Diary of a Baker Mom: June 2011

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Cookies!!!! Inspired by...

Decorating cookies takes a little practice, patience, a steady hand, and time but, is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it. There are several steps involved depending on the shape and design but, using an outline & flood method makes it doable. Nowadays there are several helpful tools out there to make it even easier to give it a try. Here are a few I've made recently. Hope you like them... :)

Now, more chances than not, you've heard of the very popular game Angry Birds!!! So, here's my 1st version of the Yellow Bird, Green Pig & Red Bird!

Angry Birds!!

Ready for Tea Time? Well, here's a tea cup cookie I made for a tea party baby shower favor. :)

Tea Cups!

And... depending on whether or not you have a younger, say 7-11yr. old child at home, you may have heard about the new up and coming "semi-educational" website for them called Moshi Monsters. So, after much convincing (on her part!), my 8 year old daughter joined it. She created a pet and enjoys playing on it with her friends who have joined as well. In addition to the 6 main "monsters" which really aren't "monsters" in the literal sense (some of them are cute, at least I think so) :) they have lots of baby monsters called Moshlings. (Which apparently I'm told, never grow up!) Why am I telling you about them? Well, as another wish for her birthday, my daughter wanted me to make Moshi Monster cookies... so, looking at the myriad of them and all my cookie cutters I had to make informed decisions on which ones I could claim that I could re-create. ;-) Here's my go at them: Cutie Pie, Dipsy, Hansel, Roxy, Iggy, & Oddie.


Dispy & Roxy!


Oddie!


Hansel!

Iggy!


Cutie Pie!

Cutie Pie!

Dipsy!

Hansel!

Roxy!


Iggy!

Oddie!

And last but, not least...Pinkalicious!! Here are my sparkly star wands inspired by Pinkalicious for a 4 year olds' Pinkalicious party!! Pretty in pink?? :o)

Star Wands!

Pinkalicious!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Innovative Cake Ideas!

My daughter recently had a birthday and all she Really! wanted was a slumber party with a few of her closest friends from school. This being her (our!) very first one, my husband and I inhaled deeply and agreed to her request. :)

She proceeded to plan out the details of what was going to happen that fateful (oops, read: exciting!) evening. My responsibilities of course, included providing the food, drink & cake. :) So, me being me, had to find out if there was any kind of cake that was special for a slumber party. :o)

Well....low and behold... look what I found on one of my favorite sites, Family Fun! I had a blast making it; it's quite easy actually. The girls had fun picking out which one they wanted. Although the recipe calls for 5 Twinkies, since there were 6 girls, I placed 6 Twinkies comfortably on top.

Here it is.... maybe you'll give it a try for your child's next slumber party. It would be really easy to change the icing colors and the hair/face on the wafers to turn them looking more like boys. :)


Slumber Party Cake!

Little girls in their sleeping bags. :)

Cooking with Kids

USING A KNIFE...
If you're looking for some thing to use as an introduction to teach proper knife skills, cutting and chopping with your child, I think Extra Firm Tofu (I use the one from Trader Joe's) works great! It is not too wet or jiggly to start and after a couple of power pushes (kids love that kinda stuff) on paper towels, it's just right. The knife goes though easily; without too much pressure they are able to learn the cutting movement and not be worried about the piece of food flying away.

Baking Tips

SOFT FUDGY BROWNIES - Remove the brownies from the oven approximately 4 minutes earlier than stated in the recipe. Allow them to cool in the pan before cutting. The remaining heat will be enough for them to finish baking.

NON-STICK PANS - Non stick pans are great and I use many of them for baking in various shapes and sizes. However, even though they are non-stick, for baking you have to be sure to coat them with spray or the "old time" method of butter and flouring. :) If you don't, chances are your cake is not going to make it out of your pan in one piece.

MUFFIN PANS - are an awesome invention! They are easiest to use when used with a liner (nowadays available in various sizes, shapes & colors). Liners provide a great convienience in that you can just pick up the muffin or cupcake and go. They do not require any pre-work, no messy spraying or coating with butter; drop in paper cup, spoon in the batter, bake and you have minimal clean up.