Wedding Cake and Poker Chip Cookies

Ai and I have been busy bees this month! Ai's co-worker had a vegas themed wedding recently and Ai wanted to give her a cake as a gift. We were told to do whatever we want and Ai came up with a really beautiful design! We kept it simple by having the cake toppers be a bride and groom cookie and adding a few sugar butterflies and fondant flowers. 

The bride cookie was decorated with royal icing and sugar pearls.

The groom cookies

We made poker chip cookies! 

We had a few hiccups along the way, but the cake ended up really lovely.

I love the bride and groom cookies. Ai got the idea from Pinterest! 

Ai came up with the clever idea to put a small tiered cake to prop up the cookies.

We really fell in love with these sugar butterflies, so expect to see them everywhere! 

We had a lot of fun making this cake and it's amazing to see how far we've progressed! That's all for this week folks! Halloween is coming up and we're super excited to reveal this year's costumes and can't wait to see yours! ♥  

Hello Kitty Cookies

Sorry for not posting last week guys! I got busy and totally forgot I didn't have a blog written up! Anyway, this week's post is just a quick one. A couple week's ago I made some cookies as set dressing for a costume photo shoot. (I was re-shooting all the costumes I've made so far to prepare for October! I'm gonna be re-blogging the costumes with the updated photos to countdown to this year's Halloween costumes!) 

These were made on the fly and are the same sugar cookies I made here. They were covered with marshmallow fondant, which is the same one we use for everything! I made a little template out of paper for Hello Kitty's head and then cut them out with an xacto blade. I just sculpted little pieces of red fondant into triangles and circles for her bows. Her face was drawn on with food markers, which you should really get if you don't already have some. I think they're the best thing ever and make it super easy to add faces and details to things! The colored backgrounds were cut with a round scalloped edge cookie cutter. They were really simple and easy to do and would make really cute treats for a little girl's tea party! 

I stuck with fun and bright colors for the backgrounds!

Closer shot of Hello Kitty's face! 

I really loved how this blue turned out! 

That's all for this week folks! Happy crafting and baking! So excited that the holidays are coming up soon, we can't wait to see what all of you have planned for this year! ♥  

Christmas Baking Part 2: Christmas Cookies

Alright so this is really the last of the Christmas themed posts since the holidays have been over for a month now! Every Christmas I love to make baked goods for my loved ones and my favorite thing to make is frosted sugar cookies! They're always so cute and festive and make me insanely happy! 


I've shared this cookie recipe with all of you before, but I'll put it up again. Also, I made a chocolate version of this recipe since my family doesn't really like gingerbread cookies. 

The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar 
• 4 eggs 
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder 
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out dough on surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6-8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely. 

For the Chocolate cookies: Melt down about 4 ounces of semisweet chocolate and cream it with the butter and sugar before you add the eggs. 

TIPS: 

This recipe is exactly as written from allrecipes with the only change made is an added teaspoon of vanilla extract. The directions for this recipe are fine, but I do like to do one more thing before I actually bake the cutout cookies. I like to let them chill again in the freezer for 30-60 minutes before baking. I feel that this helps the cookies retain their shape. Also to make cutting the cookies easier, dip your cutters in flour before making each cutout. 

Royal Icing 

Ingredients 

• egg whites from 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons water
• 4 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon of any clear flavored extract

Directions

I am very adamant about safe food handling procedures, so I scoured the internet to find information about the proper way to handle raw eggs whites in an icing recipe. Luckily I found wonderful information from here on how to handle egg whites properly. 

1. In a double boiler or metal bowl placed over water in a saucepan, stir together the egg whites, half of the confectioner's sugar and the water. 
2. Cook over low heat or simmering water, beating constantly with a portable mixer at low speed, until the whites reach 160 degrees F. 
3. Pour into a large bowl and add the remaining sugar and clear extract and beat until you reach soft peak consistency. This is the consistency you'll use to pipe your borders, lines, dots, etc.

To color your icing: 

I like to use gel or paste food coloring for my icings or frosting. Gel food coloring is much more concentrated than liquid coloring and doesn't affect the consistency. Just add a little coloring at a time until you get the colors you want. 

To change the consistency:

To get a runnier consistency for filling spaces, simply add water a little at a time till you reach the consistency you want.

Extra Tips:

Don't let your icing sit out uncovered. I like to take a wet paper towel and cover the bowl until I'm ready to use more icing. 

Cute little stockings for Ai, her boyfriend, and their dog! 

Christmas stars! 

Snowmen and an ornament! 

Christmas presents and a wreath! 

Red nosed reindeer and Santa's sleigh! 

Snowflakes are my absolute favorite to make! 

So that's all for this week folks! Hope you go out there and make some of your own cute cookies! ♥  

Halloween Cookies

One of my favorite things about the holiday season is that you get to make all sorts of seasonal cookies! Christmas cookies are definitely my favorite to make and I love to go all out when it comes to decorating them. This is actually the first time I've made Halloween cookies and I loved how well they turned out. I'll definitely have to go out and get a wider variety of Halloween cutters!  

I realized that the last time I posted decorated cookies I didn't share the cookie recipe or royal icing recipe I like to use! So naturally, it's time to share! I have a deep obsession with allrecipes.com. They have a wide and varied database and the user comments are helpful in determining whether or not a recipe is worth using.  I like to use this cookie recipe: 

The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar 
• 4 eggs 
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder 
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out dough on surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6-8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely. 

TIPS: 

This recipe is exactly as written from allrecipes with the only change made is an added teaspoon of vanilla extract. The directions for this recipe are fine, but I do like to do one more thing before I actually bake the cutout cookies. I like to let them chill again in the freezer for 30-60 minutes before baking. I feel that this helps the cookies retain their shape. Also to make cutting the cookies easier, dip your cutters in flour before making each cutout. 

Royal Icing 

Ingredients 

• egg whites from 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons water
• 4 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon of any clear flavored extract

Directions

I am very adamant about safe food handling procedures, so I scoured the internet to find information about the proper way to handle raw eggs whites in an icing recipe. Luckily I found wonderful information from here on how to handle egg whites properly. 

1. In a double boiler or metal bowl placed over water in a saucepan, stir together the egg whites, half of the confectioner's sugar and the water. 
2. Cook over low heat or simmering water, beating constantly with a portable mixer at low speed, until the whites reach 160 degrees F. 
3. Pour into a large bowl and add the remaining sugar and clear extract and beat until you reach soft peak consistency. This is the consistency you'll use to pipe your borders, lines, dots, etc.

To color your icing: 

I like to use gel or paste food coloring for my icings or frosting. Gel food coloring is much more concentrated than liquid coloring and doesn't affect the consistency. Just add a little coloring at a time until you get the colors you want. 

To change the consistency:

To get a runnier consistency for filling spaces, simply add water a little at a time till you reach the consistency you want.

Extra Tips:

Don't let your icing sit out uncovered. I like to take a wet paper towel and cover the bowl until I'm ready to use more icing. 

A cute little ghost dude! I still definitely need to work on my piping it's not as clean as I'd like! >_< 

To make this cute little spider web just pipe black circles onto the white when it's still wet and drag a toothpick through to get a web pattern. Then just pipe blobs for the spider's body and little lines for legs.

A silly jack-o-lantern

A witch with a not so spooky face! 

A vampire bat that's just had dinner! 

A black cat that happily crossed my path until I bit his head off! hahahahaha

That's all for this week folks! Go out and make your own cute and fun cutout cookies! Next week is Halloween so we'll be debuting our costumes for this year! ♥  

HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER!!!!!

So according to the title this post is going to be all about HARRY POTTER!!!!! Here's a fun fact for all of you: Ai and I are super nerds about a lot of different things and Harry Potter is naturally one of those things we love! In honor of the final movie we made some Harry Potter themed things. We had a lot of fun with these projects and couldn't wait to post this up. So enough of my rambling and on to the stuffs! 


Ai's mom is also a fan of Harry Potter so we made her some magnets! 

Our gang of HP magnets. I did the top row and broom and Ai did the bottom row and the Sorting Hat!

Ai did the golden trio and twins

I did Dumbledore, Hagrid, Ginny, Luna, and Neville

I wanted to make Dobby look really nice because he's Ai's mom's favorite! 

The twins! 

Neville ended up looking like a young Snape! lol

Ron! 

Harry!

Hermione!

Luna! 

Ginny! (my scarf is not as nice as Ai's! lol >_<)

Everyone's favorite groundskeeper! 

R.I.P. Dumbledore! :( 

Ai made Hedwig! 

Ai's amazing Sorting Hat! 

Ai's super adorable Pigwidgeon! 

I really love making decorated shortbread cookies so I decided it would be awesome to make HP ones. I taught Ai and our friend Thao how to decorate cookies so the cookies were a collaborative effort. I didn't have HP shaped cookie cutters, so most of these cookies are cut by hand. And if you've never cut cookies by hand, it is time consuming (though it was definitely worth it because we love Harry Potter)! Now on to the cookies! 

All the cookies we made! 

Some random HP related items

Harry's glasses

A wand casting a spell

Hedwig

A random owl with a wizard's hat, maybe it's an animagus! lol

The Hogwarts Crest. I had the most fun doing this one! 

The Crest of SugiAi! lol I like elephants and she likes pigs! 

The people! Poor Hermione got fat in the oven, she looks like she should be Hagrid! hahahaha

Voldemort

Harry and his broom flying off to a new adventure! 

I know that this was already a super long post, but because I am a sentimental fool I just want to say this: Thank you J.K. Rowling for creating these wonderful characters and beautiful world! Harry Potter and his grand adventure will live on forever in all of our hearts! 

That's all for now folks! Go watch the final HP movie and enjoy it, it was really great! 

Oh yeah one more thing, we joined the cool kids and are on Google+ our profile! We're not quite sure what we'll do with it, but it does have some more personal info about us on it, since we've been pretty vague here on the blog. So if you're already on Google+ don't hesitate to add us! ^_^