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.