Friday, February 22, 2013

Spiderman cookies


 My son badly wanted me to make him some spiderman cookies for his birthday.  I looked online for some spiderman cookie tutorials and I found a tutorial done by sweetsugarbelle.  As soon as I saw her tutorial I knew I had to make them. 

Here's what you'll need:
Egg shaped cookie cutter
Your favorite sugar cookie recipe
black piping icing
piping bags
Wilton #5 tip
Wilton #2 tip
White 20 second icing
Red flooding icing
Black piping icing


 
I found a coloring picture of Spiderman online, printed it out and cut out the eyes so I could use it as a stencil.  I figured I was meant to make these cookies because the coloring page I found was the exact same size as my egg shaped cookies.  How perfect is that!  Coming from someone who is not at all a computer person I was pretty pleased.

 
Using the Spiderman stencil and a black food coloring marker I drew on the eyes.


I drew on the eyes with a Wilton #5 tip and black piping icing.  I'm still learning about the consistency of royal icing and I made the black a little too thin for my taste.

 
Let the black icing harden and outline and flood with red royal icing.
 
 
While the red icing is still wet pipe on the lines with the black piping icing.  I split the face into 8 different sections.  Almost like cutting a pizza.  I then connected them with the lines inbetween.
 

 
Fill in with white 20 second icing.
 
I hope you enjoy these as much as my little boy did!
 
 
Enjoy!
 
Shayna

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Heart Cookies 2

Lately, I have been subscribing to the youtube school of cookie and cake decorating.  Learning this way allows me to learn the different techniques and I can learn when it's convenient for me.  Free time is not something well known at my house so I work videos in whenever I can.  In one of the youtube videos I watched I saw someone creating patterns on cookies using a food coloring marker and then covering it with royal icing.  I wanted to try this technique out ASAP, but I knew that I'd have to wait for an opportunity to present itself.  I found my opportunity with the heart cookies!

In a previous post I showed you how to make heart cookies.  I made them in 4 different colors:  pink, purple, blue and green.  Once I was done making the original heart cookies I had some left over 10 second royal icing.  I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. 

Using a black Americolor food coloring marker I drew a heart and split it into 4 different sections.

 
I started out with the purple royal icing
 

Pink next
 

 
Green and Blue last
 
 
When I was done I realized I had created a cookie with most of my wedding colors.  Pretty appropriate since we'll have been married 6 years soon.  The only wrong color is the blue.  I had yellow instead of blue.  My husband and I wanted to use the flowers and colors from each of parents weddings and then have our own color and flower also.  My in-laws had pink roses, my parents had yellow daisies and we had purple tulips.  We also had green to tie everything all together.  Blue is my son's and my favorite color so of course I had to add it!
 
Since these were pretty close to the colors from my wedding and it was a heart I had to add a saying, of course! 
 
 
Enjoy!
 
Shayna

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

King's Cake

The other day, I kept seeing things about Mardi Gras and Kings cake and badly wanted to make one.  I figured any excuse to bake!  My kids wanted to help me bake this so I figured I'd try to keep it as easy as possible.



I know it's not the best picture.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture until it was almost gone.  Yes, that's how good this is! 

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
[Kings Cake]:
2 cans of crescent rolls
4 oz. cream cheese
1/2 c. raisins (soaked in water for 15 minutes and dried)
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 c. packed light brown sugar
1/2 c. pecan halves or chips  (I put them into my Vitamix and they were chopped up pretty well)

[Icing]:
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar (also known as confectioner's sugar)
4-5 T. milk (more if you like your frosting a little runnier)
1 t. vanilla
Different colored decorating sugar or food coloring.

Instructions:

1.  Mix the cream cheese, raisins, cinnamon, brown sugar and pecan halves or chips together in a food processer

2.  Unroll the crescent rolls and form them into a circle with the short end on the outside on a large cookie sheet or pizza sheet.  Press the seams of the crescent rolls that overlap together.

3.  Spread the cream cheese mixture in a ring in the middle of the crescent roll ring.

4.  Take the outside of the crescent roll ring, bring it towards the middle and press together. 

5.  Bake the cake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown.  Let cool.

6.  Mix the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla.  Spread over the cooled cake.  (If you used food coloring instead of decorating sugar then put the icing into different containers and add food coloring. 

7.  Sprinkle the different colored decorating sugar over the icing.  Enjoy! 

My kids ended up helping me with this and did not want to wait until the cake cooled so the icing turned out a little runnier than I would have liked.  Who can blame them for not wanting to wait though,  I have trouble waiting until a cake has cooled myself!

Enjoy!

Shayna

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Birthday Time!

I have to say, I love birthdays and holidays.  I think the main reason I love holidays and birthdays is because I get to do two of the things I love, cooking and baking.  I admit, I definitely use my children's birthdays as an excuse to get creative and have fun with their birthday cakes and to make them cookies.  Two of my children, Wildman and Tinkerbell, are having birthdays pretty soon.  We'll end the month by celebrating Wildman turning 4 and 5 days later we'll celebrate Tinkerbell's 1st birthday. 

We're having a little birthday celebration with friends for Wildman and Tinkerbell's birthdays so I'm bringing cookies.  Wildman has requested Spiderman cookies and hockey cookies.  Wildman has an unbelievable hockey obsession.  I've also decided on butterfly cookies for Tinkerbell.  I was in the middle of putting supper in the oven and Cinderella, who will be turning 2 1/2 at the same time her brother and sister turn 4 and 1, said "Are you making my birthday cake?"  That's when I realized that I would need to at least make some special cookies for her as well.  My kids, even at their ages, have already figured out that when it comes to making and decorating cookies and cakes I'm willing to attempt just about anything. 

Here is my cookie list as it stands now: 

hockey puck cookies
butterfly cookies
conversation heart cookies
spiderman cookies

This list doesn't even include the birthday cakes.  My son has already requested a hockey cake.  The past 2 years I've done a hockey rink cake for his birthday.  This year I'm doing something new!  I'm making him a cake with the logo of his favorite hockey team.  I still haven't quite decided what I'm doing for my youngest.  I think I'll be looking through my cricut cake creations and make something using one of the cartridges.  I received several cartridges for Christmas and I've been itching to use them.

Shayna