Galentine’s Brunch

February 9, 2020February 9, 2020 ~ Angela ~ 3 Comments

I was seriously just going to Target to get toilet paper and a few groceries. You all know though, you never leave Target with ONLY the things you went there to buy…

They had the CUTEST brunch supplies in the Bullseye’s Playground/Dollar Spot area at the front of the store. Valentine themed champagne flutes and pitchers, pretty pink cake stands, this awesome white platter that says “Let’s Do Brunch.” So I did what any normal person would do… I bought all 7 boxes of the champagne flutes and a bunch of other stuff, and then decided to have a party so I could use it all. Reverse planning?

I’m lucky to have a lot of wonderful women in my life: friends I have had for decades, (non-legal) sisters-in-law, co-workers who make going to work FUN! I thought that the perfect way to put my Target haul to use would be to throw a Galentine’s Brunch to show these lovely ladies some appreciation for the joy they bring into my life.

I kept things easy by ordering catering from Panera (their breakfast souffles are SO good), and making a Valentine’s treat themed charcuterie board. The board was filled with Pepperidge Farm cookies, Raspberry Creme Kit Kats, Valentine Ding Dongs, Sugarfina Bubbly Bear gummies, Hershey’s Kisses, Lindt Truffles, marcona almonds, candied pecans and raspberries. I used another cute platter from Target for strawberries and grapes, and then put macarons from Dana’s Bakery and PEEPS Vanilla Creme Hearts on the cake stand.

Shake Bake and Party | Valentine’s Charcuterie Board

Shake Bake and Party | Galentine’s Brunch

galentines1-01 — Shake Bake and Party | Galentine’s Treats on Cake Stand

Obviously, the most important part of any brunch is the mimosas! I had a make your own mimosa bar, with orange, orange mango and pomegranate juices. I also had some Jackson Morgan Southern Bread Pudding and Chocolate Therapy (chocolate wine!) from Laurita Winery on hand in case anyone wanted a shot of something sweet! On top of all that, some gifted Red Velvet Bailey’s and wine finished off the libations.

galentines3-01 — Shake Bake and Party Mimosa Bar

galentines2-01 — Target Valentine Champagne Flutes and Champagne Bottle Balloon

20200208_104846-01 — Target Let’s do Brunch platter

I decorated with some balloons and a cute little heart banner I picked up at the Christmas Tree Shops. I found the neon “Love” sign at Kohl’s, and adorable candle that says “You’re like really pretty” candle was another Target find!

The most fun part was the photo “booth” I created by hanging gold and rose gold foil fringe curtains in front of my kitchen sliding door. I had a bunch of Valentine’s headbands and glasses plus Galentine’s themed photo props for everyone to use (#friesbeforeguys).

You can’t have a party without great music, so I put together an amazing playlist full of songs from my favorite female artists.

Finally, as a little parting gift, everyone got to choose an Anne Taintor sticky note pad or magnet and a Cheryl ‘s buttercream frosted heart shaped cookie!

I’m thinking of making this an annual event! If you have any fun Galentine’s Party ideas, let me know in the comments so I can start planning for next year!

Christmas Cookies 2016

December 24, 2016December 23, 2016 ~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

Happy Christmas Eve Day everyone! I can’t believe this year is almost over! I haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to the blog lately (school, work, work, school) but I took a little time off last week and was able to get in some baking!

Here, in no particular order, are this year’s Christmas cookies! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and a Happy New Year! See you in 2017!

Gingerbread Man Decorated Cookie

Christmas Tree Decorated Cookie

Ugly Sweater Cookies - Shake Bake and Party

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of the Perfect Cupcake

July 3, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

Sometimes you have an idea about a certain cupcake flavor in your head but it can be difficult to find the right recipe. I don’t yet consider myself good enough to just completely whip something up on my own like the contestants on Cupcake Wars. Once, when I was a teenager I wanted to make microwave brownies but I didn’t have the cocoa called for in the recipe. I (mistakenly) thought I could use hot cocoa mix instead. Instead of gooey, chocolaty brownies I created the most foul-smelling thing to have ever come out of a microwave. So you can see why I don’t quite trust myself to just wing it.

A friend has asked that I make Rum and Coke cupcakes for her son’s 21st birthday coming up later in the month. Having never made them before, I wanted research some recipes and do a test batch. I found this recipe for Cola Cake, direct from the makers of Coca Cola themselves. I figured that would be a good place to start. I followed the recipe exactly, and then topped the cupcakes with a basic vanilla butter cream icing that I spiked with some Gosling’s Bermuda Black Rum.

I got to have some science experiment type fun, dissolving the baking soda in the buttermilk and watching it fizz up, and I ended up with a very tasty, slightly chewy around the edges cupcake that tasted NOTHING like Coke. : / The icing did taste like rum at least, but I was definitely not getting the Rum and Coke vibe. Back to the drawing board…

I found a recipe on Betty Crocker‘s website for rum cupcakes which I think I will try, and then I purchase a bottle of cola extract online which I will try to incorporate into the icing. I have never used cola extract before so if anyone has some experience with it and can offer some advice, I’m all ears!

As you can see, in the meantime I got my Rum and Non-Coke cupcakes all gussied up for the upcoming holiday! I hope everyone has a fun and safe 4th of July! And here’s just a little bit of humor for the road…

Cinco D’OH Mayo

May 3, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 1 Comment

So, the thing that sucks about writing a blog about things that you make is that when you don’t make anything, you have nothing to blog about! D’oh!

I haven’t been baking anything and despite enduring quite a few days in the past two weeks that have totally been worthy of adult beverage drinking, I haven’t been doing any of that either. I have, however, been doing a lot of laundry. How one man can create so many loads of laundry in the span of a week I will never understand.

Anywho, despite my utter lack of shaking, baking OR partying lately I do have a tasty drink recipe that I wanted to share in time for Cinco de Mayo….

Beer Margaritas! Or as I like to call them – BeerGaritas.

Let me preface this by saying (quite emphatically) that I despise beer. It’s just gross. Even on the rare occasion that I can find a beer that doesn’t make me want to scrub my tongue with a Brillo pad I do not enjoy drinking the stuff.

Brillo Pad logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

HOWEVER, I absolutely loved these beer Margaritas!

Beer Margaritas (link will take you to the original recipe!)

Ingredients

1 (12 fl oz) can frozen limeade concentrate
12 fl oz tequila
12 fl oz water
12 fl oz beer (I used Corona)
ice
1 lime, cut into wedges (optional)
salt (optional)

Mexican Beer: Corona 6-Pack (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Directions

Pour limeade, tequila, water and beer into a large pitcher. Stir until well blended and limeade is melted (you may want to strain the pulp out, depending on preference). Adjust with additional water if needed. Add ice. Rim margarita glass with salt and garnish with lime wedges.

Hop, Hop, Hooray!

April 6, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 5 Comments

Here comes Peter Cottontail, hoppin’ down the bunny trail… One of my favorite things at Easter (aside from candy out the wazoo) was this old tin egg we had. It looked exactly like this (I love the internet!!) –

When you turned the hand crank, it played Peter Cottontail. I loved turning the crank really fast; here comes Peter Cottontail flying down the bunny trail! I can still hear the tinny tune in my mind.

My absolute favorite Easter memory is of dyeing eggs with my brother, mom and dad. I remember the smell of the vinegar, the fizzing sound of the dye tablets after you dropped them in the cups. My dad always got really into things – making crazy designs with rubber bands and bits of paper towel dipped in various colors. His eggs were always works of art.

These days my dad’s art takes the form of wooden carvings in the style of Easter Island Moai and (in case this is your first visit to my blog) my art is of the cookie variety!

This is my first Easter making decorated sugar cookies, and I’ll admit, I went a little nuts. I had a bunch of coworkers and friends to make cookies for – about 200 cookies all together! So last week I took a half a day off of work on Thursday and a full day on Friday. I baked Thursday, ran out of dough, made more, then baked again Friday morning. After lunch I spent a few hours mixing up all the icing colors I would need and then I decorated well into the night AND all the next day! By the time Sunday rolled around I think I was partially crippled. Apparently my cookie decorating stance is very bad for my back. It still hurts!

However, despite the long hours and the concern that someday I will become a hunchback because of Easter 2012 , I am SO HAPPY with the way my cookies turned out! I absolutely love them, and I hope you will too!

Check out my snazzy slideshow, and have a Happy Easter!!

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Cadbury Dream

April 4, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 6 Comments

While scrolling through Pinterest the other day (instead of doing something productive like laundry) I came across a recipe for a jelly bean martini. With all the delicious varieties or Easter candy available you would think there would be tons of Easter themed cocktails but I have only seen a few. I thought of all the different types of jelly beans, coconut eggs, peanut butter eggs, Cadbury Creme Eggs…

There had to be a Cadbury Creme Egg Cocktail! I did a search. I found a recipe for a Cadbury Caramel Cream Martini. While that sounds delicious, in my opinion nothing beats the taste of the original Cadbury Creme Egg.

Since I couldn’t find a recipe I decided to invent my own! I got some Cadbury Creme Eggs at the drugstore (buy one get one free – yes!) and then headed to the liquor store. I didn’t really know what type of liquor I wanted to use but came upon the vodka section first.

PB&J vodka, cucumber vodka, bacon vodka (breakfast martini anyone?), a vodka flavor called Dude that is the color of Mountain Dew…there are so many bizarre vodka flavors out there that I was half hoping to spot one called Cadbury Creme Egg. Alas, I did not, so I headed to the next aisle. I was considering the Baileys when I saw something called RumChata – a rum cream.

I had never heard of this before but I thought – cream, Creme Egg, sounds good! I brought it home and as soon as I opened it I knew it wasn’t going to work. All I could smell was cinnamon. Definitely not an ingredient I want to mix with my chocolate egg. Since I opened it, I tried a little nip of the RumChata and it is REALLY GOOD stuff. I will definitely be experimenting with that in the future, but I had a Cadbury Creme Egg Cocktail to concoct.

I decided to try to use some of the Pinnacle Chocolate Whipped I had on the shelf. I poured a shot of that into my trusty Magic Bullet, then added a splash of chocolate milk (I used chocolate soy milk since that was all I had). Next I chopped up a Cadbury Creme Egg (messy!), dumped that in there with some ice and blended. I think adding the ice before I blended the creme egg might not have been the best idea because the creme filling got a little hard from the cold and I had to chop at it quite a bit with a spoon to break it down. So if you want to make this I’d suggest blending the egg and the liquids first, then adding ice and you definitely want to make this because it was AWESOME! I rimmed my martini glass with some of the leftover yellow sanding sugar I had from making Peeps Bunny Cookies, poured in my mixture and voila! The Cadbury Dream was born…

Cheers to the Easter Bunny!

Peeps Part Deux

April 3, 2012March 23, 2014 ~ Angela ~ 6 Comments

A few weeks ago I did a sneak peek post on one of my favorite holiday goodies – The Peep! – and my attempt at making Peeps bunny cookie. Today I am back with more sugar coated marshmallow-y goodness!

And for the finale … Last year a few days before Easter I went to the grocery store and imagine my utter delight when I saw this parked out front!!!

The Sunday Bunnies

April 1, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 6 Comments

So, after three days of nearly nonstop Easter cookie immersion I am happy to report that I am DONE (and only slightly insane…)! I’m going to do a post on everything later in the week, but today I wanted to share a little how-to for making bunny cookies. For these particular bunnies, I went with the “as found in nature” look – very simple but extremely cute!

First (if you’re me) you start with a crap-load of bunny cookies…

Take your white royal icing and fill in the area where the bunny’s tail goes.

Next, flip your bunny over and dip his (or her – we don’t discriminate here) tail into a bowl of white Nonpareils.

You want to do this part first because you don’t want the Nonpareils to stick anywhere but the tail. After the tail is looking nice and cottony you can outline the rest of the bunny.

At this point you should add a little water to your icing so that it spreads easily and then simply flood in the outlined area with the icing. Once that is dry, outline again adding a little detail on the ears and feet and then give bunny an eye and a nose and you’re done! I used edible marker for the eye and pink royal icing for the nose.

I also had a few requests to put names on the cookies, so here is what one of those looks like!

Hope everyone has had a lovely weekend! Personally, I’m exhausted!

Just wondering…

March 30, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

WHAT on

…was I

This is a "thought bubble". It is an... — This is a "thought bubble". It is an illustration depicting thought. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

???????????????????????????????

That is about HALF the amount of Easter cookies I have to decorate and package this weekend, and thus far I’m not even half way done with these!! Just taking a little break to rest my hand and…

pulling hair out (Photo credit: wstera2)

Mommy!!!

A Sneak Peep

March 18, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 4 Comments

I LOVE Marshmallow Peeps!! I love them fresh, I love them slightly stale. I love them dipped in chocolate! Fluffy sugary goodness (and they’re fat free!)

I am not a Peeps purist; they are not just for Easter! Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day – if the stores are selling, I’m buying!

Honestly, I think Peeps should have their own place on the food pyramid.

Some New Year’s Eve I would love to go to Bethlehem, PA to witness the Peep Drop.

You can do many things with Peeps besides eating them. You can make an adorable Peeps Wreath for Easter, watch some Peep Jousting on You Tube or make Peeps Dioramas.

You can crochet Peeps, like my good friend at CrochetBitch. She gave me this AWESOME Peeps Easter Basket!

There are even Peeps movies, like this hilarious version of Office Space…

You can also make Peeps cookies! I’ve been messing around practicing cookies for Easter and I made some Peeps Bunny cookies. I had to search the internet for quite a while to find the right shaped cookie cutter, but find it I did. If you too are dying to make Peeps cookies, you can get the cutter here (they also have the traditional chick shape as well).

So here is my Easter Cookie preview! More to come… : )