The Cookie Counter

My first order of the year was definitely not a boring one. Tiffany contacted me on a Monday wondering if I could accommodate a Saturday order.... I was hesitant to take a same week order but after looking at my schedule for the week, I gave the green light and it was Go time! This order come with some challenges some due to short notice, but others due to personal circumstances that left me in the hospital on cookie delivery day. However, I am extremely happy with the results and am thankful that Tiffany was so understanding of my last minute personal constraints. Cookies arrived in time for the party and I am recovering well. Thanks for the fun order Tiffany! 

Happy New Year! 2013 is going to be a great year, I just know it! To bring in the new year, the bf and I decided to throw a house party for NYE and it was also a great way to "break-in" the house since we moved in 3 months ago and haven't really had guests yet. Lots of friends, food, and fun! By far, one of the best ways to ring in the new year. Here's to a great year to come!  

The Holidays are fast approaching and in case you are still looking for something fabulous to give your loved ones, how about some yummy cake ball gift boxes?!

Have you ever made homemade toffee ? Well I recently attempted to make homemade toffee and it was semi unsuccessful the first round with my toffee separating from the butter creating an extra greasy layer around my toffee. However, the toffee itself was very good. So I managed to clean up most of the excess butter and chopped the toffee to be used in my favorite chocolate chip recipe, and so we have toffee chip cookies! Toffee Chip Cookies, adapted from America's Test Kitchen 2 cups flour 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted 1 cup packed dark brown sugar 1/2 cup sugar 1 large egg 1 large egg yolk 2 tsp vanilla extract 1 1/2 cup toffee 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (I used Hershey's Special Dark) Sea salt for garnish (1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees. (2)Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the melted butter and sugars together with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. ...

This is for you Kym! Recently, a coworker of mine asked if I had a tried and true homemade toffee recipe. I hated to tell her that I have never made toffee before... And of course, with me all you have to do is plant a baking seed in my brain and sure enough it will blossom. This is a fairly long blog post with very few pictures, sorry about that but the toffee making process happens so quick that I just didn't have time to capture individual steps. I set out my toffee making adventure with this recipe from The Coterie Blog . All toffee recipes start out with butter and sugar but then there are several various, some with corn syrup, some without, some with almonds and some with pecans. The possibilities really are endless. Heather's recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of butter. Since this was for experimental purposes only, I cut the recipe in thirds and only used 1/2 cup butter.  All was going well as the kitchen began to smell like delicious browned butter and sug...

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,...