipe did! I must also say, I had some very cute helpers today, too!!!!

Illini Cookies

I have been trying to find a sugar cookie recipe that I can use for some upcoming parties.  I love how they make the cookies on sticks, so I was playing around yesterday and today trying to see if I could do it.  The first batch were some shortbread cookies with really yummy, shiny icing...but the cookies flaked in your mouth.  TJ and the kids liked them, but they just weren't what I was looking for, so we tried again today.  I found a new recipe and a new icing recipe.  They taste better than the first batch, but now I'm not sure the icing will stay cute when I layer them in my container.  I'm leaving them out to dry for a few hours, and then we'll see!