Annual Girls' Night Cocoa Party

Want to see our cocoa party pictures?

Visit my other blog at Creative Mommas.

Snowflake Sugar Cookies

I was in charge of making the cookies for our annual Girls Night Cocoa Party last year & the theme was snow, so I made snowflakes.

I decided to make the whole batch of my sugar cookie recipe that I always half. Now I know that the recipe makes around SEVEN DOZEN big cookies!!!

That's a lot of cookies!

I'm just glad that I didn't have to decorate them myself! Tiffany, Lynne and I spent quite a long time decorating these--in between refereeing, feeding & consoling kids :)

I used Martha Stewarts Royal Icing for these cookies.

This awesome picture was taken by the AMAZING photographer Lynne & it was from our "Winter Wonderland" cocoa party. Want to see a lot more pictures of this party, click here.

Here's the sugar cookie recipe I use from "Now ....you're cooking":

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup shortening (I always substitute "I can't believe it's not butter" -ICBINB)
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 6 cups flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
  

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Combine sour cream, sugar, ICBINB, eggs and vanilla. Mix well.
3. Slowly add the dry ingredients until everything is completely mixed together. Let the
   dough chill for about 15 minutes.
4. Form dough into small balls, or use fun cookie cutters.
5. Bake until LIGHT golden brown - no more than 10 minutes. When you take them out of
   the oven they may seem underdone, but they aren't. Just let them cool on the pan and
   you will find that they are perfectly soft and moist. If you prefer sugar cookies that are a
   little harder and more crumbly, bake them longer.

This recipe is linked up at:

Flower Birthday Cake

Lexi had a birthday this week and she wanted a pink cake.

I wanted to make her a cute cake, but I didn't want to take a lot of time. So to save time, I used a box mix and store bought frosting.

To make a pink cake, I bought a strawberry cake mix & cooked it in two circle pans. YUMMY!

I wanted the cake to be flat, so I could make a 2 layer, so I used my cake cutter.

This is what it looks like after cut.

Lexi LOVES chocolate, but she wanted the frosting pink, so I opted to put a chocolate layer between the two cakes. This is a filling of melted chocolate chips.

I frosted the sides and edges of the cake in whites, so the flower would stand out.

I used a piping bag to draw a flower, so I wouldn't have to frost it freehanded.

After filling in the flower, I piped lines on top of the flower.

Then used a toothpick to make this cute design.

This is the finished product.

And the cute little girl who wanted it :)

Brownie Lush

Remember this recipe, Lemon Lush?

It's super yummy, but I wanted to do something a little different with it.

I wanted to make brownies instead of crust, then I just went from there.

I made brownies from a box mix.

I added a layer of cream cheese mix.

I added a layer of chocolate pudding.

Then a layer of vanilla pudding.

Lastly, I topped it with cool whip and sprinkled with dark chocolate chocolate chips.

Ingredients:

• 2 sm. boxes Instant Pudding (I used one chocolate & one vanilla)
• 3 C Milk
• 9 oz. Cool Whip
• 8 oz. Cream Cheese
• 1 C Powdered Sugar
• 1 brownie mix

Directions:

• Crust--Make brownie mix.
• Lush--Blend cream cheese, and powdered sugar until well mixed. Fold in 1 C cool whip. Spread over crust. Beat milk and pudding for 2 minutes. Pour over cream cheese mixture. Top with remaining cool whip. Refrigerate until serve. Add some decorative lemon peel curls, lemon wedge candy, yellow sugar sprinkles. or anything really.

Halloween Party Treats

We had a game night with some friends and we had everyone bring treats.

They were all so yummy!

The spread

Yummy punch. Pina colada mix, rainbow sherbet, sprite & dry ice.

Mummies were made by wrapping hot dogs in rolls.

These are my hi hat cupcakes I posted about before.

Yummy artichoke dip. If you couldn't tell, I make this a lot!

Mary made these. They're donut holes dipped in white chocolate & decorated to look like eyeballs. They're conveniently on forks.

Yummy brownies that my kids just had to make sure I saved some for them to eat the next day :)

Hi Hat Cupcakes

I saw this entry on Bakerella and I just had to have an excuse to make them!

I'm sure hers turned out way better than mine did.

These would have been perfect if the sugar had dissolved.

Unfortunately it did not and the marshmallow cream was grainy.

This is the recipe I used from Martha Stewart.

This topping was a pain because you have to use a hand mixer for 12 minutes while your bowl is over a pot of water. Not so fun!

I made a box mix of german chocolate cupcakes because I was strapped for time.

Just pipe the topping on and put in fridge to help stiffen.

Don't they look yummy? You'd never know they were grainy :)

At least they were pretty!

No worries, these did not go to waste. My daughter loves them and the rest of us just took the tops off and ate them with the german chocolate frosting!

I can imagine how good they would be if the topping had turned out correctly :)

Pumpkin Mini Cupcakes

We made these mini cupcakes today.

To see where I copied these from and for a tutorial on these cute cupcakes,

check out this blog "I am baker"

I used a chocolate cake mix & cream cheese frosting.

Homemade Apple Pie

Crust

(I triple this recipe to make a top and bottom crust because I like a thicker crust. If I only make one, then I do one and 1/2 times the recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!®" (I use this in all my baking and I LOVE the flavor!!)
• 3-4 tbls cold water

Directions:

1. In bowl, combine flour and salt.
2. Cut in "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!®" until crumbly. (Use a pastry cutter or 2 butter knives)
3. Sprinkle with water, 1 tbls at a time, mixing until dough is just moist enough to hold together.
4. Form into a ball.
5. On floured surface, roll dough into a circle.
6. If doing a lattice top, repeat with half the dough and cut in strips.
7. I always brush my pie with milk to give it a glazed look.

Apple Pie Filling

Ingredients:

• 6 cups sliced, peeled apples
• 1/3-2/3 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp cornstarch (mixed with 2 tbsp water)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp cloves

Directions:

1. In large pot add apples, sugar, water and lemon juice.
2. Cook apples just until boiling.
3. Reduce heat. Cover and simmer until fruit is almost tender, around 5 minutes.
4. Mix water and cornstarch & add to filling.
5. Cook until thickened and bubbly.
6. Mix in seasonings.
7. Place in pie shell and cook until crust is done.

This is what the filling looks like done.

And this is the final product.

It's best warm with vanilla ice cream.