So, I clearly haven’t posted anything in a while.
Life. Crazy, right?
But I’m ready to return to the land of the living! (READ = the land of the BAKING). So check back soon for an updated site with new photos and recipes, and new posts!
See you real soon!
Hope your day is sweet.
I was invited by Nicole at Sugar & Stitches to take part in a Game Night cookie fest with a wonderful and talented group of ladies. I was so excited just to be included with such an great group of cookiers!
When trying to decide which board game to do, I asked my 7-year-old daughter. She, of course, immediately said Candyland. Sure, I thought. That would be fun. Lots of colors. I can use sparkles! It will be great! So I sent my selection off to Nicole and all was well.
Until, of course, I actually took the game board out to look at it when it was time to do the cookies. LESSON LEARNED: Don’t take cookie advice from a 7-year-old.
But at the end of the day, they were (hair-pulling-out) fun, and I once again got to use sparkles! And lots of them. So how can that be bad, right?
Lolly! Juggling gumdrops. Don’t we all wish we could?
Princess Lolly. I have a crown just like this. I just wear mine on special occasions.
Queen Frostine. I think I’ve been called that a time or two in my life.
This is Mr. Mint. He suffered a tragic Royal icing transfer removal incident. It required extensive surgery.
And you gotta have the little gingerbread game piece guys. These shorts would never meet dress code at out school. Just sayin’.
Here are all of the players in our Game Night. Check out these AWESOME cookies!!
Thank you again Nicole for including me in the fun! (Sorry I was so late =)
I hope you enjoyed our cookie party. May the rest of your week be sweet!
PS. Please forgive the stellar photography. Long story. =)
Hi. My name is Tara. And I’m a Star Wars fanatic.
I have been a fan since I was a kid. I could play the Empire Theme on piano and clarinet by the time I was 9. (Not both instruments at the same time, of course).
As a twisted fate by the universe, I married a Star TREK fan. (I know. I know.) I try not to hold that against him. The worst Star Wars movie (and we all know that’s Episode I. Sorry, George) is 10x times better than the BEST Star Trek movie (is that an oxymoron?). Just stating fact.
So I love this day to honor the real #1 Sci Fi space series. Admit it, you must.
So HAPPY STAR WARS DAY!
May the Fourth be with you!
GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED!
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And the winners are……….
If you are one of the winners, please email me at tara@theshakybaker.com with your mailing address so I can get these mailed out to you!
I will keep checking my stores for more. If I find more, I’ll share those, too. =)
Thank you to everyone who left a comment! Hope your weekend is sweet!
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So, did you know that these are the new rage in cookie decorating?
Thanks to Callye at Sweet SugarBelle they are.
These babies make the best icing bag holders. The BEST. And for $1, you can’t beat the price. (Sorry, Wilton).
Problem is, they seem to be selling out everywhere before bakers can buy them. But lucky for you guys, I live in a small town where people here don’t know the wonders of the $1 popcycle maker. So I went down today and cleaned out the shelf. Bought every one they had. The cashier thought I’d lost my mind. If only she knew how right she was.
Now, I need to share them with you. Want one?
I am going to send 2 packs to four (4) different people. INTERNATIONAL INCLUDED!! If you want them, just leave a comment ON THIS POST. I will randomly select four people to win. Simple as that.
But ya gotta act fast. I’m going to mail them out this Friday, so I’m only leaving it open until Thursday, May 3rd (yes, tomorrow!) until 9pm CST. Then I will draw 4 winners and drop them in the mail. I have to act fast, because you really need these. Your cookies could depend on it.
Make sure you leave contact information so I can get in touch with you if you win!
Good luck! And I hope the rest of your week is sweet!
This Valentine’s Day proved to be a very busy one!
Here are some of the goodies I made last week:
After a while, I felt like I had an assembly line going!
Hope your Valentine’s Day was SWEET!
I love children. I have three of them. I work at the nursery at church on Sunday. I have taught Sunday school for 5th grade. I am co-room mom for both of my girls’ classes at school. I just love kids.
That being said, this week’s project has given me a whole new perspective on them. I could have 30 of these kids!
And by “have” I mean enjoy them with coffee. And I don’t mean let them sit and have coffee with me. I mean have them WITH my coffee. Literally. (and this picture quickly comes to mind….)
See how happy he looks? I love making children happy.
This week, I was asked to make cookies for a silent auction fundraiser for my kids’ school. The item for the 1st grade (my youngest’s age) is a cookie jar with their thumb prints and names on it. How fun, right? And a cookie jar needs cookies, so that’s where I come in.
We came up with the idea to do a cookie representation for each kid in the 1st grade. So I went by their school pictures and made a cookie look like each of them. It was a blast putting their little personalities on a cookie!
If only all class pictures were this easy to take.
Look at how well behaved they are!
This is one of my daughter’s BFF’s. Love her little curls!
Say “CHEESE!”
My daughter is the one with the blue hair bow, in the second-to-the-last row. I put her towards the back because she is the second shortest in the entire grade, so she is always in the front row. This is the only way that she gets to stand in the back. (Yep, my Mother of the Year application has already been filed.)
As is expected with children, this was not the quickest project I’ve ever done. Lots of colors (12, to be exact) and lots of small details. (Not everyone parts their hair on the same side, ya know). But I think it was one of my all-time favorite cookie experiences.
My daughter is a little disappointed that she isn’t going to get to eat “her” cookie. She asked if I would please win the auction so that she could. “Yes, sweetheart. I’ll pay lots of money to buy the cookies that I made for free so that you can eat one of them.”
As if.
If you ever need a fun idea for a school cookie project, I highly recommend this one. Everyone is getting a kick out of seeing their kid as a cookie and trying to figure out who everyone is. And it will give the teachers an opportunity to see what their class actually looks like quietly standing still.
And that, my friends, is a gift.
Hope the rest of your week is sweet!
Yesterday, my kids celebrated the “100th Day of School.” So for me, that means cookies! What better way to celebrate, right?
I made “100” cookies for my daughter’s 1st grade class. I also took this as an opportunity to try out some new tricks.
When I posted my “Top 14 things I learned in 2011” post, several of you commented about using the “plastic wrap around the icing inside the piping bag” trick. I will admit that was one I hadn’t tried yet, even though I had seen several serious “cookiers” post they did this. So, I thought this would be the perfect time to try it out.
For those not familiar with this trick, it’s pretty straight forward. Just lay out some plastic wrap. Scoop your icing into the middle of it. Scoop more than you think. My first round ended up being a very small piping bag because it holds more than I thought.
Then fold over one side until it grabs onto the other side.
Fold the other side over, then twist the ends in opposite directions to seal it. Like a piece of candy!
Then just feed one end into the bag and through the coupler. (I found this to be the most difficult part. I ended up rolling down the bag to make it easier to get to the coupler).
I even decided to try it with my thick flood icing (20-second). (The above pictures are with this icing). I find it quite a pain to get it in the squeeze bottles because it’s so thick. A funnel is always involved. So I was curious if this would work for that as well.
It worked out great! I was able to fill the bag with as much icing as would normally fill one large squeeze bottle.
I also found that my icing didn’t separate as quickly as it normally does in a squeeze bottle. Not sure why. I’ll have to play around with this more to see if that continues to happen. (Which would be a good thing, mind you).
The next thing I tried was using dowels to roll out my cookie dough.
I have a confession. I don’t normally measure the thickness of my dough. Ever. I roll it until it “feels” right. But I have found that my cookies can sometimes be uneven (one cookie thicker than another) and even different thicknesses within one cookie. Both of those = bad for me. I’m not a huge fan of the rings on the roller, and I couldn’t track down the dough board that everyone seems to love (ans it’s quite pricey), so I thought I’d start with the $.75 option. What did I have to lose? (Other than $.75).
I went with 1/4 inch. Then I just rolled like I normally do. Parchment paper, dough (with dowels on either side), more parchment.
After rolling it out for the first time, I realized one very startling thing. I thought I knew how thick a 1/4 of an inch was, but after seeing my dough REALLY that thickness, I realized I was quite wrong. It is WAY thicker than I thought.
So I think I’ve been rolling my dough more like an 1/8 of an inch, which after making these at 1/4 of an inch, I now think is too thin. But, you do get fewer cookies out of a batch (obviously).
(Can you tell my 4th grader is learning fractions? They are all over the place!)
So if you are currently eyeballing your dough thickness, I recommend spending the $1 and buying to dowels. Curious if you will be as surprised as I was.
Our school colors are red and blue, but since there are lots of girls in the class, and it’s close to Valentine’s day, I threw in some pink. Because I made the cookies and I can.
Both of these techniques are ones I will continue to use. The plastic wrap made things MUCH easier, and the dowels made for nice, thick, even cookies. Try these if you haven’t before and maybe you’ll add them to your list of tricks, too.
Happy baking!
The Shaky Baker 