Snowflake Sugar Cookies

My first try at decorated sugar cookies... I took the picture with my iphone, so please excuse the poor picture quality. I just wanted to share this picture, because I was pretty proud of how they turned out :)

Happy holidays again!

~Danielle

MSCC | Gingerbread Cupcakes

Oh, I am sooo late posting this. It has been a long month at work so far and I have been feeling drained. By the time I get home, all I want to do is grab a glass of wine and sit in front of the tv... and that is exactly what I have been doing these past few weeks.

Anywho, I did manage to bake these cupcakes! I baked these last Sunday (I could have posted this on time... grrr) and took them to work on Monday. I followed the recipe for the cupcakes but decided to use my cream cheese frosting. I sprinkled some nutmeg over the frosting to add a little more flavor and some color. I had a sugar cookie order, so instead of making gingerbread cookies, I made gingerbread shaped sugar cookies. I also sprinkled these with nutmeg and some granulated sugar.



The recipe called for molasses, so I was already nervous about trying this. Molasses has a very earthy flavor that I just don't like in my sweets... Overall, I thought the cupcakes were extremely dry. My cupcakes developed a crust on the top, did anyone else experience this? In the end, this recipe left me very disappointed. I probably won't make this again, but I like the gingerbread cookie cutout idea!

And, at least the pictures came out cute, thanks again to my boss!If I had to make a cupcake or cake for the holidays, I would probably have to go with the sweet potato cupcakes we did last month. I just can't get enough of those!

Happy holidays everyone! Wishing you a safe and joyful season!

~Danielle

Amanda's Baby Shower Cupcakes

Recently I had the opportunity to do baby shower cupcakes for one of my coworkers and I couldn't be happier with how everything came out! Amanda requested "no pink" but she did mention that she liked sage green. I love that color too! I really like how this color palette ended up.

I wanted to use fondant decorations because I haven't done much of that lately. I had two different designs... onesies and a flower. I played with embossed fondant and non-embossed fondant. I also used a cupcake wrapper template that Judy in Her Natural Habitat came up with. Thank you Judy for the wrapper design! The most hilarious part of creating custom wrappers is that I work for Ellison, who is the parent company of Sizzix. Sizzix is a crafters dream, anywho, they make cupcake wrapper dies... if only I had planned ahead I could have used the die machines to cut out the wrappers instead of spending a good half hour cutting out wrappers. At least it was bonding time with Tyler :)

So here are the creations! First up, the fondant decorated ones...



I also wanted to do frosted decorated cupcakes for the frosting lovers in my company, which is almost everyone.

All the frosting ones disappeared first!

Thank you to my boss for taking pictures! Crossing my fingers that I get a camera from Santa this Christmas and then I'll need to learn how to use it...

Hope you enjoyed the cupcakes!

~Danielle

All my favorites!!!

I love chocolate cake, it may be my favorite! So, when I had an order for a chocolate cake over Thanksgiving break, I decided to make a few extras for myself and my coworkers.


After trying multiple chocolate cake recipes, I have finally found the one! Colette Peters you are my hero, thank you for this recipe! I changed it just a bit to make it my own and I definitely can't share that little secret, but you should definitely go out there and buy her book! We have also been wanting to find a good coffee frosting recipe. When I interned at Sweet & Saucy, Melody did a lot of variations of cream cheese frostings and they were GOOD! But I love swiss meringue buttercream, so I sought Martha's advice. I didn't use her recipe (I have my own already), but I did follow her steps when it came to adding the instant espresso powder. I did double, okay maybe I tripled the amount of espresso powder though... it needed more coffee flavoring! Let me just say that this is my favorite frosting of all time!!! So good! And for good measure, I also sprinkled on salted caramel (I think it would have been better without it). Enjoy the pictures and be on the look out for new postings this week!