Animal Cookies

 Shortbread cookies with royal icing

 Pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Vegan vanilla cupcakes with soy buttercream frosting

For my little nephew's first birthday my sister chose a safari theme. So, I thought we could make little animal cookies. I have the little Noah's Ark animal cookie cutter set by Wilton and decided to make the giraffe, elephant, lion and zebra. For the cookies we piped yellow & orange for the giraffe, yellow & brown for the lion, blue & black for the elephant, and white & black for the zebra. While the base icing was still wet for the giraffe and zebra, we piped the spots/stripes, mane, eye, feet and tail. This allows for a smooth finish. For the lion and the elephant we let the base or body icing dry and set a little first before piping the rest of the details. My sister made the cupcakes and we just topped them with the little animal cookies. Everyone seemed to enjoy them and the little guy got to have his very own vegan cupcake to destroy!

Transformer Cupcakes

A few weeks ago I made these Transformer cupcakes for my husband's birthday. He loves Transformers and I found these little plastic rings at our local decorette shop. I made chocolate cupcakes and piped vanilla buttercream frosting with a star tip to add a little decorative touch. I found that when I pipe from the center outward I can get the stars closer together (of course I didn't figure that out until the last center one)...the one that got destroyed first with the candles. I'm of course the only one that would notice that though. He was very happy when he saw them and it was a great birthday treat.

Happy Halloween!

I wanted to make something special for my niece and nephew for Halloween. They're only one, but I just love making them little treats for holidays. I've been learning to make french macarons and had the idea to make them orange, draw jack-o-lantern faces and fill them with dark chocolate ganache. I was so excited how they turned out. My husband is a much better artist then I am and drew almost all the faces. He's so creative in making all different facial expressions. We used edible marker to draw the faces. The smooth surface of the macarons are perfect for drawing on.