Happy Sunday! Have a Sundae!

So I decided to make chocolate chip cookie sundae cups...because I saw it on Pinterest.

"Sugar Cookie Bowls" - Original pin from Wilton.

We are definitely in the holiday spirit at my house.  This year, Miss Precocious and I tricked Jake into putting our Christmas tree up the first week of October.  How did we do it?  We told him it was going to be a "Holiday Tree".  

We decorated it for Halloween during the month of Octorber.  This month it has a Thanksgiving theme.  And next month it will be a Christmas Tree again.  (I think Jake secretly likes having it up, but he won't admit it. Men!) 

Anyway, to me it just feels wrong to decorate a tree without cookies baking and some sort of holiday music playing (Bing Crosby Holiday on Pandora!!).  So when it was time to switch the Halloween decorations for the Thanksgiving decorations this weekend, I decided to make us a special cookie treat!  

I pinned those Wilton cookie bowls a while back and decided to make them as soon as I got some Pillsbury.  I have to be honest, I didn't read a single instruction off the Wilton site.  Not one.  Lazy.  But how hard can it be?  Squish some dough, bake, eat... 

One day I will learn.  

We'll get to that. 

So here is what you need to make this happen:

I just molded the dough thinly (I swear it felt thin) around the bottom of the ungreased muffin pan.  Like so.

I was only brave enough to try one. (Can you blame me for not wanting to waste Pillsbury cookie dough??)

And since I bake cookies all the time, I know a little trick.  If you want the cookies to hold their shape, stick them in the freezer for 5 minutes before you bake.  Now I know this works for cut-outs so I figured it would work for Pillsbury too.  

Umm...no.

Wilton can kiss it.  Maybe I should have read the instructions?

I am a cheater.

Tada!

Well at least it tastes awesome!  

I give this project a big E-F for Epic Fail!  Hope you have better luck :)

Happy Sunday!

Happy Birthday Mom! Have Some Cake.

So I decided to make my mom a very special birthday cake...because I saw it on Pinterest.

 This is a two-for-one post ;)

"White Wedding Cake Cupcakes"-Original pin from Lori at RecipeGirl.

and...

"Rose Cake Tutorial"-Original pin from Amanda at I Am Baker.

I bake all the time!  Its my favorite hobby.  And I absolutely adore I Am Baker! Amanda is so clever. She is always hiding things inside her cakes (no, not like keys or money!).  Seriously.  Read her blog.  It's amazing. 

I saw that amazing rose cake a few months ago and I actually pinned it myself! I keep getting emails (like 3 a day) telling me that someone else has pinned it too.  It's a pretty awesome cake, and I guess I'm not the only one who thinks so!  

I bought the special tip for making those roses (Wilton 1M) the same week I found this cake post.  I haven't tried to make the rose cake but I did make some rose cupcakes that were pretty cute. Want to see?

I made this cake, the cookies and cupcakes for a little friend's third birthday party. I had so much fun making these!  Pink...it's my favorite color.  Anyway, those are the little rose cupcakes.

Where was I?  Oh!  Ok so why two pins in one post?  Well, I am using the recipe from RecipeGirl and the decorating idea from I Am Baker.

You see, I've been decorating birthday cakes for a while and I always use boxed cake mix.  Remember, I am the epitome of lazy.   And this has worked pretty well...so far.  But the last cake I made was a monster and the cake wasn't as dense as it should have been which caused some stability issues.  Cakes from a box tend to be a little on the fluffy side so I am hoping that this recipe from RecipeGirl will create a more dense cake with minimal extra effort on my part!

"What is the occasion for this cake?" you ask.  My amazing mommy's birthday is this week and she is coming to visit so I wanted to make her a very special cake. 

This is my sweet little mama when she was a youngster.  Isn't she the cutest thing ever? I just want to pinch those cheeks!!!  Love her!

Alright, so this is the recipe for the cake:

1 (18.25 ounce) box white cake mix
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated white sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups water
2 Tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream (I used light)
4 large egg whites

Need a visual?

Now, nowhere in her post does RecipeGirl say that this cake will be dense.  I am just using my reasoning skills (which have been wrong before)...but it seems that adding an entire cup of flour and a cup of sour cream should weigh things down a bit.  

Anyway, I am making two 8" round cakes and a few cupcakes for mom to take back home to my dad (because he's pretty awesome, too!). I am a fan of the grease-and-flour method of prepping baking pans.  This is the only way I've found to ensure my cakes don't stick. I get a lot of Crisco on a paper towel and run it around the pan a few times.  Then I dump flour in and wiggle it around until everything is coated.  Ah-like-so:

You know how I mentioned that my mom was pretty awesome?  Well to illustrate that point, look what she brought me!

Yes.  Every baker's dream.  A STAND MIXER!  Wooohoooo!!!  If I could do a cartwheel, I totally would.  (Mom, you are freaking awesome!)

Ok so first you need to wisk together all the dry ingredients.  

Now I'm just showing off my fancy mixer.

Then blend in all the other ingredients.  Since it's my mom's birthday (and for no other reason) I even removed the little white squishy yuckness from the eggs.  She can't stand the thought of eating those, no matter what.  Happy Birthday!

Can you see how amazingly smooth that cake batter is??  Gratuitous mixer footage.

I filled two 8" pans a little more than halfway and I still had enough batter for 9 cupcakes.  The oven was preheated to 325 and I should have set a timer but...I am a lazyface.  

After they started to smell really good (who needs a timer when you have a nose?), I tested them with a knife and tada! Perfection. 

While the cakes were cooling, I started working on the buttercream.  I mixed 2 sticks of salted butter, 2 tablespoons of milk, and 4 cups of powdered sugar in the separate bowl that came with the mixer (it has TWO bowls!).  Then I added  a little bit more powdered sugar...and a little bit more milk...and I did that a few times.  I just work with it until it is the consistency I think I want for the tip I'm going to use (you'll meet the tip in a minute).  

When I had it the way I wanted, I put the smidgeniest amount of Wilton Rose and Sky gel food colorings and stirred by hand.  I was going for a lavender color.  I actually tinted properly! Can you tell? Whoop!

Since I've used this tip before I know that it can be a real buttercream hog!  And I knew I wanted to give the cake a little flavor (I didn't add any flavoring to this lovely buttercream).  So I made a separate, smaller batch of strawberry buttercream to crumb coat the cake with.  

I used 1 stick of butter, 1 tablespoon of milk, 1/4 cup of Duncan Hines strawberry frosting and enough powdered sugar to thicken it up a bit.  Adding the tub frosting is so much fun!  It's totally cheating, but it adds just enough flavor to the buttercream and it makes it extra smooth.  

Yep.  I forgot to tint the crumb coat buttercream lavender.  I hate that my brain never recovered from being pregnant.  I wonder how much mental capacity I lost...  Can't even think about it!

Want to meet the beast?

That's the Wilton 1M.  My very favorite tip.  LOVE!  Get one.  You can make pretty cakes too!

Ok the first roses should go on the side of the cake.  Start in the middle and loop around until the entire side is covered.

Adding roses to the top is tricky.  I started with one square in the middle and had to scrape it off.  It didn't leave me enough room for the roses on the outside. They would have been like...half roses or something really awkward.  

So I started at the edge and did the entire circumference of the cake and then filled in from there.  There are going to be holes and gaps between the roses.  Just make some swoops with your tip to fill them in.  (This is where tinting the crumb coat the same color as the roses would have been helpful.)

I just kept swooping and before I knew it, I had a fancy rose cake!  That was easy!

And goodness, this cake was divine!  It truly is wedding cake!!!  

Way to go RecipeGirl!  I give this an A+!  The cakes were dense (in a good way) and I barely had to level them at at all.  And the decorating was easy to do, thanks to I Am Baker's tutorial.  

Oh I wish I could share a piece with every single one of you!  But now you know you can make one yourself.  So get to it!

Happy Owloween!

So I decided that Miss Precocious should be an owl for Halloween...because I saw it on Pinterest.

 "Last Minute Kids' Owl Costume"-This pin originally came from Alpha Mom. 

I am a Chi Omega and of course it is my sincerest (secret) hope that Miss P will be one as well.  So I'm doing all I can to brainwash her instill in her a love of all things owl before she goes to college.  So far this has included an owl-themed birthday party, owl clothing, owl lovies...and most recently, an owl costume for Halloween.

Or Owloween as I'm now calling it.

I saw this cute little do-it-yourself owl costume on Pinterest.  I read the info over at Alpha Mom and I thought I would give it a try.  

The last two costumes we bought were cheaply made and I'm sure they were fabricated from formaldehyde or something even worse.  So I was really excited to make a costume that I knew didn't involve neurological toxins or Asian sweat shops!

These are the materials I chose:

That's a roll of lavender organza, gray knit, pink felt, and a purple bandana.

Yes, a bandana...

And there is no way Miss P would ever keep those cute sunglasses on (the little model from the original post is wearing sunglasses made to look like owl eyes) so I decided to look for an owl hat instead.  I found this one over at The Children's Place.  

Super cute, reusable for the next few winters, and it was only $5 when I bought it!  Fab!

I chose the fabric colors around the color of the hat.  Actually choosing the fabric was the most difficult part of the entire project.

You see, shopping is not easy for me!  I have a disease.  They don't have a medical term for it yet (this is all very serious).  So I'm calling it Retail Anxiety Disorder.  RAD for short.  

I get sweaty and twitchy when I have to make a decision about what items to purchase. I probably looked like this in the middle of Hobby Lobby:

It isn't like this at the grocery store.  There I have a specific list that includes brands, quantities, etc.  

But send me out clothes shopping or, in this case, to find material, and I need four Xanax and a glass of wine! 

That explains why I panicked and bought like...10 yards of fabric (and a bandana).

For someone who is something like 26 inches tall. 

Sigh...

Anyway, the base of the owl body is a plain purple t-shirt from Hobby Lobby.  They have so many colors to choose from!

I would have used a long sleeve shirt but I just couldn't find one that was cheap enough to justify gluing feathers to!

I cut out about 90 feathers.

I ran a strip of hem tape about an inch above the hem of the shirt. 

I chose hem tape because, well honestly I couldn't find my fabric glue. It was one of the things we lost in the move.  (Think very dramatic, like Halle Berry, Things We Lost In The Fire.  Except it's "Fabric Glue-Things We Lost In The Move.")

After I had the hem tape ironed down, I placed the feathers onto the tape in no particular order.

Yeah right!  I am the QUEEN of OCD.  Of course there was an order!  But I tried to make it look like there wasn't.  Can you tell?

I am really glad I accidentally picked a variety of fabrics because when I laid them out next to each other, the texture was really good.

After I got a row of feathers lined up, I just pressed down with all my might using the iron (on the highest dry setting).  Now, I will admit that felt and organza are not the best choices of fabric to pair with hem tape. The felt is too thick and the organza is too thin.  I ended up hot gluing the felt pieces on so they wouldn't fall off.

I made a ring of feathers around the neck.  I may have had to cut the neck a little bit for Miss P's large and precious head to fit through...

And since I had like, oh I don't know, 9 yards of fabric left, I decided to cover her pumpkin tote in feathers too.

I just hot glued those on. Man, I love a hot glue gun!  I can't think of anything else so versatile and useful that only costs $2!!

And here is my little baby hootie testing out her "owl suits" as she calls it.

Hoot Hoot!

So this project was a little time consuming, but it turned out so cute.  I totally love it!  I give it an A++!!  Especially since you could pretty much do this for free using any fabric scraps you might have laying around instead of buying fabric like I did. 

Be extra sweet to any little hooties that come your way and have a Happy Owloween everybody!