White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

Who doesn't love white chocolate macadamia nut cookies? I followed this recipe and it was a hit! I believe that it was the almond extract that makes the recipe so good.

1 cup butter, room temp
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chopped macadamia nuts
1 cup chopped white chocolate

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In mixer, cream together butter and both sugars. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla and almond extract. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking salt. Gradually mix in. Add macadamia nuts and chocolate. Scoop onto baking sheet using an ice cream scoop for uniform sized cookies. Bake for 10 minutes until golden brown.

It is especially careful not to over cook these as they should be golden brown around the edges and still a bit soft in the middle. The texture is just crunchy enough and just ooey-gooey enough to make the perfect cookie.

Over the Hill

Cake for a birthday.

Vanilla Cake (doubled)
2 cups butter (4 sticks), room temp
3 cups sugar
5 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
4 large eggs
6 egg yolks
4 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups low-fat buttermilk

Mix together flour, baking soda, salt in a bowl. In electric mixer bowl, beat together butter and sugar. With mixer on low, add eggs and yolks one at a time. Add vanilla. Alternate flour mixture and buttermilk. Prep 11x15" sheet pan with cake release. Pour batter into pan, level top and bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Invert onto cooling rack. 

Whipped Cream Frosting
4 cups  heavy whipping cream
8 tbsp powdered sugar 
2 tsp clear vanilla extract 

In mixing bowl with whisk attachment, add heavy whipping cream and powdered sugar, beat on medium high speed until stiff peaks form. Add vanilla. Mix until just combined. Use immediately and refrigerate cake after frosted.

Frost cake with the whipped cream. Take a package of Oreos (14.3 oz) and put in blender, blend until smooth and dirt like. Sprinkle oreo crumbs to look like dirt/hills. Pipe borders. Pipe and smooth a tombstone. Pipe on writing. Add gummy worms strategically poking out of the "dirt". 

Baby Shower Sugar Cookies

My sister had her baby shower at 23 weeks on December 1st. We decided to have it so early because she is due in March and didn't want to have people driving in the snow in January. I volunteered to do decorations and make the sweets. The baby's nickname is Sugar until she can pick a name for her little boy. The nursery is going to be guitar/rock 'n roll theme. So her best friend and I decided we would do sugar and spice and everything nice, snips and snails and puppy dog tails, and focus more on the boy theme of it. We also incorporated a playlist based around the sugar theme and Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar on Me (since it is a baby shower for the mom) was our rock 'n roll choice.

My idea was already set around sugar cookies and some kind of spice cake. I had seen some baby onesie cookie cutters and the cookies were made into pops. I knew that would be fun! I used Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix (1 large and 1 small bag) to make 20 cookies total since we were unsure of a final head count. I used Wilton color flow mix and followed the directions for regular consistency and flow consistency. This was dyed blue with Wilton food coloring in royal blue. I used tip 1 for the outline and once the icing was thinned a used a larger petal tip to fill in and a toothpick to spread to all the edges.

I was going to add Baby and the snaps to the onesie once the color flow had dried but I had spent 8 hours working on these cookies and gave up. It took a lot of flour on the cutting board and rolling pin to keep from sticking. I rolled the dough out to 1/4", cut the shape, placed it on the cookie sheet with parchment paper, placed a stick 3/4 of the way up the length of the cookie, cut another and placed it on top. Make sure to get out any air bubbles between the layers and around the stick or your baby will look like it has a hernia.

Once the cookies had cooled enough to be iced, that was allowed to harden for a few hours. The next day I wrapped them in treat bags and tied a ribbon around them to tie them closed.

At the party we couldn't think of a cute way to display these so we just made a pile with a cute sign in front.

Aren't they adorable? They were a hit and since the turnout was small, everybody took some home with them.

"Turtle"

"Turtle" was made for my friend Cleo's sis-in-law's 17th birthday, since they say she looks like a turtle and they call her that sometimes we thought it would be fun to surprise her. The cake is Dark Chocolate Fudge and Devil's Food with Milk Chocolate Frosting by Duncan Hines. There is a Smuckers caramel filling with crushed pecans between the layers. Sand is made from brown sugar and crushed pecans. The turtle hump is formed with hand-molded Rice Crispies Treats and covered with Wilton precolored fondant. The sugar flowers and leaves were Wilton. This was a really cute and fun cake to make. It tasted great and if I were to make another turtle flavored cake, I would mix the pecans into the batter before baking and instead of using the caramel as a filling I would inject it into the baked cake.