Cookies and Cake for a Halloween Baby Shower

My friend Rachel has a sister who is pregnant. Because of the due date, Rachel's family decided on a Halloween themed baby shower. I loved this idea. Rachel commissioned me to make the baked goods for this soiree and I agreed happily. Above is a shot of the cookies I made.  Onesies in the colors of traditional candy corn. And below that is a close up detailed shot of the cake.

I am a nerd and come up with ideas and sketch them out.  I came up with the idea of a pregnant ghost and loved it, but I had no idea how I was going to do it. Thanks goodness I have a handy hubby. For the ghost I bought 2 big gumballs out of a machine and had 2 kabob skewers.  Come ghost assembly time, I called Allen over and showed him what I had and said GO!  In the end, I was VERY Happy with the result. One of my best yet I think.



2 Ingredient Pumpkin Cupcakes

OK, OK, 3 ingredients if you count the powdered sugar I sprinkled on top. These cupcakes are AWESOME.  First of all, you only need 2 ingredients! BONUS: they are in the same isle at the grocery store. ADDED BONUS: you just open them up and throw out the packaging. Easy clean up.  

I got this recipe (if you can even call it that) off of Pinterest. If you use the internet in ANY capacity and do not know what Pinterest is, I feel for you. I really do.  Pinterest.com - a virtual pinboard.  You know how you see a picture of something in a magazine and rip out the page so you can keep it as an idea for later? Pinterest is that exact same thing for the internet.  If you see something you like online you can "pin" it to a board that you create.  You can create ANY idea board you want to: Recipes I like, Ideas for the garden, my favorite movies, etc. You see a picture of something you like online and pin it to one of those boards.  It keeps the picture and the web link so you have it any time you want. The coolest part about itis you can see other people's pins and draw inspiration from those as well.  I found this recipe on someone else's pinboard.  

So i bet you can't guess the first ingredient! Ok, fine.  The first ingredient is pumpkin.  Good guess.  The second ingredient is yellow cake mix.  That's.  It.  

From the picture on Pinterest and even from the ones I have taken of my cupcakes, it looks like these might be dry. They are the opposite.  These are probably the softest, fluffiest, and most moist cupcakes I have had in ages. I dusted the top of them with powdered sugar and they were delish!

An easy something to do for a Fall recipe. 

In other news, I'll be in the kitchen practicing as I have a couple of baby showers coming up I am making cakes for.  I did a tiny practice a week ago.  The first baby shower is a Halloween themed baby shower.  I was not too thrilled with the way my cake turned out, but I have since changed my entire idea for the cake anyway. Below is what I WAS going to do, but not any more. 

Thanks for checking in. Hopefully with the holidays coming up and me needing to practice, I will have some more posts in the near future. I already have a few ideas for Christmas goodies. 

Orange Cake...........eh.....

I decided to practice a little on a fondant cake and make my first two layer cake. I did learn one important thing: put fondant on a room temperature cake, not a cake right out of the fridge.  I did the top layer at room temperature and the bottom layer from the fridge.  The reason I did this was because I put a crumb coat on the bottom layer, and then put it in the fridge while I worked on top layer.

The bottom layer puffed up.  The fondant puffed up and pulled away from the cake so............won't be doing that again.

Anyway, here it is. A double layer cake: One layer white almond cake and one layer chocolate.  both had apricot filling.

Orange Fondant with Pink Rock Candy Decor.

I still love the idea of the decoration/concept, but was incredibly disappointed with the cake as a whole. The puffed up fondant was one reason, but as a whole, the cake was not as smooth as I would have liked it to have been.  Again, I guess that is why we call it practice!

Corben's 1st Birthday

SO my pseudo nephew had his first birthday the other day (which I can barely believe). I was in charge of sweets and a smash cake. Can you believe that?  ;) I wouldn't have let it happen any other way!

Lets start with the cookies. I made my usual sugar cookies. Corben's party them was a surf/beach theme. SO I found some appropriate cookie cutters. I think in the end I had close to 70 cookies.  Sunglasses, palm trees, crabs, and just plain rounds.

Then I did Corben's smash cake.  Don't know why this made me so nervous, but it did.  I suppose I just did not want to disappoint Amanda! I thought of a million ways to put this cake together, but in the end, just went with it.  

When I first started putting it all together it was about 11:45 at night and I had been in the kitchen for, let's just say a while. I started with the orange and green circles. I had about 1/4 of it done and just burst into laughter. I mean, tired. sad. laughter.  Remember that the top of the cake was still white at this point and after putting on a few of those orange and green circles all I could see was peas and carrots. Then I decided it looked horrible.  Then all I could hear in my head was Forrest Gump.  Allen had to come console me before I forged ahead. It did turn out ok in the end though. Not a masterpiece, but ok!

Lastly, I decided to do some cupcakes. I had thought about doing this flavor for a while and went ahead and tried it. I baked white cupcakes with an Oreo cookie inside.  Then I crumpled up some cookies and put it in the frosting before I frosted them.  They were delish.  So I did the same thing with chocolate cupcakes and Reese's peanut butter cups.  Received numerous compliments.

Below is the cake after it was all said and done. Poor Corben.  That fondant was pretty tough to tear into.  Mom had to help. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Messing around

I made a huge batch of cake batter and played around with it. I did one cake, one mini cake to practice using different icing tips on, and I had an idea for some Oreo Cookies........

Here we go:

So one thing I am really trying (and struggling) to get better at is 1) crumb coating a cake and 2) putting fondant on cake. Both of these steps are fairly simple, but the end result can be....not so awesome. It's like knitting. I know all the steps, but the end result is probably not going to be something anyone really wants to wear.

To cover a cake in fondant, you first have to level your cake so they sit flat and even. I have discovered that this is much harder than it sounds. Unless you want to buy a special tool, and I do not, it is probably not even though you would swear it is.  Once you have leveled and filled your cake with jam or icing, you want to apply your crumb coat.

A crumb coat serves to help fondant stick to your cake. Since fondant also mirrors whatever you put it on, a crumb coat helps to smooth out the roughness of a cake. It really is a thin smooth layer.

In the future I should take photos to see if I have it even.  In reality, I would have bet the farm that this was even.  In the picture it is just stupid obvious that it isn't.  I'm slightly irritated with that. Slightly is slightly an understatement.

 I let that sit in the fridge overnight. In reality, you should put fondant on immediately. These cakes really do take forever to bake so I don't have 4 hours to stand around in the kitchen that long. SO pretend I didn't put it in the fridge for a night, and started with the fondant pronto.

Fondant is like Play-Doh for adults.  Even though it is work, it is fun in a weird way.  So I rolled out white fondant and put it on the cake.  I then used 2 different shades of blue to make tiny circles. The funny thing about this cake is, I meant for the circle colors to be random.  It wasn't until I was knee deep in it that I noticed I had been using alternating colors and putting them on in a circular pattern.  Then I realized I had made an intricate pattern on accident. Once I was conscious of it, it was damn near impossible to keep up with.  There are quite a few mistakes on the pattern of this cake. Oh well, I guess that is why it is called practice.

So then I had some leftover batter. I made one mini cake and filled a piping bag with my remaining icing and just played around on the mini cake to see what I could do with it. I could see doing an entire cake in the pattern below.  That is, if I ever learn to do a pattern without over thinking it and messing it up!

Believe it or not, I still had some more batter! So I tried something I had thought of a while back.  Doubtful I am the first person to try it, but it was a first for me nonetheless.

Oreo Cookie Cupcakes!  I was out of icing or I would have crushed up some Oreos and mixed the with the icing to top the cupcakes.

They were yummy!

OK, that's all I've got! Although that is a lot for one batch of batter!  Be back soon!

It Can Be Done

Since my first success with macaroons, I have tried numerous times to get it right again. I have failed.......numerous times. I tried doing some orange macaroons today.  Since I was absolutely expecting to fail, I had not given any consideration to the filling for these little bastards. (EXCUSE me. I have really had some frustration with these!) They are filled with just some Duncan Hines butter cream frosting  straight from the tub since I had some on hand. 

Here's the funny part: I have no idea what I did differently that sets these apart from my failures. **Sigh**

Truthfully, I could care less. Big pat on my own back. Macaroons attempt no. 672: success.  They didn't hang around the kitchen long. 

Inside Out Carrot and Cream Cheese Muffins

I had some baby carrots in the fridge the other day.  One of those bags you buy at Costco and could never possibly finish because you are the only person in your entire house that eats carrots! I've had the recipe for these muffins for a while and thought it would be a good time ti utilize those darn carrots.

These take the award for the most dense muffin I have EVER made.  Having said that, they are yuuuuuummy.  There are a few things I would tweak on the recipe and I had made notes to my copy, but all-in-all, this recipe is a keeper.

These disappeared VERY quickly. I took 4 of them down the street to Joe and Teresa. I ate one as a tester, Allen took some into work, and Alex and I each had one for breakfast the next day. DONE.  Joe has since called me 2x to let me know that if this is the sort of thing he gets by being on the "Kate Has Extras So Please Have Some" list, then sign him up!

Like I said, a few changes I would make, but VERY good and will do them again.


I was thinking about baking something tonight. I am torn between practicing for Corben's 1st Birthday Smash Cake or a recipe I have for Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffins. Well, being as I used the last of my cinnamon on these muffins, I guess that solves my dilemma.

Chopper is always on standby waiting for crumbs

Happy Fourth of July!

A little "smash cake" practice for me.

You think this is hot!?!?

Summer is officially here in Texas, although the temps made it feel that way a month ago! It's not even July yet. Ugh.  I hate Texas in the summer.

Yesterday I woke up with a pounding headache.  I did get up when the alarm went off and turned the shower on, but I immediately turned it off and went back to bed.  It wasn't a migraine, but it sure was evil.  I went back to bed after emailing Pops that I was going to sleep in.  I remember waking up a few times and thinking, "I should get out of bed.........." Finally at 9:30 I got up. (I knew I was feeling bad then.  There are days that I have really really tried to sleep in until 9:30 and try as I may, I fail)

So I got out of bed, did some laundry and decided I would (gasp) make some cookies.  Even though the headache was winning the battle here, it was nice to do this in the kitchen with no TV on or radio blaring or toddler lurking. For me cutting out the shapes from dough and then fondant is kind of like arts and crafts to a kid.  These cookies are not hard to do, but they DO take a ton of time. From the time I starting rolling out the dough to the time I was cleaning up the fondant and sugar crystals, it was 3.5 hours. (and I'm not wasting much time here people).  I have to apologize for the craptastic photography here. By the time I was done, the headache had taken it's toll and pictures were not my primary concern!

So my sweet almost-nephew's 1 year birthday party is coming up and his Momma is doing a surf theme. I thought I might practice for that occasion with my new crab, sunglasses, and palm tree cookie cutters!
Since I had the sugar cookie dough out, I made a few Linzer's as well just because I like them.

I have been trying to figure out the recipe for the Morning Buns from Starbucks.  I love them.  I know I can put them together reasonably easy if I just bought some Pillsbury Croissant Rolls and figured out a good mixture of cinnamon and brown sugar, but that is kind of cheating isn't it.  We'll see what I come up with......

Linzer Cookies

La Madeline does these big beautiful heart shaped Linzer cookies.  They were my inspiration for this attempt.

I used my usual sugar cookies recipe but rather than vanilla extract I used butter extract (just to try something different).  When I baked them the entire kitchen  smelled like warm butter, which is nice, but the taste is just the same.

So I chose two cookies cutters that were the same shape but different sizes.

I rolled out the dough and cut out my shapes.  

Baked them up. Defended them from the little one.

 Are those cookies I see? I was just walking by and happened to notice...

Once I had them baked up I tried to pair them up as best as possible for 'fit', but come to find out after I put jam on them, that doesn't really make a difference. So don't worry about that. 

I placed the lids on parchment paper and sprinkled them with powdered sugar. 

Then I just spread some jam on the bottom and made a sandwich!  For these I used Raspberry Jam and Wild Maine Blueberry Jam. 

Thanks for stopping by!