Wow, Easter came, and went and I was a little surprised to see that not many people actually celebrated the religious side of it. No matter what store I visited, I heard, “But, MOOOOOOOOOM, I want the big Easter basket!“ and, “That candy is gross, I want the expensive kind.” It seems to me that these days, kids are only motivated to do things when rewarded and have come to know holidays as Days When I Get All Kinds of Free Stuff And it Doesn’t Matter if I Was Bad or Not. P-L-E-A-S-E! In my house growing up, we didn’t get squat unless we earned it. We played outside most days and drank...

A friend of mine is having a birthday party for her son, he’ll be the big 1!  He’ll be needing cowboy cookies for his cowboy pals so I came up with these Deputy Badges.  Sugar cookie stars frosted with royal icing, Kopykakes writing, gold dragees and dusted with edible gold dust.  They were a bit of hard work but definitely worth the effort, completely. I haven’t ever worked with royal icing before.  In fact, I looked up the recipe on cooks.com and watched a video on youtube on how to make and apply the stuff.  Amazingly, I got it on my first try.  Look out world, Heathers got...

Damn, she strikes again.  I tried not to do it.  I decided not to bake anything today, not to join in the drinking and debauchery in the local pubs.  Alas, I failed. I caved.  I baked some wonderously delicious Chocolate Guinness Stout cupcakes, filled with red raspberry and topped with vanilla buttercreme – green, of course. INGREDIENTS (recipe found on www.chow.com) 1 (12-ounce) bottle Guinness stout 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract 3 large eggs 3/4 cup sour cream 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa 2 cups sugar 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 1/2 teaspoons...

Captain, Captain, there are sharks afin! This weekend my nieces visited and we worked together on a great cupcake project.  Shark Attack cupcakes.  We started off with a basic vanilla cake recipe and then added some red food coloring to make the cake look gory like blooooooooood…    Ewwwwwwwwwww.  And, scaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrry! For the frosting we added blue to some buttercream (confectioners sugar, unsalted butter and heavy whipping cream).  For the fins, we used oreo cookie sides, broken in half.  We dipped the cookie halves in melted white chocolate, tinted with black gel color (hint...

After having been sick for the last week and a half, I decided to bake something fun, for myself, as a bit of “feel better” non-medicine.  I decided on the following recipe which I altered from the original found in my 100 Best Cupcake Recipes book – Tropical Luau Cupcakes.  Although the recipe calls for a “yellow cake mix” I opted for a homemade vanilla cake mix, not from a box – they are usually icky!  As for the banana pudding mix – I used 3 (individual serving) containers of Hunt’s Banana Creme Pie pudding. Tropical Luau Cupcakes Ingredients 2 cans...