December Baking: Week 1

The first week of December’s baking was for my husband’s birthday. We didn’t have a huge party, just some friends over to play games. My husband is a big Magic the Gathering enthusiast – he goes every Friday for Friday Night Magic at our local comic shop, competes in some tournaments throughout the year, and is currently studying to become an official judge!

This year he requested a carrot cake – my first time ever making one! I consider myself a good baker; I can make a mean cupcake, and frost it prettily, but I haven’t actually made a layer cake since I was in high school. Which is almost 10 years ago. . .so I was a bit intimidated.

But overall, I’m really happy with how it turned out! The cakes themselves seemed a little flatter than I was expecting, but once they were frosted it made for quite a decent sized cake. As for the decorating job. . .well, let’s just say it was made with more love than skill! The writing is legible (first time piping lettering!) so that’s a bonus!

Best of all, this cake was DELICIOUS. I got some recipe advice from friends, and had a couple people tell me that the Betty Crocker cake and frosting recipes were excellent. They were right! I’m not even a huge cream cheese frosting fan but this one was fantastic! I highly recommend it.

Click here for the recipe!

I also made a batch of Lemon Bar Brownies. Back when I was doing the farmer’s market, these were a best seller. I sold out of them every week. I think it’s the combo of fresh squeezed lemon juice and fresh lemon zest that knocks these out of the park. It gives them such a great balance of sweet and tang. And their consistency is really good – so dense and moist.

Click here for the recipe!

And finally, I baked my hubs a birthday surprise – Magic the Gathering cookies!! For those who don’t know much about MTG, these are the symbols of different types of cards in the game. My hubby loves iced sugar cookies so when I was browsing Pinterest ages ago and saw these, I immediately pinned them to make for his birthday! Go check out the original cookie post via Not Your Momma’s Cookie, which most certainly puts my cookies to shame. She has so many awesome cookies ideas; I’m sure I’ll use more in the future.

The cookies weren’t actually that hard to make, just time consuming. And let me tell you, piping on designs with icing is NOT the same as drawing with a pencil! But they came out decently (other than two bloopers that I very unfortunately forgot to take pictures of before eating) so I will definitely make these again in the future!

Click here for the sugar cookie recipe, and here for the icing recipe!

Our gaming get together was good fun as always. I sat out on the Magic playing and got some drawing done, but definitely joined in for some Acension and Lords of Waterdeep (my current favorite board game).

Phew! Week 1 of baking accomplished. . .just in time to start Week 2 of baking! Stay tuned for Vanilla Cupcakes, Chocolate Cupcakes, Vanilla Buttercream Frosting, and Dinosaur Cookies.

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Iced Pumpkin Spice Cookies

Happy Halloween everyone! I’m sure I’ll have some photos of my little miss trick-or-treating tomorrow, but for today, enjoy a yummy cookie recipe instead.

Pumpkin Spice Cookies are yet another fabulous part of fall. Granted, I could bake them anytime I wanted, but they just seem to taste better in their appropriate season! I think this is one of my most highly loved recipes by my friends and family (They did quite well at the farmer’s market last year as well). This year my best friend asked for them for her birthday, and my hubs asked me to bake them for the blood drive at his work. So I’ve had a pumpkin-y household for the past two weeks. It’s okay, I needed a break from all the apple goodies I had been baking anyway.

Ingredients:

Cookies:
2 1/2 cups flour (I use half white flour, half wheat flour)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened (I use Country Crock Spread and it works perfectly fine)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup pumpkin puree (canned or fresh, whatever you have)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Icing:
2 cups confectioner sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat your oven to 350F.

She decided she had to bake in her jammies!

First, mix your dry ingredients, stir and set them aside.

In a larger bowl, cream butter and sugar together.

Add eggs and vanilla and blend thoroughly.

Then add in your pumpkin and mix well.

Pour in the dry ingredients and mix until thoroughly combined.

And the most important part, the assistant taste test.

I use my dough scoop to drop the dough onto cookie sheets – if you don’t have one just drop tablespoon size balls. Bake for 15 minutes, and let thoroughly cool before icing them.(To make the icing, combine all icing ingredients and stir with a fork.)

To ice mine, I use a fine icing tip and bag, but a baggie with the tip snipped would work as well. Or, if you don’t mind a messier way, you can just drizzle it on with a spoon! (I say that’s messier because when I’ve done it that way I get it all over my cooling racks and table.) Let them sit out until the icing hardens, then store in an air tight container.

These are just so delicious – chewy and soft, just the way I like a cookie. Enjoy!

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Rainbow Cupcakes

A quick blog update – I finally added some new work to the Pure Inspiration page – please go take a look, there is so much awesome art there! Hopefully there will be more soon – I need to carve out a chunk of my time in August dedicated to finding more awesome art!

This past Sunday I celebrated one of my dearest friends 25th birthday. She’s now joined me in the Quarter of a Century Club. We’ve been best friends since we were 11 – it’s crazy to think that it’s been 14 years!! Anywho, I just had to make her some rainbow cupcakes – I’ve been dying to try them out. They’re a little time consuming, but extremely easy to do, and so much fun to look at when they’re finished! So let’s dive right in.

Ingredients 

1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter (I use a vegetable oil spread, and it works just fine)
2 eggs
2tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk (I ended up adding a couple tablespoons more for a better consistency)
Icing dyes in all the colors of the rainbow (I would definitely use icing dyes, NOT standard food coloring. These give you extremely vibrant color, whereas regular food color comes out very dull I find)

In a small bowl, whisk flour and baking powder together.

In a larger bowl, mix butter and sugar

and whisk until creamy.

Add in eggs and vanilla.

Mix until smooth.

Add half your flour and milk, and stir until combined.

Add in the remaining halves of the flour and milk, then stir until thoroughly combined. If your batter is a bit thick (mine was at this point) add in milk until desired consistency is reached.

Divide batter into six bowls. (I busted out my camping bowls in case the icing dye stained the bowls – it did not just as an FYI.)

Mix in about 1/8 -1/4 tsp of each color dye and combine thoroughly.

Lay a layer of your violet batter on the bottom, making sure it spreads to the edges of the cups. (I use silicone cups as they are reusable – less waste and saves money!). Then, keep layering each color on top in backwards rainbow order (ie; blue next, then green, etc). I used about a half tablespoon for each layer.

All the colors layered in – ready for the oven.
Bake at 350F for 20 – 25 minutes.
Let cool completely before frosting them!

The finished product! So vibrant – I just love them.

Ready to eat!
Unfortunately I was in a super rush when these were done and I totally forgot to take pictures of them all together before frosting them. DOH. Also, as you may have noticed, I didn’t have my little miss help with these. Although the dye doesn’t stain dishes, it absolutely does stain skin and clothes (I looked like I dipped my hand in a rainbow at the end of this). And while I don’t mind mess, that’s pushing it! So I’d leave the little ones out of this recipe. These do not stain once baked though, so you don’t have to worry about rainbow teeth!

So as you can see, these are pretty simple and just SO CUTE! If my little miss has an art party for her birthday theme this year, I’m totally making them again. They are just vibrant and fun.

The party was totally stellar, as always. A great gathering of friends, with some great food to boot. The birthday girl is into archery, so she had a course set up for her archer friends to shoot with her, and I tagged along for photo ops.

The birthday girl being a total badass.

Until next time!

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