Michael’s Way

April 14, 2016April 14, 2016 ~ Angela ~ Leave a comment

Hey all! How has everyone been? I’m dropping in with a quick post about some cookies I just made! I didn’t get a chance to take any nice, professional looking photos before I sent these out the door (new work responsibilities, grad school and attempting to have a life in between have me feeling like everything is moving at warp speed these days, know what I mean?) but I wanted to do a little write up, mostly to spread the word about a great charity.

Michael’s Way is an organization in the Philadelphia area that provides assistance to the families of children battling pediatric cancer. According to their website, “Michael’s Way has raised more than $6 million to lessen the financial hardships of hundreds of families whose children are suffering from cancer. 100% of money raised, as well as private donations and grants received from foundations goes directly to the families, not to overhead.” I think that’s pretty amazing given the number of “charities” that spend more per dollar on salaries, marketing and who knows what else than they do on actually helping people.

For the third year in a row PMC Property Group is sponsoring a bowling party at Lucky Strike in Philadelphia to raise money for Michael’s Way (4/20/16 – details here if you are interested!) and I was more than happy to make some Michael’s Way logo cookies for the event!

So here’s my crappy picture of what turned out to be a pretty cool cookie!!

If you suck at bowling or aren’t in the area, but are interested in making a donation to this wonderful organization head over to their online donation form!

Funny Bunny

March 30, 2015March 29, 2015 ~ Angela ~ 3 Comments

I know a really fun lady who asked me to make some Easter cookies for her grandkids so when I saw these Wilton icing decorations in the stores last week I knew I had to use them somehow. I’m pretty sure she’s going to love these funny bunnies and I hope her grandkids do too!

Star Cookies

June 20, 2014June 19, 2014 ~ Angela ~ 6 Comments

I recently had the pleasure of making two batches of star shaped cookies for very different purposes. The first set was purple and pink starfish for a beach themed bridal shower.

The second set was for Operation Cookie Takeover. Tons of awesome people have volunteered to send over 12,000 cookies to our troops serving overseas! I am so happy for the opportunity to contribute once again to such a great cause.

Easter Cookies – Chicks, Eggs and Bunny Butts

April 17, 2014April 17, 2014 ~ Angela ~ 11 Comments

I had a ton of fun making this year’s batch of Easter cookies!

I found the little PEEPS candy toppers at Michael’s craft store. Aren’t they adorable?!

Hope everyone who celebrates has a lovely Easter!

Cookies for the Cure

April 26, 2013May 8, 2013 ~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

A few weeks ago, in my post about Operation Cookie Takeover, I shared with you how happy it made me feel to be able to donate my cookies to a good cause. Well, this week I got to make some very special cookies for a good friend of mine at work.

Her family does a yearly memorial benefit for her aunt Norma who sadly passed away from cancer. This year she is putting together a ton of cool baskets to raffle off: scratch-off lottery tickets, Phillies tickets and ballgame themed goodies and a baking basket full of cake mixes, sprinkles and cupcake liners.

I wanted to help out so I made a batch of cookies that they can sell at the benefit.

I know my friend’s aunt would be very proud of all the hard work she has put into making the raffle baskets, and I was really happy to be able to contribute. Hopefully the attendees like my cookies enough to want to buy them!

I Enjoy Being A Girl?

July 10, 2012March 23, 2014 ~ Angela ~ 8 Comments

I am definitely not a “girly” type of female.

I prefer jeans and sneakers to skirts and high heels. I have never (nor will I ever) worn a pair of stilettos. Your feet really aren’t meant to do that.

I would rather watch hockey than Dancing With the Stars. I was going to make NHL jersey cookies during the Stanley Cup playoffs this year. I had the cookies baked and everything, but I was too busy watching hockey to decorate them.

THE CUP!! (and me) — Me with Lord Stanley, many moons ago…

I’m not a fan of pink. I don’t scream at the sight of mice or spiders. I don’t get manicures unless I’m a bridesmaid in a wedding. I don’t spaz out when people bring their babies in to work.

I wasn’t even very girly when I was a little girl. Take my Barbie dolls for example. Yes, I had Barbies. No, they did not go shopping or go to fancy dances or get married to the perfectly coiffed Ken dolls. Barbie drowned in the Barbie pool. She hung herself from the second story of the Barbie house. Barbie fell to her death out the third story window of my actual house.

Barbie muerta (Photo credit: nicoventurelli)

Remember the Heart Family (Mommy, Daddy and two little toddlers – one boy, one girl) and the Heart Family car? They didn’t go for leisurely rides to the zoo. The Heart Family car was a plastic deathtrap on wheels hurtling down the stairs from my attic bedroom, smashing into the wall at the landing and sending Mr. and Mrs. Heart and their progeny flying in all directions.

The Heart Family - Kisses & Cuddles — The Heart Family – Kisses & Cuddles (Photo credit: Freddycat1)

I did have a heart shaped pillow with a picture of Dylan from 90210 (the ORIGINAL!!) on it and I like my cocktails sweet and fruity, so the girly-girl is somewhere there inside me – she just doesn’t come out that often.

I Love Dylan (Photo credit: emilydickinsonridesabmx)

Given all this, you can see why I would be amused by the fact that I have made not one, not two, but THREE girly baked treats in the past four days.

First up… Wedding Cake Cookies! A coworker’s daughter is getting married next weekend and she asked that I make cookies to put in the gift baskets she is making for their out of town guests.

Next, I attempted to make some hydrangea cupcakes I saw on Pinterest. For a tutorial on how to make these yourself, go here! These were to celebrate the birthday of one of my friends at work on Monday. They came out pretty good. When I was taking the photos my camera was choosing the flower macro setting, so at least I had Canon fooled.

Last but not least are the teapot cookies I made for my friend’s daughter’s Princess Tea Party 6th birthday shindig this weekend.

Okay, I’m gonna go blow up a Barbie doll or something…

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!!!

Put A Stick In It!

March 3, 2012March 3, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

Last May my friend was having her son’s baptism. I was helping her look for centerpiece ideas and we both loved the centerpieces made out of cookie pops. Not only do they make cute centerpieces, but at the end of the party everyone takes a cookie and you have your favors taken care of as well. Plus, it’s a cookie on stick – what’s not to like about that? Well… there is one thing. The price!! Fifty, sixty bucks for ONE centerpiece! Obviously that wasn’t going to happen so I said, “We can make them for WAY less than that!”

Now, I’d never made a cookie pop in my life and my only previous experience with making any type of decorated cookie resulted in some slightly sloppy (but still cute!) Pac-Man Cookies. How hard could it be though? You cut out your cookie shape, put a stick in it and bake.

Well, for the most part it really was that easy! We decided to do angels and crosses. My friend got the cookie cutters, and the only real snafu was that the cross cutter made cutouts too small to be sticking sticks in. In the end I think that worked in our favor because we wound up making crosses out of blue melting chocolate instead and they made a nice contrast against the angel cookies.

I knew from my Pac-Man cookie experience that I would need an icing with a little thicker consistency to decorate the angel cookies and the good old internet told me that royal icing was the way to go. So I whipped up a batch using the recipe from the container of Wilton Meringue Powder that I bought and got to work. I’m definitely no artist, so all I did was trace the outline of each section (head, wings and body) and then filled them in. Being only my second attempt at doing a decorated cookie I had yet to learn about the technique called flooding which makes a much smoother finished product (more on that later!) so they were a little lumpy looking but other than that I thought they came out great.

I used an edible color marker to draw on the face, then wrapped each cookie in individual cellophane bags. For the base of the centerpiece I had purchased little white square buckets from Oriental Trading Company. I put a foam craft ball in each bucket and then stuck the cookie pops and chocolate pops into the foam. To cover up what you could see of the foam ball I used some green tissue paper and green gem stones. Here is the final product…

Not bad for not spending a fortune, eh?

Totally Awesome 80’s Party and Pac-Man Cookies!

March 2, 2012March 4, 2012 ~ Angela ~ 2 Comments

A. Being a child of the 80’s I have a special place in my heart for hair bands, jelly shoes, and all things neon.

B. I love theme parties.

A + B = C (aka Totally Awesome 80’s Party!!)

A few years ago I decided to throw an 80’s themed party. I spent hours surfing the internet for ideas for decorations, food, drinks and the perfectly tacky 80’s outfit. One of the food ideas I came across would become my first attempt at making decorated sugar cookie cutouts – Pac-Man Cookies!!

The cookies themselves were simple enough to make. I needed three mini cookie cutters – tulip, a circle and a heart. Flip the tulip upside down and you have a ghost (or to be more specific, a Pinky, Blinky, Inky or Clyde). The circle makes the Pac-Man, and the pointy end of the heart can be used to cut a wedge out for Pac-Man’s mouth. They baked up perfectly!

Next step was to ice the cookies. This ended up being a little messy (remember, I said this was my FIRST attempt!!). The icing recipe I ended up using was more like a glaze and my application method involved a spoon, a toothpick and some foul language. Despite the cursing and the dripping icing, my finished product was pretty cute and VERY tasty.

: (a mini chocolate chip placed in a small dot of white icing from a tube makes the eyeballs)

The cookies were a hit, as were the drinks! I made a pitcher of Electric Smurf and a pitcher of Slimer’s Ecto Cooler, both which fit my 80’s theme in name AND color. Just in case that wasn’t enough sugar I also had a table filled with candy from my childhood. That’s right people, I found RAZZLES!!

I set up a playlist of all the greatest hits of the 80’s, covered my walls with 80’s posters and my couches with He-Man sheets, scrounged up an Alf hand puppet, and also had an 80’s game table!

I put a ton of work into my 80’s theme party and for the most part it was in fact, Totally Awesome! One note of caution – it seems that when you throw a party that reminds people of their childhood/teenage years there is a greatly increased likelihood of people actually acting like children. That is a story for a whole different blog though… : )

Oh, and that perfectly tacky 80’s outfit??