Snowflake Cookies

Happy New Year! So far I have yet to bake anything in 2011, I can't believe it! I'm trying to resist the temptation and keep my mom's kitchen clean while I'm her house guest! I'm still in KY visiting family from the holidays and for work so I hope to start baking again this weekend when I return back to Mobile. I promise there will be more sugar filled treats coming up soon! So for now I'll leave you with some snowflake cookies my sister and I decorated to celebrate our white Christmas this year! Christmas morning was absolutely gorgeous with a fluffy blanket of white on the ground and flurries in the air! If the weatherman is right, it looks like I'll get to enjoy one more dusting of snow on Friday before heading back south! Hope you enjoy these cookies!

Tis the season for baking!

My kitchen is officially cleaned up and "closed" for Christmas baking this year! Whew! There has been more butter, sugar and flour in the last week than probably the last few months of my baking combined! But all the hours in the kitchen, rotating cookies in and out of the oven, icing cupcakes and doing the dirty work of washing dishes has been completely worth it! This is my absolute favorite time of the year to bake and I have enjoyed sharing my sweets with neighbors and friends and hosting holiday parties!

We are packing up and starting our 11 hour trip to KY tomorrow to visit my family for Christmas and I have promised Randolph that this year there will be absolutely positively NO BAKING while we are there! So lucky for you, I had a marathon week of baking last week that I have enough photos and recipes to share with you through the end of December!

Last week I made all the desserts for a launch party for my friend Stephanie's new catering business! Stephanie recently started Bella's Bistro to pursue her love of cooking. Her focus is on Italian cuisine and let me just say her lasagna is Amazing! She recently won first place in the Mama Mia cook off in Daphne, AL for her Eggplant Caponata. I tasted this last week at her premier event and it was delicious! So if you live in Mobile, Daphne or any neighboring cities in Alabama keep Bella's Bistro in mind for your holiday parties, weddings, baby showers, etc. You are going to love what her menu has to offer!

Since Stephanie's love is for cooking and not baking, she asked me if I would be interested in making the desserts! Of course my response was YES! She gave me complete freedom to do whatever desserts I wanted, the only thing was I needed to have enough to feed around 200 people! WOW 200 people, I don't think I have ever baked for that large of a crowd before! So I tied on my apron and rolled dough, cut out and iced sugar cookies like it was my full time job.

In addition to cookies, I made cupcakes (from this post) and cake pops and cranked out enough desserts for an army! Let's just say I went a little overboard and had lots of leftovers. Lucky for me I have neighbors who are always willing to take sweets off my hands!

So here's a look at all the desserts I made for the party. Check back the rest of the week as I will post recipes for everything! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves right now!

I'm not sure if I made enough cookies...what do you think???

Cookies & Cupcakes with Friends

Because it's Christmas and I love cookies, I hosted a party. I baked a ton of sugar and gingerbread cookies, bought loads of sprinkles and whipped up some royal icing! Then invited some of my closest friends over to do the decorating!

There were cupcakes too. Chocolate with Peppermint Buttercream. Gingerbread with Cinnamon Buttercream. Peppermint with White Chocolate Buttercream.

Everyone is in serious decorating mode!

It was fun to see everyone's creativity come through in their cookie designs and color choices!

I love all my cookie ladies!

Meet the gingerbread families!

Here's the newly engaged couple! With gingerbread creations in both wedding attire and honeymoon swimwear! What clever cookie decorators!

Cookies galore! My friends make gorgeous cookies.

By the end of the night, everyone was a little high on sugar and things started getting out of hand with icing and piping bags!

For all those Runners out there...

I just got home from a whirlwind day of Christmas shopping! Today I officially started my shopping and I'm excited to say I'm almost finished too, what a great feeling! Only 12 shopping days left, how is your shopping coming? If you are still looking for a gift for the runners in your life, I have got the perfect idea for you this year!

I am excited to say that I recently started a new small business selling a product for runners to keep their race memorabilia in. If you have been a long time follower of my blog then you know that I am an avid runner as well as a marathon coach for Team in Training. If you are new to my blog and want to know a little bit about my running background and why it is such an important part of my life then click here, here, here or here.

So now that you know a little more about my running journey, let me introduce you to my product...RACEDAY miles raced. memories made.

RACEDAY is the perfect organizational solution for all runners to preserve and display their race statistics, bib#s, race photos and other race memorabilia. If you are a runner you know what all this runner's jargon means...if you are not a runner and have no interest in running at all, then I'm sure you are bored to death as you read this! In simple terms basically this is a "scrapbook" type product for runners! Go check out the site for more specifics about the product materials and photos of the inside of the book!

I wanted to introduce you to this product as I have devoted much of my time and creative energy in developing it over the past two years! I am excited to say that I just recently launched the website to sell these books online and so far the response has been great!

So if you have been wondering why I haven't been blogging as much lately, I must admit RACEDAY has been taking up a good portion of my free time trying to get this product launched!

But since this is after all a baking blog, I did whip up a special batch of gingerbread cookies with the RACEDAY logo on them!

Right now I'm offering free gift wrapping on all books ordered during the month of December! Also, any order placed by December 20th will be guaranteed Christmas delivery! Come check out my Facebook page too! I'd love for you to spread the word about RACEDAY to all the runners in your life!

Thanks for taking the time to read about my new product! I promise there are many more holiday sweets coming up this week!

Farm Animal Sugar Cookies - 1st Birthday!

This past weekend my friend Andrea's little boy, Drew celebrated his 1st birthday! Andrea had asked me to make a farm themed cake for the party months ago, but seeing as I live in AL and she is in KY, I just knew there was no way I felt comfortable making and decorating a cake to ship in the mail. So I offered up the next best thing...cookies! The party was at a local farm with a petting zoo, hay ride and pumpkin patch for all the kids! What a great way to spend a fall afternoon outdoors! So to go along with the farm theme and one of Drew's favorite toys, the Farmer Tad Magnetic Fridge Set I thought it would be fun to make some farm animal cookies.

I used this sugar cookie recipe. All the cookie cutters were from Sur La Table. Unfortunately, they did not have a cow cutter, which I was so bummed about...every farm has cows doesn't it?

After making the cookies and letting them cool I piped the outline in royal icing. There were sheep, chicks, horses...

barns and pigs...

Once the outline was dry, I flooded the cookies with a thinned down royal icing.

I let the cookies dry overnight to harden before adding on the final details.

Then it was time to add the horses tail, sheep fur and the barn doors.

And the curly tail on the pigs.

Here's the final farm cookie collection.

Can't forget the number "1" for the birthday boy!

I packaged all the cookies individually to keep them safe during shipping. Apparently they all made it safely except for the little horses, they broke into several pieces, the poor guys!

I added a little present for the birthday boy too. I can't believe I stumbled across this farm puzzle that matched the cookies I was sending!

Happy 1st Birthday Drew!

"B" is for...baby, boy & Barrett

It's been a super exciting week! On Sunday, May 30th at 4:45PM my friend McKensy gave birth to her first child, a little boy named Barrett! How cute is that name!! Let's just say he made a late arrival. McKensy's original due date was May 20th, but this little guy must have been happy in her belly b/c she had to be induced 10 days later! This would have driven me absolutely crazy to have to keep waiting and waiting. Nine months is long enough...but 10 more days!


Barrett was 7.9 oz and 20.5 inches long. I can't wait to meet this little one! Unfortunately I'm not sure when that will be since they live in Charlotte and I'm in Mobile! Luckily with the wonders of computers these days I have already gotten several email updates and loads of pictures sent my way to see the litte guy! He is adorable and even has a onesie with his name on it...precious!

To celebrate in the festivities of baby Barrett, I made some monogrammed "B" sugar cookies for McKensy's shower back in March. I wasn't able to attend the shower so I packaged them up and shipped them to KY to McKensy's mom as a surprise for her! Let's just say they arrived just in the nick of time. I asked for priority delivery on a Thursday since the shower was on a Saturday afternoon, just to be on the safe side. Well let's just say McKensy's mom and I were emailing each other back and forth for two days straight trying to figure out where the cookies were. Thank goodness they arrived moments before they headed off to the shower!

Congratulations McKensy & Jeremy! I can't wait to meet little Barrett!