Valentine's Sweets

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!! As I said yesterday, Megan came over on Monday night to bake. We only got half of what we wanted done.

The Pretzel treats are by far the EASIEST. So quick to make! You lay out square pretzels and place a chocolate on top. (A lot of people use Hershey's Kisses, we used Wilton's melting chocolate wafers.)

I found dark chocolate raspberry flavored wafers at Michaels so I mixed those in too. We were cooking brownies at the same time so just put the pretzel chocolates in the oven for about 60 seconds or until the chocolate looked melty then placed a Valentine's M&M on top of each one.

Next we melted Wilton colored chocolate wafers (white and pink) in zip lock bags, cut off a tip and piped it on top of the pretzels. So cute and only takes about 10 minutes to make!

The brownies were a little more difficult. Our first batch didn't want to come out of the pan. (Even though I sprayed it with cooking spray!)

We used the same heart shaped cookie cutters from the sugar cookies to cut out heart brownies. I quickly realized that we weren't going to get a ton of brownies from this mix - and then we got even less when the brownies stuck to the pan.

I got a little smarter with the second batch and used the ever-trusty Wilton Cake Release to grease the pan and the brownies slid out perfectly.

There is so much scrap brownie when you're cutting out hearts... Cook's Treat!!

The lastly there's the sugar cookies. My old stand-by! Megan and I ran out of time to frost them on Monday so I did it last night while catching up on Downton. Sidenote: if you are also watching Downton, you HAVE to read the Facebook Recap. It's written as if the whole episode took place on Facebook and is HILARIOUS. Back to the cookies - The two designs I did weren't very intricate but still look great. It didn't take too long to do which was nice. And of course I sprinkled Disco-dust all over them. What's Valentine's Day with out a little SPARKLE??

Ghosts in the Graveyard - Dessert Style

The graveyard cake is one of my favorite things to make every Halloween. Not only is it really easy to put together, it's delicious and ADORABLE. The recipe is pretty straight forward, only 3 ingredients - chocolate pudding, cool whip, and Oreos. I substitute a chocolate cookie with no cream in the middle for the Oreos (basically whatever I can find at the grocery store) because I find the cream makes the crumbs harder to work with. The past few years I've also started replacing the cool whip ghosts with peeps because they stand up longer and just look better.

You can see this year the gel didn't really work in my favor to write "RIP" on the cookies. Waaa waaaaaaaaaaaa. I vary what I put in the "dirt" depending on what I'm able to find that year - gummy worms, candy corns, gummy pumpkins, etc. There's so many different things you can do - a great chance to get creative!

Stars and Stripes

I spent Independence day in Myrtle Beach. It's great being at the beach for the 4th because as far as the eye can see - up and down the beach - people are blowing up fireworks. And South Carolina has the GOOD stuff - none of this sparkler amateur hour. Their fireworks shoot high in the air, EXPLODE, and rain down in a glorious shower of color.

My mom asked me to make some desserts, so before I left for the wedding in California, I baked some star cookies. I waited to ice them until the actual 4th of July because I knew if they were iced beforehand my piggy family would eat them and there'd be none left for the actual festivities.

For the cookies I had 4 different designs: USA cookies, stars within stars, tie-dye, and just plain sprinkles (I let my brother decorate those.) To get the star-burst/tie-dye effect I flooded the cookies with white royal icing, then drew on red and blue lines. 

Taking a toothpick I drew lines from the middle out.

And wah-lah! Starburst!

I went on a patriotic decoration buying spree a few years ago so I have a bunch of fun cupcake toppers.

I still maintain that the red, white, and blue star sprinkles are one of the best purchases I've ever made. It'll be a very sad day when I run out of those.

I hope you all enjoyed your Fourth of July!! 

Memorial Day Treats Part 1: Dipping things in Chocolate

I went to my friend's legendary Memorial party this weekend. It's theme - Solo Cup. How awesome is the solo cup flag they made? I got together with a friend on Saturday and we made LOTS of treats for the party. Today we'll look at the first half of the desserts - Chocolate covered Strawberries, and pretzels!

First we melted white chocolate wafers. I think I've mentioned before if you don't have a double boiler, you can just use a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water.

With the first few we dipped the strawberry in blue sprinkles, but that messed up the chocolate and made it a weird shape. When we began to spoon on the sprinkles they looked much better. 

We put our finished strawberries on some wax paper and then stored them in the fridge. I'd recommend keeping them there until they're ready to serve. I had mine out for a little while and the strawberry juice started to leak out and mix with the sprinkles - it was a bit of a mess. But oh-so-yummy! Also makes me really want a rocket popsicle. 

We also dipped pretzel rods in the chocolate - because, why not? Next we loaded them with patriotic sprinkles. I had also bought blue candy chips to melt down, but the colored melts are a totally different consistency and not very conducive to dipping. I even tried adding some oil, but nothing helped. Oh well, the white with sprinkles looks better anyways!

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Every Easter I annoy my family with a high pitched squeaky rendition of Peter Cottontail. Imagine my surprise when they actually played that song at Busch Gardens in their very own Bunny Trail!! I'm pretty sure my mom was embarrassed to be seen with me as I skipped down the lane singing along. I may be 27 years old, but I'm definitely 6 at heart.

I made these ADORABLE bunny butt cupcakes for our Easter Luncheon. I got the idea out of Hello Cupcake! This is the first time that I used a scoop for the cake batter. It is the BEST THING EVER. I used a 3 tablespoon scoop and the cupcakes just come out so even!

I had some leftover batter so I used a 1 tablespoon scoop and made some mini cupcakes too - cook's treat!

I frosted 6 of my 24 cupcakes and covered them in Oreo crumbs to make the bunny butts. I changed a few things around - the book called for white circus peanuts and chocolate covered sunflower seeds to make the feet, I used the leftover fondant from my Hunger Games Cake instead.

They were all out of little fondant rolling pins at Wal-mart so I used a glass... resourcefulness FTW!

Attached the bunny feet!

Icing the grass was a pain for the first few cupcakes, but then I got the hang of it and it became pretty easy.

I placed all the cupcakes on my serving platter so that it looks like bunnies are hopping into their bunny holes. 

Next I decorated the grass with egg malt balls and flower sprinkles!

Bridal Shower Desserts Part 3

Here are the rest of the desserts I made for Kim's shower! Did I mention how much I loved the color scheme? Because I LOVE the color scheme! First - a major shout out to Mackenzie who came over the night before the shower and helped me to make all the desserts. I would have been up till the wee hours had she not showed up!! For the heart shaped rice krispy treats we dyed the marshmallow goo pink and then cut them out with cookie cutters.

I got yellow and orange candy melts as well as chocolate chips to dip the hearts in. 

This is a great way to spice up your rice krispies!

Next I made my traditional wedding shower cookies in the shapes of dresses and cakes. I used lemon flavoring in my royal icing to give them an extra springy taste. I dyed some of the leftover fondant from my Hunger Games cake to make bows and flowers to decorate the cookies.

Then of course I doused them in disco dust!!