A few little desserts and one delicious birthday beer mug!

Been a little busy lately and I actually didn't get a picture of the krispie treats I made for the 4th of July :( but I remembered to snap one of the last mini peanut butter cookie I made for the campers to enjoy with their hot chocolate on "winter in july" day @ camp.


Also made a batch of yummy brownies for Vanessa's Birthday, followed but the intricate Beer Mug Cake for Dad. He always gets the best birthday cakes, I think I get really inventive in the middle of the summer. His 6 layer cake consisted of a brownie layer, chocolate pudding w/chocolate chips, a double vanilla cake layer, more pudding, a 1/2 cake 1/2 cookie layer, pudding, double vanilla layer, pudding, double vanilla, layer one last pudding section and one more double vanilla cake. Frosted in both milk chocolate and vanilla (yellow) frosting and featuring a dunkin donuts donut as a handle. (I frosted it in the chocolate frosting. Aside from being the perfect cake for him, it was always really delicious, which made me happy since I baked these cakes on Monday, froze them and then frosted it all Thursday and refrigerated until Saturday. Success!

Bridge's Sunflower Shower

Bridge's bridal shower #2 was filled with sunflowers, including my 1st real fondant experience. A few weeks ago I practiced the technique with my experiment recipe and gum paste petals (see previous post), but for the shower I used yellow sparkled and orange fondant petals (lots and lots of cookie cutting for these guys!) and mini chocolate chips as the center. Turned out adorable - and perfect as the sidekick for Mrs. Ferg's cute decorations and the vanilla ice cream they were served with. I also fitted the table with personal purple watering can sugar cookies - note to everyone: 80 degrees is TOO hot to bake sugar cookies. Saying goodbye to these guys until October!

Father's Day Concoction!

What do you get when you fill a pie crust with cookie dough, cake batter and frosting? Only the most delicious Father's Day dessert in America! I decided to tackle what I deemed the "dessert turduckin" for father's day since it could not take the place of a birthday cake. It was an incredible success for Dad, Tommy & Jay, as well as the one I sent with Elizabeth for her dad.

Lots of steps for this one.

Buy crust, make cookie dough, put in crust, add chopped peanut butter cups, make cake batter, add cake batter, bake FOREVER, cool, frost, decorate, devour!

a little bday treat and sunflower practicing

Marissa's Bday called for my signature pb freezies - peanut butter cups, melted white chocolate and pretzel thins. Melted, Frozen, and Chunked - she loved 'em!
The day finished up with sunflower cupcake practice for Bridge's upcoming shower, glad I practiced since I invented the cupcake batter (success!) and needed the practice with the decos, decided on sprinkles with yellow fondant petals glistened with shimmer dust. The real ones will be up in 2 weeks!

Princess Cake - Madeline turns 2!

"Hi 'Chelle. Where's my princess cake?" -Madeline

My niece turned two on Saturday and she had a princess themed birthday with my special princess cake - pink and yellow layers filled with chocolate pudding and crumbled cookies, covered in a peachy pink buttercream frosting! Yum!

Drake Cake & Grad Hats

Graduation Party!!!! This called for my favorite, graham cracker cake! Of course we had so many people I got to make a ginormous cake and filled half with strawberries and cream and half fudge ganache and cream. Covered in a light chocolate buttercream! Also blue sugar cookies and peanut butter cup/graham cracker graduation hats! Woo, I'm a graduate!

Mother's Day Cake Balls & Chocolote Covered Strawberries!

Mother's Day was full of chocolate covering. I was able to use the giant block of chocolate Tommy & Jaime gave me for my birthday to cover strawberries and my new favorite: cake balls! I got the cake balls recipe from an online blog and loved the idea. They were red velvet (my mom's favorite), but next time I plan on trying out a few other fun flavors.

After Relays Oatmeal Vending Machine Muff-ies

After Relays, you need a cookie. But not just any cookie, something dramatically delicious. Enter: Oatmeal Vending Machine Muff-ies. They originated from an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe I got out of my food processor cookbook, and were changed to "muff-ies" by baking in muffin tins and termed "vending machine" because I had no chocolate chips, and instead chopped up Hershey's with Almonds bars, Nestle Crunch bars and Twix. Who knew how great that would be?! Yum. Excellent (and necessary) end to the weekend.

And apparently I forgot to add all the amazing things I made for my chocolate birthday party at school - which is very surpising here they are: brownies with Hershey Bliss inside, cookie dough stackers, spiked milkshakes and more... enjoy!

Celebrating my Birthday at home (also on Easter)

Happy Birthday to me! We celebrated my 22nd birthday on Easter Sunday with a Michelle-sized cookie concoction. In spite of the fact that we'd just returned from an elaborate (but waffle-lacking...) Easter buffet... an hour or so later we were ready to stuff ourselves again.


Since I'd been chocolate free for the ENTIRE 47 days of Lent, chocolate was obviously going to play a staring role in my birthday dessert - which was my favorite Paula Deen chocolate chip cookie recipe (of course, changed up a little, Michelle-style) smashed into an 8 and a 6 inch cake pan, filled with Oreo pudding and Easter M&M's, and topped with more pudding and 4 perfectly spherical cookie dough ice cream scoops... the whole tower smothered in hot fudge sauce, and ignited with giant sparkling and sparkly candles.
You can't tell me your mouth isn't watering as you look at that inside picture!
(plus the natural lighting on these pictures is amazing!)

Yum, YuM, YUM!

Easter 09!

Easter weekend came and went in a FLASH! It included baking up some Fioretti bread (including my butterfly top...michael ate it...) mixing cookie dough for my birthday "cake" and of course, my mom's famous sugar cookies, lovely decorated by Elizabeth, Jacquie and me! Delicious and just the beginning of my super sugar high!
I portioned that cookie dough so that I would have some at 12:01 Easter Sunday morning for my chocolate fix!

Not really desserts at all... but...

The kitchen bug gets me at least once a month, but this lent thing has really become a problem... so this time when I realized I NEEDED to be in the kitchen, I was forced to cook for real! Turned out pretty delicious, and I managed to invent some things too. This weekend consisted of super veggie pizza and amazing strawberry orange dream smoothies with Kathy on Friday, honey almond butter on Saturday and aglio olio and tomato toasts for dinner Sunday night. I'm counting down these last weeks of lent... impatiently anticipating Easter M&Ms and some oreos!!! (and chocolate chip cookies... maybe some frosting...ganache... brownies... eek!)

Aruba Goody Bags!

How could I go on vacation with 6 other girls and not supply something to eat for the 5 hour plane ride? Since giving up chocolate for lent has limited my choices of what to make, I decided to opt for hummingbird mini muffins. These muffins are adapted from a Paula Deen cake recipe and truly are the moistest little cakes ever. Although Paula pairs them with cream cheese frosting, they stay on their own without any topping. I put little "goody bags" together with 5 mini muffins, a green lei (st. patrick's day!) and of course, umbrella straws in a bag tied together with a personalized flip flop key chain - here's Sarah's -->

"Who killed my sister??? Was it you?"

My mom's birthday always leads to a Wizard of Oz/Wicked theme because that's pretty much her favorite thing in America... but it also generally calls for her favorite red velvet cake. I planned this cake about a month ago in class and drew and colored my plans last week in Honors. Too bad I always miscalculate (or forget to calculate) my plans - this cake was pretty much completely disproportionate, but that's fine because the Wizard of Oz is kind of trippy anyways. So here is her Wicked Witch of the East cake, with her striped socks and Ruby Slippers after the house falls on her... of course placed upon the yellow brick road. The yellow buttercream is covering 2 layers: red velvet on the bottom and brownie on top, the legs are red velvet cupcakes stuck together with giant toothpicks, frosted in vanilla buttercream with black licorice stripes, and connected to giant rice krispie treat sprinkled and . ganache covered Ruby Slippers (shaped by my dad). And of course the witch was killed by Dorothy's house, another big slab of rice krispy treats covered in ganache and toothpicked... there were a LOT of toothpicks in this one... and we almost got them all out before Tommy took a bite... almost... at least everyone loved it - including Madeline :)