Sooooo, exciting news! Little Muggsy turned 3 years old! 3 whole years old! I've heard that this is when dogs start calming down, but I don't really see that happening with this one any time soon. I decided to make some simple sugar cookies (not for her...she got to eat treats and some steak plus a new toy!). I wanted to make them look like her toys and so I picked her two faves! She LOVES her FETCH ball (so much so that she has already chewed off the blue FETCH letters off!) and her KONG toy. Read on for more!
Hey y'all, it's been awhile! Last week and this week have been very exciting and busy! I had my birthday last Thursday, our housewarming party on Saturday and today is my One Year Blogiversary!!! I can't believe that a year ago, I started this little old blog and began this awesome journey. I've met so many incredible people and have made some great friends (some who I've even met in real life!) I've loved it so much and I wish I was making something awesome to celebrate, but I have been dying to show y'all what I made for the housewarming and the cake I did for my birthday, so I think I'll share that instead... I hope that's okay with y'all :) First I'll talk about the housewarming things I put together, and then I'll move in to the birthday cake! So we all know that I love Pinterest. Like love, love, love it. I have about 65 boards and 6500 pins (eeek I'm out of control!) Anyway, Matt and I decided to have a housewarming to celebrate moving in to our new place. So, of course, I took this as an opportunity to make a new board. Now, I didn't make everything on that board, but I let it inspire me, and I definitely felt like I succeeded in making that board come to life! It ended up being a lot of work, but thankfully I had my friend Kristen in town to help me make all this stuff! Here are some of the highlights... I'll add captions to describe them and give some instructions.
Well folks, we did it! We finally took the plunge and moved to Raleigh. Matt can now walk to work, and our new place is just lovely (I will post pics below). On the same day we moved, I got a job *yay!* at a firm ten minutes from our new place...fate or what? Anywayyyy I was feeling slightly cheesy and so I decided to make some cookies celebrating our move but wanted to make them Cow-Themed so that they could say we "MOOved"...I know, I'm a dork...but at least I don't deny it. I made these cookies with the simple sugar cookie recipe given by the lovely Sweetapolita on her blog...I just adore this recipe and so I use it a lot. I used fondant to do both the white and black and also for the letters. I used a pre-made fondant (Satin Ice), which is good but it's insanely sweet. I found it to be far too sweet and could only eat like a quarter of a cookie. I preferred the marshmallow homemade fondant I made for Marina's birthday cake because I had used lemon extract to cut the sweetness and so it wasn't too sweet like these. I used these little letter cookie cutters that I got from Williams-Sonoma, and they worked great for the most part...I had a hard time with the Os and the Ds (Because you have to cut the middle part out) so they look a little wonky and I think I preferred the cookies as just the plain cow pattern, but nevertheless I stuck with the letters because they were fun.
Hey y'all... I'm doing the holiday thing early (or right on time, in blogger world). I realize that I posted my 4th of July cake ON the 4th of July, and my holiday cookies on December 30th (oy vey) and that does not give readers enough time to make these holiday items for the actual holiday (unless they have a time machine...if you do, please let me know). I wanted to make mini-cakes for St. Paddy's day that reminded me (and hopefully you too!) of little lucky pots of gold! (I have recently been informed that it is actually St. PADDY's day and not St. Patty's day...learn something new every day huh?!)
Yesterday, my friend Marina had a birthday. I won't tell you how old she is but I'll tell you that she is definitely a glamour girl... a princess... a girl who loves to and deserved to party in style. So nothing felt more right than making her a glittery, girly, princess-y cake! I had been brainstorming for weeks. Planning and pinning the best ideas I had found and inspiration for what I wanted to create for her. If you don't know what I mean by pinning, here you go. You're welcome. {Don't blame me when you get addicted...just warning you} Pinterest is the world's best internet site to find inspiration and amazing things. I had made a board with all of the best ideas I thought would fit her personality and be delicious as well. I decided to go with a few different ideas: Glitter, Bows, and Ombre. I used the recipe from Whisk Kid for a "White (but not really) Cake" which Sweetapolita also used for her amazing rainbow doodle cake. I then made all the layers different shades of purple. Basically I took the whole batter and weighed it on my scale, then determined that each layer (of 6) would be 9 3/4 oz and then it was easy to measure out each layer. I greased the pans and then did the first layer as white (real white, not off white...I used white Americolor gel to get the white layer perfectly white). Then after taking out the white layer and putting it in a 9in greased cake pan, I added in a little purple Americolor (these things are amazing) into the bowl (see below)...then measured out the next layer, added more purple and then did the next layer...and so on until I had done all 6 layers, the 6th layer being a deep purple.
We have a winner folks! The lucky winner was Comment #50:  See? Here's the #... I used Random.org like I said I would in the giveaway post :) Thank you so much to all who entered, and don't forget, you can always go to SimplyLobsters.com and order some fresh Maine lobsters yourselves! They have a huge variety, including just lobster tails so if you aren't quite comfortable just yet with killing one yourself, you can still enjoy lobster AND take baby steps! They also have specials so make sure to check their website!
So I made some cookies to celebrate the giveaway ending! I used Sweetapolita's perfect sugar cookie recipe... it IS perfect and I suggest you use it, like I did for my holiday cookies. It is so great, I can't stop talking about it...and everything else she does because, let's face it, she's so incredible I can't believe she's a real person. I got some extra help from Bridget at Bake at 350 and Callye of The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle. They gave me some last minute tips on using Royal Icing and I am so grateful! I'm planning on continuing the Lobster theme for Valentine's Day and make these instead of hearts. I'm also planning to send a dozen or so to Don from Simply Lobsters for being so gracious to host this giveaway, I definitely couldn't have done it without him! (But shhh don't tell him there are cookies coming!) Below, I'll just give you a few photos and such, since the recipes aren't really mine :) I couldn't have done these lobster cookies (or anything else colorful for that matter without Americolor gels... they are amazing! Just a small amount and it totally saturates the icing (or whatever it is you are dyeing). As you can see in the middle photo it wasn't quite red enough for lobsters but that was only one squirt of the bottle! To the right you can se how intense that color gets! LOVE! Below you can see the lobster sugar cookies before they get all iced up! All you need is some sugar cookie dough and some cookie cutters. Use the colored royal icing to outline and flood the sugar cookies... then let them dry to harden. Store in an airtight container and they should last a couple of weeks!
Hey all, I promised to post my holiday cookies and I know they aren't much use to you now but at least you will have this reference if you want to plan ahead for next year! I made a few different kinds. I made gingerbread cookies for Matt's boss (who is a judge...that's why they are wearing robes) and sugar cookies for everyone else!
Let me back up and tell you a little Christmas story. I was unfortunately scheduled to work on Christmas Eve and was very upset at the thought of not being able to be with my family during that time. I found two lovely ladies to cover my shift so that I could be with my family. I dubbed them my Christmas Angels, and made them cookies for being so sweet to offer to do it. That is what Christmas is really about to me-- being with your family, and doing kind things for others when you know it will mean a lot to them.
Now that you have a little background, I'll show you all the cookies and you can keep them as a reference for next Christmas.
Remember when THIS happened??
And THIS had already happened in preparation for that? Well THIS is what happened next!:
Well, as promised, I made Champagne Cupcakes! I had promised to make this in the exciting event that I passed the North Carolina Bar Exam, and lucky for you (AND ME!) I passed and made treats for you all to celebrate with me! One of my favorite cocktails in the world is a Kir Royale. I discovered this delicious cocktail at Christmas last year and thought that transforming them into a dessert would be an absolute delight! I adapted a recipe for Champagne Cupcakes from my friend Yuri of Chef Pandita. She made lovely champagne cupcakes with lycee for her birthday and I've been dying to make my Kir Royale version, but I was waiting for that letter! Well I finally got it and it was good news! I already had a backup plan in case it wasn't (another cocktail) but I'm happy I can share these with you instead! Now that it's the weekend and I had time to go buy ingredients, I got everything I needed, including champagne and Chambord.
I am oftentimes amazed at the ability of social networks to bring people together. Just a few months ago I decided to launch this blog and join twitter. I discovered not only a slew of amazing food blogs to drool over but also some incredible twitter friends. You may laugh at my usage of "friends" but that's what they feel like to me. When my grandmother passed away, I had countless tweets with kind words and the same was true when I took the bar exam. I received at least as many "good luck" tweets as I did real life comments. Today, food bloggers around the world are gathering together to make Peanut Butter Pies. Why? Because one of our own has suffered a tremendous loss. While I do not personally "know" Jennifer (Jennie) Perillo, I follow her blog, In Jennie's Kitchen in my RSS feed and therefore, I feel as if I know her in a way. We are connected, even if through a love of food. This past week, Jennie suffered a kind of loss I don't even want to imagine. Her husband passed away suddenly of a heart attack. Jennie posted a beautiful video of him dancing with his daughter, and you can just see what kind of a man he is. He reminded me of my father in that video...the one who adores his daughters.
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