Carrot Cupcakes

These super tender carrot cakes are choc full of nuts and freshly shredded carrot. 

They're flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, and get a molasses-like flavor from brown sugar.

They're covered in swirls of simple cream cheese frosting.

 Dusted with cinnamon sugar.

 And topped with a white chocolate carrot.

These were my first carrot cakes - simply delicious!

Vet Logo Cookies

These cookies were made for a new veterinary practice. They wanted a treat to bring to animals hospitals in the area to announce their presence, and I think the message came accross pretty clearly!

I was worried that the red, black, and white colors in the logo would bleed together, so I waited quite a bit of time between piping each layer. 

So that the cookies wouldn't get stale, I started by just piping all 125 cross logos in red onto wax paper. This was great because it let me fix my mistakes, but, most importantly, I had a printout of the logo under the clear wax paper, so I could trace the design. This helped me keep them consistent.

I waited a day before piping the black dogs onto the red crosses. 



 I baked the cookies, outlined them in red royal icing, and let the red dry a day. That same day, I painted the black dogs from the decals in silver luster dust to cover any imperfections and make them even more memorable.



 The next day, I flooded the centers of the cookies in white icing and while it was still wet, I carefully peeled off the decal I mad made and plopped it onto the wet icing, pressing gently.

Once they dried, my mom used an edible marker (basically food coloring in a marker with a felt tip) to write the name of the hospital on each cookie.  Finally, I boxed them up with layers of wax paper and tissue paper. Each dozen cookies got their own little box.

These cookies took days and an incredible amount of work! My kitchen was covered in cookies for days because they're HUGE and took up every available tray, tupperware, and surface. 

 But they're pretty cute, aren't they?

Jewelry Cookies

These cookies were so much fun! They were made for a jewelry company to send out to prospective clients, so they match the jewelry design. Thanks to Stephanie Fishbein for the beautiful pictures.

I made 25 of each of 6 designs. 

These quilted cookies are some of my favorites because they're simple to make (tutorial coming!) and look amazing. 

I used a new technique, brush embroidery, for these flower cookies. You use a small damp brush to pull the lines of frosting inward while the icing is still wet. 

The swirls in the middle of these were improvised, but I think they look so cute!

It'd hard to tell in the pictures, but the gold on all the cookies was brushed with luster dust to make them shimmer and give them a special touch. 

I learned that the purple cookies above are the "Om" symbol.

 The snakes were some of my favorites to pipe out because of all the zig zags

Each box of six cookies was beautifully wrapped with a big bow on top. Enjoy!

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes for Strider

A few weeks ago, I made some very special cupcakes. After years with our dog, he was getting very sick and it was time for him to leave us. Because I show love through my baking, my sister and I made him these pink lemonade cupcakes as a special treat before we went to the vet. Read on - there are pictures of a dog eating a cupcake at the end of this post!

 

Pink lemonade cake mix fancied up with some sour cream, lemon pudding mix, and fresh lemon zest. 

 

Fluffy meringue frosting courtesy of Martha Stewart's 7-minute frosting recipe. 

 

Which, by the way, took much longer than 7 minutes to make.  

 

My sister and I took turns frosting the cupcakes.  I piled the frosting on high while she took a more creative approach.

In this smiley face cupcake you can see the lemon curd added to the centers to give them a nice punch.

They were very moist and tasty, super lemony, and just the right amount of fancy. We hit them with a blowtorch for the brown color and toasty flavor. For the record, blowtorch + paper cupcake liners make for a volatile situation...literally.

And of course, Strider loved them too.

After dinner we all got ready to feed him his cupcake. We took off the cupcake liner and put down the plate...

 

I rushed to my camera to take a shot. He gulped it down so quickly that this was the first picture I was able to get!

Mmm...human food!

Someone loves cupcakes!

Making sure to lick up every last drop of meringue. 

Thank you Dr. Shane for taking such good care of Strider. We love you as much as Strider loved his cupcake!

Father's Day Cookies for a Golfer

Father's day is coming up - what does your dad like to do on his special day? One of my uncles likes to golf, so his wife and daughters asked me to make up some special golfing cookies for him.

I love the bright, limited color palette for these golf cookies. The intensity of the colors, however, made them bleed a bit. I hope the colors last until Sunday!

This little golf bag cookie has some personalization at the bottom and is stuffed with golf clubs of all shapes and sizes. The plaid pattern was a fun way to incorporate more colors into the cookie.

A little golf ball on a red tee with grass growing up all around it. 

 
I bet you never realized decorated sugar cookies could be so manly.

Fluffy white clouds in a blue sky - a perfect day for golfing!

A red flag marks the 18th hole. 

Makes a great cookie golf scene, doesn't it. 

See the special Father's Day cookie? It made 13 cookies total, a baker's dozen.

Happy Father's Day and don't forget to do something nice with your dad this weekend to show him how much you love him! I'm working on a special dessert for mine, I'll post pictures when it's finished this Sunday!

More Macarons - Lemon, Strawberry, Chocolate, and Mint

I went crazy with the macarons and made about 100 little sandwiches over the course of one weekend.

 3 flavors of shells: lemon, chocolate, and strawberry.

The lemon shell was made with fresh lemon zest (easy peasy) but the strawberry was a bit more complicated.

Strawberry. I made this flavor by slicing strawberries very thin and baking the berries in the oven at a low temperature for a few hours to dehydrate them. When they were dry, I put them in the blender to turn them into intensely flavored strawberry powder and mixed that in with the macaroni batter.

3 kinds of fillings: swiss meringue butter cream, strawberry cheesecake, and chocolate mint.

The strawberry cheesecake was made using my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe and adding fresh strawberry puree.

The chocolate mint is a mint infused chocolate ganache. I soaked fresh mint leaves in simmering milk before making the ganache and combined with the dark chocolate it was the perfect hint of flavor.

These french macarons were gobbled up in no time.

They have a fabulous crunch on the outside but are soft and almost cake-like on the inside. 

 After 100 of these, I think I'm done with macarons for at least the next week.