Dippidy Do Da

Like I said in last week's post, my husband needed a dessert for a brunch lunch they were having at work. So to go along with the chocolate waffle cookies, I also made a chocolate chip cookie dough dip. Pretty easy to make, and was a big hit. I found the recipe here

chef-n-training.blogspot.com and you will find it down below.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

½ c butter
¼ c brown sugar, slightly packed
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
8 oz. cream cheese , room temperature
½ c confectioners’ sugar
1 c mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

In a medium saucepan melt, the butter and brown sugar. Whisk together over medium-high heat until sugar has dissolved, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in vanilla extract. Set
aside and let cool, and if you’re in a hurry stick in the freezer for about 15 minutes.

While that is cooling, cream together the cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar for 1-2 minutes. Slowly pour in the butter/sugar mixture. Beat until the mixture is combined and not separated. It may take up to 5 minutes. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Put in your container and top off with some extra chocolate chips for fun.

You can pair it with waffle cookies, or graham crackers, or fruit.

Ironing out a Cookie

Last week, my husband's work had a lunch at work that required me to whip up some dessert. Sometimes, they have themes for their lunches, and this time it was a Waffle Bar Brunch. At first, I had no idea what to make, but then, thanks to Pinterest (again), I had my answer.

I found a recipe for really simple cookies to make and I thankfully had all the ingredients I needed. The special trick with these cookies is that they are made in a waffle iron.

Chocolate Waffle Cookies

1 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 ½ cups sugar

½ teaspoon salt

4 eggs

¾ cup cocoa powder

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all purpose flour

Preheat your waffle iron.

Cream together the butter, sugar and salt. Then beat in the eggs until well incorporated. Mix in cocoa powder and vanilla extract. At last, add the flour and mix until just combined.

I did spray the iron with some cooking spray, but I'm not sure I really needed to. Using a 1 ounce scoop, I put my batter in my waffle iron, shut the lid and "baked" for 90 seconds.

You could even go a little less on the time with the cookies being this small. After they are done simply remove the waffle cookies with a small spatula, let the cookies cool on a wire rack, and start all over again.

The recipe I was following decorated the cookies with some chocolate frosting. I decided to make a chocolate chip cookie dough dip (that I also found thanks to Pinterest) to go with these cookies. Also you can use a larger scoop to make these cookies, and once I had enough to send with my husband, I did use one to finish off the batter. Next week I plan to share the recipe for the dip, so stay tuned. :)

Another Eggperiment

Last week when I was playing around with the bunny cookies, I also tried something new on some egg cookies.

I bought these stencils awhile ago, and had never used them. So I thought they would be fun to use on the egg cookie. On Pinterest, I saw a post with some beautiful cookies that used stencils. The only problem with the post is it was in another language and I could not read it. Thankfully I could understand basically what to do from the pictures. So the first step was to lightly brush some shortening over the stencil.
I sprinkled the cookie with some disco dust. I recommend doing this over a paper towel so you can tap the excess off over the towel and then fold the towel up to create a funnel to pour the dust back into the container.
Sorry for the blurry photo. I was in a rush and this goes to show that it's a good thing my hobby isn't photography.
Now because I was in a rush, I didn't let my royal icing completely dry on the cookie. And because of that, my stencil sunk into the icing. To cover that mistake, I piped some royal icing to hide the cracks and ridges I created by not having any patience.
Here are the cookies I made while playing. It was fun and my family enjoyed eating all my creations.

Hippity Hop

Tis the time for all things Spring and Easter. Blogs that I read have shown some beautiful and some really cute cookie ideas over the past couple of days. I decided to try my hand at Easter cookies and thankfully I had a little sugar cookie dough to play around with. I've been wanting to try this one decorating technique in particular. It's called brush embroidery and while it looks hard, it's pretty simple.

You will want your royal icing to be piping consistency. I used a #4 round tip, and wish I had used a smaller one, like a #2. To start, pipe the outer edge of a petal.

Take a small paintbrush, dip it in water and then wipe off the excess. Catch the edge of your line, and drag it down to create the petal. Overlap your next line slightly, and continue to use a wet brush to pull the line down creating petals.

Continue all the way around and then you can even create a smaller one inside to fill your flower.

I finished my design with two smaller flowers and some white non pareils. I will say I will be doing this again as I love the effect, even though I think my icing was a little too thick and my tip a little too big. But I do love how this bunny turn out especially since I was basically playing around.

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. :)