The Cookie Counter

The trick-or-treaters have come and gone. We just moved into our new place and are still living out of boxes, but that does not stop the ghosts and goblins from coming to our door screaming "Trick-or-Treat!" There were more kids than we expected, even with 7 large bags of candy and $50 dollars worth of sugar, we ran out of candy just after 8PM. The porch lights have been turned off and now I am sitting here trying to get my Halloween blog post in before the holiday comes and goes. We had a Halloween potluck contest at work and of course, I entered the dessert category. When in doubt about what to bake, I tend to lean toward my good ole Tiramisu. This contest was no exception. But this time, I put a spooky twist on things and made my favorite dessert more Halloween-ie :) I made individual servings of tiramisu topped with a dark chocolate Oreo-style cookie. The theme for my dessert was the song "Monster Mash." ♫ It was a graveyard smash , ♫ they did the m...

One of the last orders that I took before moving to Austin was a lovely yellow and gray themed baby shower.  A friend of mine was throwing a baby shower for her sister who, bless her heart, has been on bed rest since about month 5 of her pregnancy.  The least we could do was throw her an awesome baby shower!! :) The theme was cute elephants and color scheme of yellow and gray. This was the first time that I experienced the dreaded color bleeding between dark and light colors. It may be hard for you to tell, but as the creator I can tell you that the gray bleeding into the white stands out like an elephant in the room, hehe, at least to me. Given that I made these cookies in the thick of Houston summer heat, I will choke it up to the humidity in the air, but honestly I have no idea what the cause is. I will have to investigate the color bleeding situation further, and I'll report back. Welcome Baby Ethan!!  

When it comes to celebrating a kids birthday sometimes it just calls for a good ole fashion yellow cake with chocolate frosting! That is exactly what my coworker requested for his nephew's birthday along with some yummy sugar cookie truffles :) Nothing super fancy but a darn delicious and good looking cake! I used a simple technique commonly referred to as the "petal effect."  You can find a great tutorial here by The Hungry Housewife on how to achieve this simple yet elegant decorating technique. This was my first time trying this technique and I will say that it absolutely will not  be my last! :)  I also made some sugar cookie truffles (not to be mistaken for cake balls) dipped in milk chocolate, yum yum! Sugar cookie truffles are essentially like the all popular "oreo truffles" but I used my own homemade sugar cookies instead of the Oreos.   

It is with very mixed emotions that I announce this week was my last week working in "The Big 4" and I am MOVING!  Unless you are familiar with the accounting world or know somebody who is, "Big 4" really doesn't mean anything to you, but if you are knowledgeable of the accounting field, then you are well aware that Big 4 is a demanding, vigorous and rewarding place to work.  You endure stress, sweat, tears, and joy while struggling to also find your own work/life balance. I started my career in Big 4 two years ago when I was fresh out of grad school. I came in with tons of ambition and really took the job on 110%. I have to admit that I have enjoyed the past two years thanks to my amazing co-workers even through all the headaches and stress, my co-workers made working in Big 4 that much better. I have truly enjoyed the company of my co-workers over the past two years, so much so that there were tears of sadness shed as I told my goodbyes... I truly have c...

Another first for The Cookie Counter, a wedding! My brother's best friend, aka my other big brother, asked me to make a cake ball cake for his wedding reception.  I was overwhelmed by him just asking! Thankfully, they were going to have an actual wedding cake as well, and the cake balls would just be an added touch.  They wanted a 200 cake ball display that looked like a cake, but they did not want it to actually be cake. The weeks leading up to the wedding consisted of calculating out what size structure would fit 200 cake balls and then creating the structure.  We went with styrofoam since that would be easy to stab sticks into.  The day before and the morning of the wedding were pure chaos!! Thank goodness that I have the best  boyfriend ever, and he put up with my madness and helped bring me back to earth when I started to get away from myself.  The assembling of the cake balls was suppose to be easy, but of course, roadblocks! I had spent ...

Some of you may recall the holiday "dump" of pictures that I posted a couple months back where I was too busy to write a post but I shared some pictures of what I have been up to. Well it's time to rewind a little and talk about the adorable baby shower cake that I made. I was approached to make my friend's baby shower cake and my only direction was a color scheme.  She told me that she trusted me and the decorations were free range as long as I included baby blue, pastel green and deep brown. For anybody who has been asked to make a custom design for somebody who doesn't know what they want, you guys know the feeling.  I was going crazy trying to research designs and ideas and I would go back to my friend and ask what ideas she liked and the only response I would get was, yea any of those would work or they all sound great.... really not helping here. After enough pestering I was able to get her to decide on baby blocks as a "theme."  She also proc...

A few months ago, I gave you all a sneak peak of the Tiffany & Co. inspired cookies and cake I was working on.  Well months later, I am finally getting around to posting about it!  I was approached by a friend to make a Sweet 16 cake and cookies.  I was very nervous when I was told that they wanted a Tiffany themed party.... Tiffany's is tied to the concept of elegance and class, but my cakes are still in the amateur phase. I spent the whole week prior to the order searching the internet for all things Tiffany & Co. related.  I had to make sure that I could represent the theme accurately.  After lots of planning and sketches of how I wanted the cake and cookies to look like, it was time to create! First, I needed to make my perfect Tiffany blue icing color so I turned to Sugarbelle who is a pure cookie genius! Within minutes I had a gorgeous blue color :) Perfection. In order to get the dimension on the bow, I also used a technique of Sugarb...