Baby Elephants-Cute Baby Shower Cookies

There were over 100 of these on my table, I was so good, I only ate like 5.

  I guess that is a little presumptuousness to say cute, but you know what, they really are.  Well at least to me.  You can just let me think they are, okay?

  So Pork chops teacher from last year is having a baby, which is really great.  I love other people having babies.  I can cuddle and ooh and aw over them, then when they poop, give them back.  In a perfect world I would have a baby to cuddle every day.  Pork chop is so not into cuddling, I have to bribe him you know.

Me -"Hey Pork chop, come give me a cuddle."

PC- "NO!!!!!"

Me -" I'll let you play X box if you cuddle."

PC - "Fine, but only for 30 seconds."

  He drives a hard bargain and I always go for it, you know when he is 16 I won't be able to bribe him like this right?  I may need to get a dog instead, then no bribes and all the cuddles I want.  And stinky dog breath, it's a win win situation people.

  So anyway, on to the cookies.  The mommy to be sent me a picture of some cute elephant cookies she wanted me to make.  Only issue is I didn't have a cutter, and there is no way I am cutting those out by hand.  I may be crazy people, but not that crazy.  (shut up Hubby!)

  So I did manage to find a cutter, but it was much smaller than she had wanted.  In the end it worked out as that was all we could find.  So I set to work!

  First I mixed up four batches of Amanda's  amazing sugar cookies.  I have to point out that doing this is sort of crummy, but with only a small mixer that is all I can do.  When I get a bigger kitchen aid I should be able to do double or even triple batches.  That is the dream people, I have a vision!  And it includes a bigger kitchen aid, a house keeper and a Hubby that likes my baking.  What?  It could happen.

So this is how I stack them, I know the post would totally not work without this picture.

And then I wrap them, again I know, news worthy picture.

  Anyway, I rolled out and baked a whole bunch  of elephants, I always, ALWAYS! make extra.  (yes I know it's rude to shout, but you need to understand how important this is) I make extras because inevitably you mess one up, you break one ( and with elephant trunks this happens) or at the last minute there may be a need for a few more.  And if not, well you have extra to share at work, or eat all by yourself.

  So I always bake a few days before I decorate, I like to do the things a little each day.  I work so I don't have the luxury of setting a full day aside to do it all.  But this works for me, and I still enjoy it, I don't want to feel like it is work you know?

  So once baked and fully cooled I stack and wrap my cookies.  Two layers of cling wrap then either a freezer bag or a layer of tin foil.  Then into the freezer. I usually put them in the fridge freezer until they are solid then move them to the large chest freezer.

  Then for the day you decorate, you need to allow at least 24 hours to let the glaze dry.  If not you will have cracks and stuff.  And don't worry the icing will keep the cookies from drying out.

My set up, I work one cookie at a time.  Outline then move it aside.

  When I am ready I pull the cookies out and take off the tin foil and let them thaw while I mix up my glaze.  For these I needed a few colours.  Pink, blue, white, yellow and black.  But for the first day of decorating I only needed the pink and blue.  So I mixed up a large batch of piping consistency glaze and halved it to tint.  I try to make more than I think I need, because if you run out half way through you will have a hard time getting the colours exactly the same. Fill a piping bag with each colour and do your outlines, then put the icing back into a bowl and add milk until it is flood consistency

I hate outlining, because I always end up with some that look like my son made them.  

  To start on day one of decorating I outlined all my elephants then went back and flooded them.  I use a toothpick, or this cute cookie tool to spread out the glaze and pop any large bubbles.  Then that is it, leave it be until the next day.  If you are paranoid like me you can face a fan, on low, at them to help ensure they dry.

My pictures look weird because I was decorating them upside down for some unknown reason.  And of course I was too dumb to turn the cookie over before I took a picture.

I am lazy and just put a blob of icing in the middle, if you are not lazy you can sort of pipe it out in the design.  I will admit, again, I am lazy.

I find with glaze you are always going to have more bubbles.  I am sure if I let it sit longer you would not have so many, but I am impatient and don't wait.  You really cannot tell in person as much as in the picture.

  Now I must add that I decorate on my dining room table, with a layer or either wax paper or parchment.  I do this for two reasons; three really.

My reasons: ( I like making official looking lists)

-you don't have to worry about all the drippy glaze getting on your table then having to scrap it off when it's all dry.
-you can sort of slide the papers around so you don't have to move one cookie at a time ( I so want to buy some nice cookies sheets with sides so I can stack them, they would not be used to bake so there is no chance of any burnt sugar or anything falling on the glaze, I will be putting this on my birthday list)
-and I just don't want to take any chances of there being anything on my table that could get on the cookie, I scrub and scrub but I am paranoid.  ( If I was only so diligent about the rest of my house.)

All my colours ready to decorate. I use tiny bottles because it is so much easier than a large pipping bag.  And they are cute.

After about 3 cookies I decided to do this, since the glaze was really thick it  sort of took some bottle shaking and lots of squeezing to get it out if I set them up.  This worked great, and I am going to pretend I invented the idea. 

  The next night was detail work.  It is not fast, it is a pain in the butt sometimes, but it is what finishes the cookie. I was lucky that the details were not hard, so I managed to get it done really fast.  So I again made a batch of piping glaze, then took a small amount, like 1/4 cup and made it black and put it in a tiny bottle that you can use with tips, and put a #1 tip on.  I took about the same amount of white ( I coloured it white with soft food gel paste, you get a nice bright white that way.) and put it in a bottle with a #2 tip.  And the rest I tinted yellow.  I put some in a small bottle with a #2 tip and then thinned the rest with milk and put it small bottle, but it was just a regular bottle so no special tip.

The ear was a heart shape, so I put my cookie side ways to draw it.

  I started with the yellow, making the heart shaped ears and the tiny little toes.

I made the flood icing so thin it did not need any help to spread out.

Then I flooded the ears.

And then the eye.  It sort of looks like a zombie elephant if you leave it like this.

 Then I went back with the white and added eyes, and then last I added tiny black dots for the eyes.

I should have thinned my black icing out a bit more, because it was  so stiff and I had a heck of a time getting nice dots.  Most were standing up and not flat.  GRRR. He also looks sort of startled, don't blame him ,he is going to be eaten after all.

  I had hoped to use pre made royal icing eyes but they were too big, and it was just as easy to pipe them as it would have been for me to buy them. So really it was just four steps, yellow outline and toes, flood ear, put whites of eyes, then put black dot on eye.

I forgot to take a picture of all of them, I realized this half way through bagging them.  Darn it all!

  Then I let them dry again over night and packed them into bags all ready to go.  The mommy to be had tags to add and was very happy with how they turned out.  She does not know if she is having a boy or a girl so that is why there are pink and blue elephants.

I use boxes from the grocery store and stand my cookies up.  Less chance of crushing or breaking and free boxes  are always good.

Here they are all stood up, that right there is 85 cookies.  And I ended up with like 20 extra.

  And since I had some extra I attempted to take some cute pics, I know, I will not win any awards.

  And now for the story of how Pork Chops little friend made me feel bad.  I had set up a play date for the night these cookies were sitting  on my table.  So I had to think of something else for them to do.  I usually make something for them to decorate.  So I hit the dollar store and grabbed a few Valentine theme craft kits.  I think I am the best mom ever.  The kid comes over, oh's and ah's over the cookies.  The kids eat diner, they do their craft, they play some games and just have fun.  I think I am good and in the clear.  I tell the boys they have 30 minutes before they are done.  And what does his friend say?  "why didn't we do crafts"  I told him we did, he then tells me no that was not a good craft, he wanted to decorate cookies or something.  I told him I was sorry but he could take some elephant cookies home.  The he said "fine, but I wanted to decorate them myself."  So there you go, I set myself up for this, always having fun yummies to decorate.  And that my friends is the story of why I made extra cookies, and felt like a crappy mom.  ( Not really, I just wanted to be dramatic)

My super artistic picture.

I'm linking up HERE

Alphabet Cookies in a Jar

Before I start I just want to remind you of my Give away.  So come check it out and enter!

You know what, I don't even know if I spelled that right.

  I love making sugar cookies, there are so many things to do with them.  Other than eating, you know because food should be multipurpose right?  So when I was making like 1000 cookies this week I had a lot of extra dough left over.  Not to be confused with "dough" which would mean money, which would mean I would not be baking, I would be shopping.  Anyway.....

  So I had lots left over, and as luck would have it I made a mistake and added too much flour to the last batch of dough.  This resulted in the dough being hard to roll out, but it made for a cookie that hardly spreads out.  The taste was still great, a little crisper than I like, but you know, once you cover it is icing, does it really matter?

I saw the tooth pick tip on a blog, and I feel horrible that I cannot remember which one.  It stops the glaze from dripping out.  Big help.

  I started by cutting out a million little circles using the smallest cookie cutter I have.  They are a little bigger than a quarter.  Once baked I let them cool then got to work decorating.

  I use the glaze recipe from Amanda at I am Baker.  It was the first glaze I used and I have not stopped, it is so good!  Only issue is it takes longer to dry than royal icing, but crusts really fast.  So I made up some icing in a few colours using Americolor soft gel paste.  I made my glaze and thinned it out to be just a little thinner than piping consistency and just a little thicker than flood consistency.  I did this so that I could outline and flood my cookies in one step. So saving me from using plastic bottles and piping bags.  Anything to save time people!  And since the circles are so small this was really fast.

I started off with a number 2 tip, then found it took so long, so I switched up to a 3.  This is the steps of outlining and flooding, but of coarse backwards, what can I say?  I think differently.

 I filled my bags with glaze and used a number 3 tip.  It is big enough to get a nice outline and flood without being too big or too small.  So outline the cookie then right away fill it in.  Then sort of shake the cookie back and forth on the table to settle the lines.  If you need to you can go back and use a tooth pick to help spread the icing out.

  Now I wanted to be fancy and was thinking of doing wet on wet icing.  But then I figure I would probably  want to poke my own eyes out after about 10 cookies.  With glaze working wet on wet means you have to do the colours right away, the glaze crusts over so fast.  With royal icing you can work a few cookies at a time.  So I let my cookies dry for an hour or so then went back to finish them. (really I just finished flooding, tidied up a bit then went on to the next step, so well under an hour.)

  To start I used a disposable piping bag, because if you can cut down on what you have to wash at the end, you are much happier.  Trust me.

The one on the left is regular piping, the one on the right is wet on wet, see how it just blends.

  To show you wet on wet and how the look is different I did a few cookies, because I love you all.  But I don't love you enough to do them all.

  At least you know where we stand in this relationship.

 For wet on wet, you flood your cookie then right away pipe on the next colour, a letter for this one.  The two icings should melt together and it becomes flat.  It's really neat, but like I said, time consuming.

I just piped letters, no rhyme or reason, but then my Mom was watching Pork Chop and they ate their names.  So I was low on some letters.  But I still love them, kind of.

 Anyway once they had dried, which really did not take long.  I used a 1.5 tip, these are special tips I read about on other blogs, and I went searching for them.  They are like $5 each!  So I have two, that is it, and I do not use them much.  I am afraid if I do I will like them and then what would I do?  Buy more I suppose, but you know Hubby is on to me and my shopping, so we have to keep it reasonable for some things.  Notice I said some things, I am not insane people!

  So I made a black icing and started making letters.  I thought this would be fun so whomever they are for can work on their spelling.  I need to work on that too, thank goodness for spell check.  And even then I suck.  Oh well.

 Pork chop ( my son) is getting a tutor this month, so I thought this would sort of be fun for him.  He will probably not agree. But I am the mom, so if I say it's fun, it's fun darn it!

  So I left them to dry over night and then got a few jars.  Since they are small you can get a good deal in one jar, but my mom has been saving these huge soup jars for me so I used that.  Then you can make a label and give them to the ones you love.   Or like I did, just eat a bunch and give a few in a baggie to your friends at work.  It's all the same, my friends know how to spell already anyway. (I bought a bunch of dissolving canning labels at Walmart on boxing day, just for something like this.)

I just wrote the label, I hate my writing, but it says A B C cookies.

  And if you are immature like me you spell "naughty" words and take pictures of it.  Because that is what all the mature mom's do. Right?  Fine, this is what I do.  And it's my blog so there!  (Imagine me sticking my tongue out at you and making faces, again mature I am not!)

I wrote "poop"  ha!

  This is just one idea, I have seen a  bunch of other great ideas, where bloggers made snow man faces to put together, jack o lanterns and such.  I was not so creative, but you know, they all taste good.

  The cookies are again from Amanda at I am Baker, they are so good.  Check her site out, it's worth a look.  Here is my post with the recipe. Let me know if you have tried it yet, you will be hooked once you do!

Baileys Bunt Cake

I think it looks good, maybe not the greatest pic, but still yummy.

  Oh I had such big plans for this holiday,  I was going to decorate, bake some more cookies and make an amazing Christmas day desert.  Well I got the cake done, and without Hubby's help, so I did one thing.  I know it's the little things. That pesky hospital stay really got in my way.

  Anyway before the holidays I was checking out blogs like I always do and I ran across this on a bakers blog and I was so excited. For many reasons.  Firstly my mother in law doesn't like anything too sweet, secondly it had to be easy and thirdly it had to have chocolate in it.  So this covered all the bases.  I planned to make it and keep the icing on the side so if my mother in law didn't want any it would be all good.

  So I had emailed Hubby and he was all, that looks perfect.  Then when I was asking him to help he noticed it was made with a cake mix.  He made some comment about making something else, so I said I would do it alone.  He is very anti cake mix, another thing to put on the negative list for him! ( the list is getting long LOL.)

  So following the recipe that was on the blog I whipped this together really quickly.  I would have loved to make this with mini bunt pans, but I am not buying any more pans. But I did get like four more new different ones for Christmas so, you know unless I see them on super sale on boxing day, I am NOT getting any more.

This is all you need, and a bit of water.

Baileys Bunt Cake
From Suzie Homecaker

Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes

Cake:
1 yellow boxed cake mix
1 box of instant chocolate pudding mix
4 eggs
3/4 cups of oil
1/8 cup ( or 2 TBSP) water
1/4 cup of vodka
3/8 cups (or 6 TBSP) of Baileys

Glaze
Icing sugar and Baileys to make as much as you want, and as thick as you want.


So I probably made it more complicated than it had to be, but you know, some times I do that.


I first put the cake mix and pudding mix in a bowl and mixed it together, just to ensure that it was mixed before I added the liquid.


I then measured all the wet ingredients together and added them into the dry mix all at once.  I did this because I have found when I use instant pudding in a cake, it thickens really quickly so I wanted to do it fast.

My pan all ready, the dry ingredients and the wet all set!

Once it was all mixed together it got really thick, I then put it in my buttered and floured bunt pan.  I put it in the oven in the middle and left it for 39 minutes, I tested it with a wooden skewer and when it came out clean I knew it was done.  

I am so happy that it came out so nice, I have never done a bunt cake before, I think.

I found it really puffed up, and I could have trimmed the bottom when I was done, but you know I was not really concerned with how amazing it looked as I was in getting it done.  So I put it on a cake carrier plate, and then made the glaze.


I just put icing sugar in a large measuring glass cup and mixed it with Baileys until it was thick enough to coat the back of a spoon thickly.  I then poured the glaze over 3/4 of the cake and then put the cover on and put it in the cold basement until we were ready.  I had extra glaze just in case anyone wanted more.  

I left a bit without glaze so that my mother in law can have it less sweet.

I think it turned out really great, and I cannot wait to find a mini bunt pan, you know if they have them on sale.   I also don't know if the glaze soaked into the cake a bit, making it moister, but you know, it was all good.

All ready to eat.

 Just a small update before I go, this was the best cake ever.  Moist and dense and so flavourful.  I do think if I make it again I would use half cream and the other half Baileys in the glaze, as it was strong enough to make me feel it.  And I am not one to use only a little glaze, so just keep that in mind.  I now want to make cupcakes with this and my Baileys cream cheese icing.  Oh goodness, the new years is not going to be a light one for me.




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