Last college cookie package!

Little brother graduated from college!  More on that and my trip to St. Louis for his graduation in another post, but for now, cookies!  I usually sent him cookies once per semester or so, so this was his last college package of cookies.  (Though hopefully I'll get around to sending him a belated batch for his birthday, because I know he enjoys them, and he's skinny enough to eat them in unlimited quantities.)  He requested "letter" cookies...I think he was grading general physics labs at the time... :)  I don't have letter cookie cutters, but this is what I came up with.  I thought they were pretty awesome.

P.S. Happy 4th of July!  Boyfriend and I are off camping in western Massachusetts before heading to Amy's wedding.  Hopefully I'll still be on a blogging kick when we get back and you'll get to hear about it!

Wedding Cookies

At the beginning of May I went home for a weekend to go to Amy's bridal shower.  It was a surprise, and the bride was actually surprised!  Woohoo!  I made these super fun cookies - some more lingerie cookies and some adorable bride and groom cookies.

So excited for Amy's wedding in July!  They're having a mini world tour of food, and you know I like food. :)

Easter Tradition

Some of you (imaginary readers) may be familiar with the Easter Pinata tradition that my classmates/friends and I started in grad school.  Well, the pinata has come to the east coast.  I brought a cute little blue and white cow pinata, and all the little cousins had a blast with it.

Over the past year or so, I've also gotten more into using royal icing to decorate cookies, and I made some cute chick and egg cookies.

When Boyfriend and I got back to Lancaster, we had some fun with the peeps my aunt gave us in the Easter basket she so nicely made for us. :)

E's Bachelorette

E's not really a party girl (anymore), so rather than the penis accessory-filled bar night, several of us had brunch at my place and then headed down to the vineyards in Sonoita for some wine tastings.

I made these blueberry muffins (minus the butter & sugar topping as most of us were/are trying to watch our waistlines), this spinach & cheese strata (no pictures, and I didn't taste it because I don't like eggs, rumor has it it was good though), amaretto-soaked chocolate dipped cherries (do some googling, I didn't follow any one set of instructions), and had way too much fun decorating cookies.  I thought the cookies were super cute, and really fun for a bachelorette without being so vulgar.  At the wineries we really liked we ran back in afterwards to offer them cookies (yes, we drove from one vineyard to another with a container of lingerie cookies), and everybody was super entertained by them.

By the way, I totally recommend Wilhelm Family Vineyards down in Sonoita.  We were fortunate enough to find a Living Social deal, but we had a great time there.  The owner/winemaker is super nice and gives a great tour.  And the wine is tasty - almost all of us took a bottle or two home with us.

Cinco de Mayo & Supermoon

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!  Ok, so that about exhausts my knowledge of Spanish.  Ok, so not quite, but I really don't know much more even though my vocabulary has probably doubled since moving to Tucson.

I made margarita cupcakes and cookies for a Cinco de Mayo party this afternoon.

I made the cupcakes (from Annie's Eats) about two years ago for a Memorial Day party, but brought them out again for the more appropriate May holiday.  We thought we had conquered the oh-so-finnicky Swiss buttercream frosting, but even though we eventually got it to the right consistency, it still tasted funny to us.  Too buttery.  While butter makes things delicious, you don't want things to actually taste like straight up whipped butter (although I have one friend/former labmate who might...).  They turned out ok overall, though not quite what I thought they should be.  I swear the frosting tasted better the first time I made them when I hadn't really figured out Swiss buttercream yet.

The cookies (from Smitten Kitchen) were delicious, though E didn't think they were nearly as margarita-y as she expected.  I wouldn't mind a stronger tequila flavor, but I thought they were tasty and pretty close.  While I really liked the bit of salt around the edges, I would totally make these again without the salt rim for a non-Cinco-de-Mayo occasion.  I think the flecks of orange and lime zest are just so pretty.

And finally, here's a shot I took of tonight's "Super Moon" after I got home from the party.

Sweets for my Sweetheart(s)

Happy Valentine's Day!  With or without a boyfriend (previously it's always been without) I like Valentine's Day.  I'll always take an excuse to get dressed up and go out for dinner with my girlfriends.  And you can't be surprised to hear I'm a fan of all the ridiculously adorable Valentine's-themed desserts out there.  This year I sent packages of goodies to Boyfriend, my little brother, and one of my college roommates (I would have sent a package to my other college roommate, but she only eats 3 food groups now, none of which are butter or sugar.), and the cookies just turned out so freaking cute that I had to share them.

I made these chocolate cookie sandwiches from Sprinkle Bakes - a lot of her her desserts are more involved than I'm generally looking for, but man are they gorgeous.  But these cookies were just the right amount of involved AND they used up every last sprinkle I had!

I also made these conversation heart cookies from Annie's Eats.  The sugar monster inside of me loves conversation hearts, and the cookies are just so cute.  And it was fun to throw in a couple "specialized" ones.  This was my second attempt at decorating with royal icing, and I've decided it's a lot of fun (though rather time consuming).  Please ignore the icky-looking butter prints on the paper towel and consider how delicious and buttery it means these cookies are.

For my labmate.  My labmates got the extras that didn't get mailed.

I also made these yummy toffee blondies from Lovin' from the Oven.  I didn't take any photos since they taste much, much better than they look.  Also I substituted regular chocolate chips for the white chocolate chips because white chocolate is icky.

Sorry to post this so late, but I wanted to wait until the packages got to their destinations before posting.  Hopefully they all beat this!

Weird Mascot Cookies

For Christmas, Boyfriend's mom gave me a lovely cookbook, piping tips, and an Arkansas razorback cookie cutter!  By Friday afternoon I was pretty tired of writing, so I made some razorback cookies for the Cotton Bowl that night.

I'm most impressed that in the photo they actually look like razorbacks!  In person...well...not so much.  Maybe if you stand a bit further away and squint they do.

Now I feel the need to find wildcat and billiken cookie cutters.  You know, to have cookie cutters mascots for the schools I've actually attended.  Sadly neither of these cookie cutters seem to exist (the girl at the bookstore this morning giggled awkwardly and looked at me like I was nuts when I asked).  Fortunately Google tells me that custom made cookie cutters shouldn't be all that hard to get!  As my college roommate said, "Weird mascot cookies all around!"

Save Second Base

My roommate Jen is doing the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure later this month in Denver. It's a 3 day (in case you hadn't picked up on that), 60 mile walk to raise awareness and research funds for breast cancer. The fund-raising goal (requirement) for this event is huge - $2300/participant. Needless to say, $2300 and 60 miles are huge numbers, and Jen's been working her butt off to be ready.

Last week, with help from friends, she had a taco dinner and bake sale to raise some money. Straight-up asking people for money is just so awkward, so she's been trying to have various events or goods for people to enjoy in exchange. (Tucson folks - FYI I think we're having another Beer for Boobs kegger in a few weeks.)

Considering baking is one of the things we do best, E and I baked up a storm the night before Jen's bake sale. (Yes, we have very healthy egos when it comes to our abilities in the kitchen. :P ) Here's E in my kitchen:
For some reason, she thought you needed to see the flour hand print on my butt:

Over the course of about 6 hours, we made rolo cookies, gooey butter cookies, pumpkin cookies and muffins (both with frozen pumpkin from our CSA pumpkins last fall!) , snickerdoodle cookies, mini zucchini breads (with fresh zucchini from our CSA share!), red velvet cupcakes, and chocolate nutella cupcakes. It was insane, and my kitchen was an absolute disaster area afterward. We're a little crazy, and eventually we were curious to see just how much we could make in a night.

Red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting - Red velvet cake is VERY red! And delicious if you make it right. Red velvet cake is NOT, I repeat NOT, chocolate cake dyed red!

Snickerdoodles

Zucchini bread

Chocolate cupcakes with nutella frosting

All the loot packaged and ready to go. (Side note, I think it's quite funny that the common bookshelf in our house is over 50% travel and/or hiking/climbing books...)

The craziness was worth it - between the dinner and the bake sale Jen made nearly $500. I went to the bake sale for a while to help out, also figuring I had a better idea of what was in everything in case people needed or wanted to know (after nannying for a peanut-allergy kid when I was in high school I'm super allergy-paranoid and made sure to label everything very clearly). I think the funniest thing I saw all night was the rather crabby looking doctor who came in, handed me $10, took the entire container of pumpkin cookies, and said he'd be back to return my container!

Jen still has a long way to go to reach her $2300 goal. If you'd like to donate let me know and I'll put you in touch with Jen/let you know how.