Christmas Cookies! (Part I)

I spent Sunday and Monday baking and decorating the following sugar cookies. I then proceeded to gift them to the math department of my high school (and then I visited with all my old teachers), and I'm told that they were delicious and cute, which is always a plus!

Some nifty little tips & ideas:

• Wilton Sprinkles
• Candy Cane Ideas
• Bell Ideas
• Snowflakes

The pictures:

(look familiar?)

These are the "rejects" but they don't look too bad.

Then last night I made cupcakes and today I'm decorating a cake for my little brother's Christmas party. But first I've got some Christmas shopping to do, so I'll be back later!! :D

Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes

For Thanksgiving this year, my mom requested pumpkin cupcakes, because when she came down to visit me one weekend, they were serving some in the cafeteria.

And because they were so amazingly delicious, I decided to try my hand at making my own.

But what no one told me is that due to the crazy, abnormal amounts of rain 'round these here parts, pumpkin puree (the, shall I say, most important ingredient) is pretty much impossible to come by.

So Mom bought me some pumpkin pie filling instead.

OK. Well, I guess that can work too. It's like puree, right? Except they already threw in all the other ingredients: sugar, spices, stuff like that.

(It's This versus This, basically.)

Then Grandma told me that sweet potato has the same consistency and color, and no one would know the difference, but my dad hates sweet potatoes, and I couldn't do that to him. After all, he's the one making the turkey so I gotta be nice after all that hard work he put into making dinner.

So we substituted the puree for the pie filling, and decreased the amount of spices in half (because they already put spice in the filling, but I already said that, so anyway) but we kept the amount of sugar the same... mostly because I didn't know how much sugar was already in there, and I didn't want to risk not having enough, and I figure, hey, they're cupcakes, they can be super sweet, right?

But it turns out I worried for nothing, because the cupcakes turned out beautiful and moist. I was so, so happy that my ingredient substitution didn't go awry. The only problem we had was that one batch was slightly burned on the bottom.

Oh, and all I could find for cupcake liners were the July 4th ones and some NASCAR ones I picked up at Big Lots for my mom. But no biggy, they were still awesome and yummy and amazing.

And even though Christmas isn't a huge pumpkiny season, I bet these would taste great at your next party or family gathering as well. And if you don't like pumpkin pie (honestly, I don't), give these little guys a chance... some cream cheese icing and dash of cinnamon sugar on top and you'll find that pumpkin has become one of your very best friends. :)

Bake Day '09

So I realize that Thanksgiving was a good two weeks ago, but I sorta kinda forgot to post all the pictures and recipes. Sorry about that :( Final exam week has that affect over people, I guess.

Anyway, the Monday before Thanksgiving, I spent the entire day baking (and I mean the entire day) with Katie, Adam, Sarah (all pictured above) and Hillary and Chris. (That's me sitting at the computer, by the way.) We made cupcakes:

And cookies:

And even a cake!

Oh, and cake balls, too, but those aren't pictured. Mainly because I didn't get a chance to cover them in chocolate since we didn't have any.

The cake was for a friend's little sister. She turned 10, if you couldn't already tell. ;)

The day began at 10 am when Hillary came over and we got to work. We made pumpkin pie cupcakes (based on this recipe) but we didn't have enough ingredients so we went to Publix to buy butter and cream cheese (for the frosting). It was delicious, sugary, messy fun.

Hillary & Adam

Chris loves butter as much as Paula Deen

After the cupcakes, we baked the cake, and used left over cream cheese icing to decorate it. That icing (plus the leftover cake from cutting it out) went into the cake balls I made. I never got to eat them, either. And after I already got back to school, Mom decided to bake them, which I never even thought of doing; apparently, they tasted really good, too. So maybe I'll try that next time?

And then we made sugar cookies, but Sarah looked a 'soft' recipe, instead of 'cut out,' so once they baked, they didn't have much shape to them. They still looked cool though. And Chris brought more ingredients for his cream cheese icing, so we made that too, of course!

Overall it was an amazingly fun day, and I'm so glad that everyone could come over and help out. I look forward to many more baking days while I'm home for the Christmas holidays!