Toy Story Cupcakes!

So, I saved the best for last this week. I made these cupcakes for a friend who was having a birthday over the weekend, you may remember the cakes I made for her last year. This summer I posted on Facebook asking for suggestions for what to make for my brother's cake and this particular friend suggested Toy Story characters. Those weren't exactly what I was thinking of for my brother but I made a note of her suggestion for when her birthday rolled around.


I'm still working on perfecting the art of buttercream transfers, so there are some issues with the eyes and also with the alien's ears and half of Woody's hat being missing, but overall I'm really happy with how these turned out. And I had so much fun making them on Sunday, it was great! Plus the look on my friend's face when she saw them was priceless. :)

A Long, Long Time Ago, in a Kitchen, Far Far Away...

So the second item I bought at the Williams Sonoma was a set of pancake molds. And not just any pancake molds, they were Star Wars Pancake molds! They are so much fun to make, even if it is a little time consuming.

Start with a Pancake recipe - this is my family's favourite:

3 cups flour
2 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
3 cups milk
4 tbsp oil

Mix together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. In another bowl (preferably one with a spout) beat together eggs, milk and oil. Add dry ingredients to liquid and whisk until almost smooth.
Pour onto grill 1/4 cup a a time. Cook until bubbles break through on the top side, flip and cook until the other side is brown.

Then, instead of using the regular grilling instructions, take your pancake molds and grease them. Then put them on your pancake grill and pour in enough batter so that it will spread to fill the mold (you may need to thin out the batter a bit with a tablespoon or so of extra milk) and use a knife to make sure batter gets into all the corners.

Then wait until the bubbles come through to the side you can see, remove the mold and flip the pancakes over. Wait until they brown, then serve them hot or put them in the oven (on warm) to keep them warm until everyone is ready to eat!

And enjoy biting off Yoda's ears!

Message in A Cookie Cutters

So I haven't posted in over a month, mostly because the day after my last post, I came down with pneumonia. Pretty much I was unable to get out of bed for a week and a half and then the entire month since then has been spent recovering and trying to relax, right in the middle of back to school. So I haven't had a chance to bake anything, until this weekend! I've made 3 new creations in the past week and I can't wait to post them all.

I'm going to start with the cookies I made on Thursday for my co-workers.

So, a few weeks ago (while I was still sick and should have been resting instead of going on a marathon shopping trip) I managed to take a day trip down to the States where I got to visit one of my favourite stores of all time - Williams Sonoma. It is where I got my Star Wars Cookie Cutters and my Apple and Star Pie Molds. On this trip I bought four items, each of which will have its own blog post soon.

The first are my Message In a Cookie Cutters...

What are Message in a Cookie Cutters you ask...

Well, you start with some letters for a message...

And a cookie cutter...

Then you put them together...

With some sugar cookie dough...

And start stamping away!

And Voila! Personalized cookie cutters for any occasion! I made these ones to thank my co-workers for the wonderful Get Well Card and Gift that they sent me while I was sick!
These cookie cutters are really great, the set also came with Star and Heart shapes, as well as a few pre-formed words and also 3 of every letter, plus a few extras! These cookie cutters are so customizable and sugar cookies are so fun to decorate. And of course you could use gingerbread, or shortbread or any similar cookie of course!