The Cookie Counter

I really need to get back into my blogging but after the holiday rush of cake balls and the busy tax season, I have found I spend all my time trying to catch-up on life.  Along with tax season comes college interns at work and we cannot always find enough work to keep them busy, so this year they have been given the task of putting together a March Madness competition but given that most of our interns this year are girls who are not really into March Madness, we also had the interns put together a Dessert Madness competition! Our lovely interns have put together a 5 week dessert competition where we go head-to-head against other teams to compete for the best dessert in the group.  For our first competition we had the classic chocolate chip cookie.  As I try to be a team player and do not want to be considered a ball hog, I asked for a volunteer from my team to step up and make the first round of cookies.  It was like pulling teeth!  I guess not every accoun...

Okay we are in the thick of "busy season" at work so lets make this a quick one... To add to the many addicts of Pinterest , I too must admit to being addicted to the wonderful endless flow of pictures/goodies and crafts that it supplies.  During one of my Pinterest sessions I came across these WONDERFUL, FANTASTIC looking/sounding beauties: Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies from Two Peas & Their Pod . These already sounded SPECTACULAR as is, but then I had also seen these red velvet marshmallow thumbprint cookies  from How Sweet It Is on Pinterest, so guess what I did?!? I combined the best of both these recipes to make  RED VELVET CHEESECAKE THUMBPRINT COOKIES !!!! Yes yes I totally went there and it was amazing! Recipe from Two Peas & Their Pod . For the cookies: 1 box red velvet cake mix 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 2 large eggs 1/2 cup canola oil 1 teaspoon vanilla extract For the cheesecake filling: 4 oz cream cheese, softened 2 cups powde...

Wow time sure does fly!! It feels like just last week that I was celebrating the holidays and sharing lots of laughs with my family... I truly cannot believe that it is February already! First, I would really like to take a moment to thank all of my wonderful customers who kept me busy during the past few months! Although it was stressful at times, it always brought me such joy to see the final product and see how people's faces lit up!! :)  Now I will attempt to get back into my blogging, but it is tax season and I have been really busy at work these days.  But I will do my very best to keep updating. I would officially like to welcome in the new year 2012! You may all be thinking that I am late, but honestly I'm not... you see my family celebrates the Lunar New Year (aka Tet if you are Vietnamese)!  My dad is still celebrating the new year and going to various Tet festivals around town, so as you can see I am right on time, Happy New Year of the Dragon! To kick...

I have been so busy ever since Thanksgiving and I am hardly able to keep up! This is good for being my first Christmas taking orders but man it has been a lot of hard work!  Not only has it been Christmas orders but even Birthdays and Baby Showers; oh my!  I don't have much time for an update but I feel like I can't let the whole month of December pass me by without a blog update so here is a little glimpse of what I have been up to.... Whew! That is a lot of cake balls! I really hate to just do a dump entry but at least you have some sweets to drool over now! :D  I promise that I will update soon with a legitimate post.  Happy Baking!

Click here to download SMALL Batch instructions.    Click here to download FULL Batch instructions. Anybody ever head of this?!?  Well the other day I was in the break room at work getting water and saw three bags of cream colored mush... Now I had seen these bags several weeks back and didn't pay much attention to them, but these strange looking bags were back, so I decided to stop and read the paper attached to them and saw "Amish Friendship Bread" with strange instructions like "Mush the Bag." Well still not really sure what the bag of goo was, I went back to Google, and read up on it.  It is similar to a chain letter, in the sense that once you get it, you must pass 3 more along.  So this bag of mush is really an active yeast mixture that is supposedly passed down from generation to generation steaming only from the Amish. Now I don't know how true this is, but it has definitely been circulating around my office for a month or so now.  Ev...

Cake balls and Cake pops have swept the nation ever since  Bakerella brought them into the spot light. Everybody has there own way of making them, and personally I don't like the huge 2" cake balls that some people make. I would much rather have a manageable small cake ball, but I like all my sweets in "bite size" form! I have also considered making super tiny bite sized cake balls.... perhaps that will be my next experiment.  I wonder if peanut M&M size or Whopper size is too small..... I recently had an order of cake pops for an infant's birthday, but really the treats were for the Moms and not the children :) I was pondering how to package these cuties without damaging them, and then I realized I had tons of these cupcake containers!! These may not be cupcakes but they can still nestle into this container for safety during transportation. :) I made three flavors: chocolate, strawberry, and good ole red velvet!

I have never been much of a thrill seeker or scary movie watcher, but I still love Halloween! I may not enjoy the spooky creepy crawlies of the night, but I sure do love the SWEETS that come along with Halloween!!! I am a week behind on the post but I hope that you all can still enjoy some of the fun treats that I made for Halloween. The first order of business was eyeballs with a gooey center!  I got this great idea from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen . The idea is absolutely brilliant, gushers and all! I did however use strawberry cakeballs instead of the peanut butter truffles that she used.  Any truffle type treat should work here.  I thought that the pink of the strawberry cake would add to the gross factor of biting into an eyeball :) For Halloween, the boyfriend and I had some bonding time over cookie decorating :)  He is very artistic and loves stepping up to show me that he is a better artist than I am.  But I don't mind because we are doing ...