What's Black and White and Yummy all over?

In the wonderful month of March, both my sister and I celebrate our birthdays. When I asked my sister Jodi what she wanted for her birthday this year, she replied nothing. Shortly after her response, I was shopping and saw exactly what I wanted to get her, or more like make her, for her birthday. Now I swear I meant to take more pictures, but when I was working on these I was also dealing with another cookie order, a child coming home from school with the start of a head cold (that I would later get and still have now) and a dying battery on the camera. So two little pictures is all I have to share today (sorry). First for Jodi's gift, I made some sugar cookies and iced them in royal icing. Then while they icing was still wet...

I topped the cookies with these little cuties! This is what I found shopping that one day that gave me my aha present moment. These are also what I was planning on taking more pictures of, like a picture of the package so you could see all of them. These edible paper decals are by Cake Mate. I picked out the black and white decals because they had two designs with bumble bees. My sister loves bumble bees. The other designs were flowers and circles. I'm telling you, these things couldn't have been any easier. All you really do is pull them off the paper and put the decal on top of wet icing. After that let them dry, and you have a very cool looking cookie that people will wonder "How did they do that?".

Baby, Baby, Baby

My friend Cecilia was hosting a shower for a friend and asked me to make some cookies for the affair. Cecilia was going with a baby elephant theme for the little boy to be, and found some very cute cookies on pinterest. So after finding a elephant cookie cutter at my favorite cake supply store, and tweaking the cutter a bit to make it more cartoonish then realistic, the cookies were made.

I used my basic sugar cookie recipe and then outlined the elephants in blue royal icing.

Once the outline was dried, I used a thinner royal icing to "flood" the inside of the cookie.

I piped an upside down green teardrop for the elephant's ear.

Once again I used the flooding technique to fill in the ear. I also added a black dot for the baby elephant's eye.

After the ear was completely dry, I piped on a simple white royal icing heart to complete the baby elephant.

Put Your Paws Up

My friend Sharon asked me to make some cake pops for her daughter Lizzie's 6th birthday. She asked if I could make a cherry vanilla cake with a dark purple coating and a white paw print. The paw print was to represent Lizzie's school, where she would be passing out the treats to her classmates. The school's mascot is a panther. Above is what I came up with. I did have to mix some orchid candy melts with some dark blue and red candy melts to create the purple because I couldn't find dark purple candy melts. The paw is made from marshmallow fondant. I loved the way the turned out. :)

Teacher, Teacher, Can You Teach Me

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! This year I didn't make the kids treats to take in with their valentines. One, because one of the my kids' classes has a student who is allergic to nuts, and we have been asked not to send in homemade treats for that student's safety, and two, because I would have needed 56 cake pops to cover just the kids! That doesn't even include the teachers, which between my three children, there are 6 of, and I always like to give the teachers a little something. So this year, I just made some special treats for them, and it wasn't cake pops ,which three of the teachers might be a little upset about since they have had them the past two years and this is their last year to get them...oh well.

This year I made cookies.
I started off by baking some rectangle cookies and icing them in green royal icing.

After they dried, I made a border with brown marshmallow fondant.

Then I cut up some straws and filled them with melted white chocolate. I put the straws in the freezer for just a little bit, and then peel away the straw to reveal a stick of white chocolate.

I dusted the green royal icing with a little powdered sugar and attached heart sugar cookie that I had iced and sprinkled with light pink sugar. I glued the heart in place with some melted white chocolate.

Then I glued on the sticks of white chocolate, or chalk as it was meant to look like, and I was all finished with my sugar cookie chalkboards for my children's teachers. I hope they enjoy them. :)

Splish Splash

I have had a couple of cake pops orders lately, so I decided to feature one of them today. My friend Carson's son just turned four. And for his pool party, he asked his Mom to order cake pops to give as a favor. At first the cake pops were just going to be blue to match the pool water. Then I thought maybe I could make them into fish or starfish, but that felt more beachy than pool to me. (I know, I'm crazy). So I ended up making beach balls. I know, also beachy, but you are more likely to find a beach ball at a pool then you are a starfish right?


I made my basic chocolate cake pop and dipped them in white chocolate. Then I colored some marshmallow fondant red, blue, and yellow, and using a small cookie cutter, created the stripes on the ball. After that, I use a small round cutter to finish off the tops and the bottoms.


I was a little worried they weren't going to look right until half way through making them, my 5 year old came up and told me were cool looking beach balls. Success!

The Resolution

Can you believe today is the last day of January? I know I can't. This month flew on by I swear. In the begin of the new year, the family and I (and by that I mean me) decided to reduce the amount of sweet and tasty (also know as high fat, high calorie)goodies in the house in an effort to eat healthy. And also to lose this fat I carry around that I can no longer call baby fat since my youngest is going to be 4 this year. Now my kiddos all have a major sweet tooth, just like their momma, so I decided to try and make a snack for them that satisfied both the sweet and healthier eating. I give you chocolate covered frozen bananas.

You can make bigger sizes of frozen bananas, I just chose to make slices for easy little pick them up snacks. I have also seen these guys done by spreading some peanut butter on top of the banana, freezing and then covering in chocolate. All I did here was freeze the banana for about 10 minutes just to make it easier to dip. While they were in the freezer, I melted some chocolate, and then using a spoon and a dipping fork, I covered the banana slice. Easy peasy right!?

I used the dipping fork to remove the banana from it's chocolate bath, tapping the fork on the side of the bowl to remove any extra chocolate.

I placed the covered slices on a cookie tray lined with wax paper. At this point you could sprinkle some nuts or jimmies to fancy the slices up. Then back in the freezer they go until the chocolate is set or you are ready to eat them.

The ones with the sprinkles were for the kids, the plain ones were for my husband and myself. :)

The Artist

This past weekend, we had a birthday party for my middle child, Mackenzie. It is so hard to believe that my little girl is five, but sure enough, in three days she will be exactly that. This year, we went with an artist theme. Mackenzie loves to draws, can spend hours doing it and is even in charge of the art area at school (probably because she is always there).

Here is Miss Kenzie's cake. It was pretty easy to make the art palette and I'm happy with how the cake turned out. As requested by the birthday girl, it was a chocolate cake with strawberry icing. The cake even had some fresh strawberries in one of the layers.

The idea for this cake came from pinterest. I really like the tubes of paint here and it even gave me a chance to break out my silver edible dust.

The picture was added because after the invitations were made and sent, Mackenzie informed me that she wanted a pink and purple cheetah party. So this was my compromise.

The birthday girl throughly enjoyed her special cake. :)