Cakes, recipes, parties, crafts, tutorials and aspergers
Computer Boy turned 10 in January. When I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday this year he said “can i just have a regular party, not with a theme?” GAH! He decided to have his party at the local recreation center pool and water playground. My kids love to swim, so with 2 feet of snow on the ground we headed off to the pool.
I kept it simple so it didn’t feel like a huge party theme. I used blue ombre waves in the decorating with beach ball colors for the rest.
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Last week was the reveal of the DIY blogger house at the Parade of Homes in Daybreak, UT. They asked if I would make 10 dozen bumble bee sugar cookies for the evening!
It took THREE days, but I’m pretty happy with how they turned out! And they were a HUGE hit, but honestly I really didn’t like making them, I would much rather make a cake! So no more orders for cookies or cupcakes- CAKE ONLY!
Sugar Cookies
3 ¼ C flour
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. baking powder
½ C Butter and margarine
1 C sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
½ C thick sour cream
Sift flour, soda, salt, nutmeg and powder. In separate bowl cream butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, sour cream. Mix in dry ingredients. Chill in fridge for 3-4 hours
roll out to 1/4 inch- the thickness is KEY- you want a nice thick cookie.
cut into shapes! Try to use as much of the FIRST roll out as you can. Once you start kneading the dough it get’s thicker and doesn’t end up tasting as good. I only knead and roll out and cut 3 times, after that I toss the rest of the dough.
Cook at 350 for 8-12 mins, you want the cookies to be JUST cooked, don’t over cook them. I usually cook the first pan 9 mins and the rest (once the pan is warm) 8, but every oven is different so play it by ear.
Frosting
4 C powder sugar
1/4 C milk
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp corn syrup
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp extract (peppermint or almond)
Food coloring (optional)
Mix butter, powdered sugar, corn syrup, milk, vanilla and flavor extract add more milk if needed, but you want it fairly thick for the lines.
To detailed cookies you do the edging first, in a thicker frosting. In some cases you edge the whole cookie, for the bee’s I did just the white wings. I decided to add some details in the wings, you want the ENTIRE outline to DRY.
To Thin Icing: To thin for pouring, add 1 teaspoon milk at a time. Keep adding milk until it’s thin enough that when you stir it the lines will smooth out by the time you count to 10.
I have a clear tutorial on my airplane cookie post about how to do the color flow technique to get the bubbled up, thick icing! So fill it in with white and LET DRY
Black is hard to get in frosting. I started by adding dark cocoa powder (to the thick icing), until it tastes good (you don’t want it TOO chocolatey), then add black powder food coloring until your happy with the color! Added the darker outline, and LET DRY
Fill in with the thinned yellow, and LET IT DRY
Fill in the remaining spaces with thinned black icing! And again LET IT DRY! It’s the key to the whole effect, letting each step dry completely before moving on. But it’s also one of the reasons it’s so time consuming!
Also the piping muscles in my arm hurt for 2 days after all this piping! By the time I got to the end of all the piping I couldn’t open my hand by myself, I had to slide the bag out of my clenched fist and massage it open. But they looked great, tasted better, and were a huge hit! And it’s OVER!
roll out to 1/4 inch- the thickness is KEY- you want a nice thick cookie.
cut into shapes! Try to use as much of the FIRST roll out as you can. Once you start kneading the dough it get’s thicker and doesn’t end up tasting as good. I only knead and roll out and cut 3 times, after that I toss the rest of the dough.
Cook at 350 for 8-12 mins, you want the cookies to be JUST cooked, don’t over cook them. I usually cook the first pan 9 mins and the rest (once the pan is warm) 8, but every oven is different so play it by ear.
To detailed cookies you do the edging first, in a thicker frosting. In some cases you edge the whole cookie, for the bee’s I did just the white wings. I decided to add some details in the wings, you want the ENTIRE outline to DRY.
To Thin Icing: To thin for pouring, add 1 teaspoon milk at a time. Keep adding milk until it’s thin enough that when you stir it the lines will smooth out by the time you count to 10.
This week I’m going to be sharing my airplane baby shower all week, today is the cookies, Wednesday the cake, Thursday the invitations and Friday the rest of the party, including the labels! I hope you all enjoy it! It was such a fun party to throw for my sweet cousin.
Take your favorite sugar cookies, but for this method if you want the frosting to dry hard so you can stack them you need to use royal icing, so it’s mostly sugar, and looks AMAZING, but isn’t he most tasty frosting. You CAN use my classic Sugar cookie frosting, making it thick for the outline and thin for filling in, but while the frosting will crust over you won’t be able to stack them. But it does taste better in my opinion….
First we’re going to outline the shape you want. I started with the MAIN space, then did one side of the details then the other. You want to make sure your outline connects everywhere without spaces or holes.
Then any detail work in the center, I was going off an image of a plane I tweaked and colored for our party… do this to ALL the cookies and let the outlines dry completely.
Take the royal icing and THIN it out, after you’ve thinned it, plop a bit of the frosting back into the main bowl and count to 10, if the plop and/or lines created when you dropped it in have disappeared and you have a nice smooth surface again it’s thinned enough, if not add a bit more water, mix and try again. Go slowly, like half a tsp at a time, you can always add more water, but if you go too far you can’t take it back out!
Now we’re going to fill in the design, doing one space at a time,works smoothly and quickly, starting with a side and moving your way over. You want it to bubble up over the edge of your outline JUST a bit (but not overflow) creating a pillowy effect..
Use a straight pin or toothpick to help fill in any area and pop any bubbles
Jiggle it a bit to help it smooth itself out
Let it dry completely between each color! Fill in every space and your done! Once they are completely dry you can stack them.
And here you can see the plane I tweaked for the labels and used as my cookie inspiration! More on the party all week! I can’t wait to share it with you guys!
To Thin Icing: To thin for pouring, add 1 teaspoon milk at a time. Keep adding milk until it’s thin enough that when you stir and let it sit the icing will smooth out by the count of 10.
Airplane Baby Shower
Airplane Color Flow Cookies
Airport Traffic Control Cake Tower
Airplane Boarding Pass Invitations
I waited until the last minute yet again to create the valentines for the kids this year. I pre plan and make a lot of things, small holiday stuff isn’t one of them. (yes I consider Valentines a small holiday).
I took pencils and some pretty scrapbooking paper and created these pinwheels. Since the pencils and paper were all different each one turned out unique! The kids loved them!
I found this fun Spinning quote from online (from the movie Practical Magic?) “Do you ever put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that’s what love is like.” And created these pencil flags (Free download valentines pencil or straw flags), with “to” and “from” on the other side so the kids could personalize them!
On Valentines day itself The DA, Baby Boy and I took cookies, frosting and sprinkles over to the school and helped in Lego Boy’s classroom. I love her “What cookie? I didn’t eat a cookie” face in the first picture when she thinks I caught her doing something wrong!!! She was pretty excited when I said she could EAT the cookie she decorated!
And of course Lego Boy- I love his concentration, from frosting to adding sprinkles this guy get’s down to business!!! His fun and energetic 1st grade classmates are hilarious, and it was so much fun to be a part of their party! You can also see the hole where he lost his first tooth last week!
