A Baby Shower & My Favorite Frosting Recipe

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It must be that time of year, adorable baby shower time! This time It's a Girl    The theme colors were purple and white. I love doing treats in my favorite color, purple. For this particular order, my wonderful boyfriend helped to put together an adorable set of cupcake toppers. I even got him to whip out the glue and sticks and actually assemble, hehe. I'm spoiled and he's THE best! 

For these cupcakes, we went with a classic vanilla bean cupcake with my favorite cream cheese frosting. And speaking of my favorite cream cheese frosting, I realized that I have never shared it with you guys. So guess what that means?! Sharing is caring, recipe below.

Cream Cheese Frosting, adapted from Glorious Treats

8 oz. Cream Cheese, softened
1/2 cup Butter, cold but slightly softened
1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
1/2 tsp. Butter Vanilla Emulsion
4-5 cups Powdered Sugar, sifted

(1) Place softened butter and cream cheese in a large mixing bowl. Whip together until fully incorporated and smooth, about 1 minute.

(2) Add vanilla extract and 3 cups of sifted powdered sugar. Mix on low until combined. Slowly add additional powdered sugar until you reach desired consistency.

I prefer a thicker frosting for best piping results, but everybody sings to their own tune in this category. I have found that the butter vanilla emulsion really adds that extra richness and really makes the whole kitchen smell amazing as the mixer whips up the frosting. It really hits your nose and just makes you want to dive in the mixing bowl, yummy! Give this recipe a try and I swear, you will never use another frosting recipe again.

Happy Baking!
 

Austin Bakes for West

Whenever tragedy hits close to home, it always makes you think twice. When people you know are closely affected by the accident and you see their tears of sorrow fall from their eyes, you see things in a different light. And then you wonder how you can help. Recently, in the small town of West, TX a fertilizer plant exploded and hundreds were injured and many killed. Knowing friends of mine had lost close friends due to the explosion, made we want to help. 

When I saw that there were going to be 8 bake sales going on around the Austin area to raise proceeds for West, I knew I had to contribute. The big day was Saturday, May 04, 2013, and it sure did sneak up on me fast.

I volunteered to bake for 3 of the locations around town and to table the bake sale in Round Rock. When I originally signed up to volunteer, I think I was overly ambitious... I ended up not sleeping the night leading up to the sale because I was still buried in un-decorated cookies. I was stuffing cookies into bags just as the sun was beginning to rise. I even woke up the bf at 7AM so that he could help. I never knew that stuffing 80 favor bags with cookies would take so long! I was definitely running on adrenaline that morning as I tabled the Round Rock bake sale.

But in the end, I am glad that I was able to contribute to a great cause. We raised over $18,000 and that is a great feeling! I totally went home and crashed after the bake sale was over and slept like a baby through the whole night.

I ended up meeting some great local bloggers and bakers, and even got a membership to the Austin Food Blogger Alliance. Losing one night of sleep is nothing compared to knowing that you were able to contribute to a great cause and getting to meet some awesome fellow bakers. You rock Austin!

Donation: 20 mini loafs of Banana Bread, 8 dozen mini Cupcakes, 80 bags of Sugar Cookies

 

Kickin' Into Spring!

With a pair of Jordans! I am just full of cheesy puns this month

This has definitely got to be one of the more detailed cookies that I have ever done. But hey I love a challenge and it feels that much better to successfully overcome a challenge, esp a cookie challenge! Seeing how happy my customers are definitely make my day. This was also my first time to hand-cut a cookie shape. Finding a cookie cutter in the exact shape of a Jordan shoe is not exactly easy to come by.

So you may wonder what occasion would spark Jordans cookies? Well this order actually came to me via an old High School friend who saw my cookies floating around facebook. We haven't spoken in years and I was so excited to hear from her! Her goddaughter was celebrating her 7th birthday and she happens to be a HUGE fan of Jordans sneakers. My friend sent me a picture of Jordans that the birthday girl actually owned and asked if I could replicate it. I was extremely nervous to accept such a task but as I mentioned, gotta love a challenge. In the end, I am so extremely happy with how they turned out! Hand-cutting the cookies was a pain, adding all the detail was a pain, but wow the final outcome was totally worth it! I hope you guys had a great party and little Jewels enjoyed her special Jordan cookies!

 

April Showers

In a very literal sense, we'll start the month off with a Baby Shower! Elephants must be a popular shower theme these days... I feel it was yesterday that I made these elephant baby shower cookies. When my client said the theme was elephants and I asked her to send me an image of the invitations. I was happily surprised when the elephants on the invitation looked almost exactly like the elephants I had made previously, minus the hearts for ears. So here they are again, round two of the baby shower elephant cookies! I have to say that I think the hearts for ears is the perfect little adorableness needed for any baby shower theme.

P.S. Be on the look out for an amazing post regarding the BEST birthday present a cookie girl could ask for! Yes, that's right, my birthday was this past Friday but I have been so busy celebrating and making cookies that I haven't had the chance to stop-in and tell you all about it, but soon, very soon! But of course, after April 15th..... I, the CPA, have yet to file my own taxes... one more cookie order to go and then I can sit down and file that bad boy.

Angry Birds Birthday

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We continue with the March Birthdays around here. These cookies required a little more creativity and planning than usual, but I absolutely love how they turned out! I posted this picture on Instagram while I was making all their eyes, and I was asked if they were suppose to be mean angry eyes or cute googly eyes. I laughed because it was going to be both! Just goes to show how important facial expressions are. Bushy angry eyebrows are enough to make a cute face into a mean one. But I have to say that the green googly eyes piggies are definitely my favorite! I love how quirky they look, it's hard to believe that they are the exact same eyes used on the Angry Birds but yet their expressions look so different.

Thanks Karen for such a fun order! Hope you guys have a blast at the birthday party!