The Cookie Counter

UPDATE: Added more pictures of the cake! A lot of my orders lately seem to revolve around babies and toddlers. Cute little rascals. This particular order was for precious little Isabella's 1st birthday party :) An old friend and colleague of mine called me a few weeks into my new job and was asking how things were going and if I was enjoying the work.  Asking about the move and how me and the ole boyfriend were doing. It did not take long before he admitted that he called with ulterior motives.... His baby girl's birthday was coming up and they wanted to place an order, but the catch was he needed me to deliver the cake to Houston and let me remind you that I just moved to Austin.  I sighed and asked what the date of the party was, and I guess it was his lucky day! I already had plans to go back to Houston that exact weekend for a friend's engagement party. Of course I teased him about this being his last order but that I would be happy to help. The theme of the pa...

I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving and got to spend quality time with their loved ones, I know that I sure did!! I got back from Denver on Saturday after spending a whole 6 days with some awesome people who I am happy to call family! But since I was away for the holidays, and there were tons of us trying to cook in my cousins kitchen, I unfortunately do not have any fun Thanksgiving recipes to share with you. Although there is no turkey today, I have another great poultry recipe perfect for Game Day. I may refer to football a lot on here, but really that is just because I live with a football fanatic and I am just along for the ride and honestly, don't know what the heck is going on half the time, so I play on my iPad make dinner or bake while the game is on. This is a glamed up chicken wing dish for those football days, yes I said days with an "S". Apparently football comes on more than just Sunday and Monday... he watches football all day Saturday, Sunday,...

The boyfriend is so spoiled. After our successful Sunday breakfast last weekend, we were grocery shopping on Friday evening and he said so what are we gonna make for brunch this weekend... He proceeded to ask how we could spruce up the pancakes this week, and he said strawberries. And he got strawberries, spoiled. Strawberry Pancakes,  adapted from Pumpkin Pancakes Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour 3 tbsp. sugar 2 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. salt 1 large egg 3 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted 1 1/2 cups buttermilk 1 cup Strawberry Compote (recipe below), cooled to room temperature Strawberry Compote: 1 lb. fresh strawberries, diced 1/4 cup sugar The first thing I did for this recipe was to make the strawberry compote because I mixed the compote directly into the pancake batter. You can opt to make regular pancakes and then use the compote as your syrup. But we don't like soggy pancakes around here so we rarely poor sweet goodness over o...

Let's start our November blog catch-up with a some simple pumpkin pancakes. The bf and I are making progress with our unpacking and this weekend, we broke in our new kitchen and made a nice Sunday breakfast followed by a long day at Ikea and back home for steaks and Sunday Night Football. We were discussing what to make for breakfast and I said I would make pancakes and the bf asked if we could spruce em up and what better for the month of November than PUMPKIN! Because of our chaotic unpacking and running errands weekend, we forgot to buy syrup for our pancakes. Which is fine by me because I personally only use a tiny bit for just a touch of sweetness. Therefore, since we didn't have any maple goodness to put on the pancakes, I upped the amount of sugar that I would normally put. If you will be using syrup, reduce the amount of sugar to 3-4 tbsp of sugar. Pumpkin Pancakes, adapted from  America's Test Kitchen Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/3 cup sugar ...

Looking at my blog lately, I realized that I am majorly falling behind on my posts. A little over a year ago I updated my blog design and was really trying to kick-start my baking presence. However, for the year 2012 I have barely maintained 1 post per month compared to my 19 posts for 2011. I honestly have no excuse for the lack of posting except that I have been busy completing orders and then loose motivation to post about them because I am so tired. But it is time to really bring it home before 2012 ends. In order to make up for my neglect, I am going to try and post one entry every week during the month of November, eek. And, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I may even try to continue this goal through December. The pressure begins.