My mother once in a while often puts in requests for baked goods for work. This year she as for a dozen cupcakes and 3 dozen cookies. I'm going to not even try to feign modesty and report I was happy to hear that at the annual holiday party her co-workers actually asked, "Ms. B, where are the cupcakes? Your daughter didn't make us any this year?"  My reputation grows ya'll! In the end she asked the day after for me to make 2 sets of goodies for her different program sites. Here's a report on what I made for her.

All Nutella Cupcakes

Now you know I loves me some chocolate and peanut butter. I also really like cookie butter/speculoos. One time I even made Oreo butter. All that is to say you should be able to guess I also love Nutella/hazelnut chocolate spread. I do! What I don't like about many of the Nutella cupcakes on the market is that they're usually just chocolate cake w/ Nutella buttercream. Not cool dude! I want that hazelnut goodness through and through. Fortunately, Robin of Bird on a Cake, feels the same way. She posted a GREAT way to incorporate hazelnut flavor into your chocolate cake recipe. The secret... (which is GENIUS in my mind) ADD HAZELNUT CREAMER!!!! My mind was blown you guys. So that's what I did.

 Holiday Cookie Cut-outs

Once again I used the best ever sugar cookie recipe. I figure, it works so... meh. I bought an amazing set of nesting circular cookie cutters waaaaay back when I lived in DC. I pulled them out. First I made like 2 dozen teeny tiny circle because the plane was to make them look like peppermints. Then my mom informed me she needed the cookies to be ready that afternoon (I thought I was baking for the next day) so that changed things a bit. I bumped up my cookie cutter size and only iced about 1 dozen faux peppermint cookies.






So yeah. I made these things for my mom. She took them to work and to share with others. They were enjoyed. Not a lot of process pics for this post b/c I used basic clutch recipes which I've shared before. But, my next post will include some new things... And you can be merry in knowing I continue to try my hand at different dessert creations.

What's more classic than a nice sugar cookie? What's cuter than a nicely decorated sugar cookie? I'm not sure but I wanted to find out. My lovely friends know just what to get this avid home baker for her birthday. A few months ago I got my hands on a belated birthday gift from my amazing friend L.A. Maltz. I love kitschy kitchen gadgets so the Fred line has always been my thing. I was so happy to unwrap my present to find these:

Just a plethora of typography! So many styles. So chic. So clearly in need of detailed decorating. Making iced sugar cookies was a must! First I checked through my recipe files and pulled out an old favorite. But then just for fun I checked some of my favorite foodie sites: thekitchn.com, seriouseats.com, and chow.com. I found a tasty looking recipe on kitchn. What makes it so special? The addition of lemon zest and cream cheese. I was sure these light flavors would give a lil' pizzazz to the average sugar cookie.








I was lazy AND cheap on my Easter Sunday deadline so I just thinned out a tub of frosting w/ some milk from the store and added some food coloring. I put the icing into sandwich bags and snipped the tips for "mini-pipping bags." Then a pulled out some colored sugars and got to work.




While the cookies tasted great I wasn't that excited about the finished product aesthetically. I thought the icing could have been neater. As I thought about it... I came to the conclusion that it's because I was using the wrong type of frosting. I should have used what real decorators use: royal icing! So thus began a search for a good royal icing recipe. Most royal icing calls for eggs whites/meringue and/or cream of tartar. Have I ever talked about how much I hate whipping egg whites to any sort of peak? I do. So I compromised and bought some royal icing mix from the confectionery shoppe. I realize it's probably a huge bag of confectioner's sugar with a smattering of dried egg whites mixed in but I also sometimes buy pre-chopped veggies. So... go figure!

For round 2 of the classic cute sugar cookie battle I used a simple scalloped square cookie cutter. I planned on decorating the cookies with a tie-dye icing technique. I read up on using royal icing b/c it dries out so quickly so using those tips I got all the icing together and ready first. I had 1 bag of thicker royal icing for creating the borders. I also had 2 small squeeze bottles with thinner icing: 1.) white and 2.) purple.









In short.... I used the thicker royal icing to create an outline border. Then I flooded the cookie with the white (thinner) royal icing to create the background color. This flooding icing is super thin so although you don't have to use a border it makes things a bit neater in the end. Finally, I pipped some lines of the purple across the cookie and used a toothpick to drag lines across in a perpendicular direction to create the tie-dye/webbing look. I boxed these bad boys up and sent them in the mail to a few friends. Reports say thumbs up!