Have your cake and eat cookies too.

First things first: I did NOT make this cake. The credit goes to Briana's (and Michaela's) mom. She made this cake for Michaela's baby shower. Secondly: This cake is even cooler because it matches the quilt, accessories and decorations that said mom made for the baby's room. Thirdly: A really fun, 3D way to decorate a cake. The cookies on the sticks were not placed into the cake until it arrived at the shower location. Frosting was put around some of the sticks to help stabilize them.

Gracie's Birthday Cake

This is the cake I made for Gracie's birthday. It turned out quite cute. Instead of frosting the bottom, I just cut some paper and fan folded it to go around the bottom. It gave it a different kind of look but I think it worked out okay.

Traveling Dessert Buffet

A fun selection of treats that can also travel the distance to the party (from top left, clockwise): Peanut Butter Temptations, Brownie Bites, Cream Cheese Brownies, Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars, Cranberry Pecan Cookies, and M&M Cookies. The cookies are the same basic dough as the cookie bars, I just divided it and put M&Ms in one half and cranberries and pecans in the other half.

For traveling, I put everything in plastic containers. The cookies and cookie bars packed the easiest. I used waxed paper between layers of Brownie Bites and the PB Temptations. Waxed paper on top of the Cream Cheese Brownies pulled off the top of the cream cheese, so I only did single layers in shallow containers. Ideally, I would I have just left these guys in the pan and covered it, but I had already cut them up when I realized I couldn't stack them.

Make your own cupcake picks!

By using stickers that were nearly symmetrical, I stuck them together with a toothpick sandwiched between and they became cupcake toppers. If your stickers aren't very symmetrical, you could punch out some paper circles so you have a symmetrical base, and put your stickers on the circles with the toothpick between the two circles. For the top cupcake pick, I printed out the words using my computer printer and took a scallop punch to them. To keep the surface flat, and not rounding over the toothpick, I used mounting tape to put the two scallop circles together.

My First Cheesecake

This is the first cheesecake I made that didn't come out of a box. I used the recipe Vanilla Cheesecake from Williams-Sonoma Dessert cookbook. The cinnamon in the graham crust and the vanilla in the filling created a delicious dessert that could stand on it's own without a berry topping, although I did have sliced strawberries on hand. When I first pulled the cheesecake out of the oven, the center was not split like in the picture, but the it was split along the edges. As it cooled, the edges unsplit and the center pulled apart. I should have tried running a knife around the edge when I took it out of the oven so it wouldn't split down the middle I think. I have decided that cheesecakes are not that hard to make and will definitely make one again. Here is a less vanilla variety I am thinking of trying next: S'mores Cheesecake.

Cookie Flower Bouquet

I used my normal sugar cookie recipe for this. I made sure not to roll the dough out too thin. After I cut out the shape with a cookie cutter, I placed it on a cookie sheet and stuck a stem in. For the stem you could use the white candy making sticks, but I happened to have the long bamboo skewers on hand so I used those. Then I baked the cookies as normal until done. After cooling, I frosted with a powdered sugar frosting. I learned that the frosting should be just barely runny enough that you can move it to frost, and if you are doing multiple colors on a cookie, you really need to let the first one dry so you don't mess it up with the second color.

When the frosting was dry I wrapped each cookie in plastic wrap and used a green ribbon to secure it like leaves. I put styrofoam in a pail and topped it with paper grass so I could stick my cookie flower stems in. The "birds" are peeps, also wrapped in plastic so they don't dry out.

This is definitely one of those things that would hopefully turn out better the second time around. The frosting didn't go as well as I hoped because it was too runny, and then I should have let it dry longer before standing it up in the bucket. A container that was rectangular would make a nice planter box so you could spread the flowers out and could even get some gummie bugs/worms for decorating the "grass".

Pie Decorating

Use your pie dough scraps, cookie cutters, and colorful sprinkles to make a pie for a special person. No frosting required.