BAKE ALL THE THINGS!

Let's talk about Hyperbole and a Half - you are already reading this blog, yes?  If not, you should be.  Allie's blog is funny and heart-full, and gives some of the best descriptions of dealing with anxiety and depression I've ever read. She posts  infrequently, but when she does, it is worth the wait.

One of her most popular posts was This Is Why I'll Never Be an Adult.  It's about the how quickly an attempt to do all the adult things in life (return emails! go to the bank! grocery shopping! clean ALL the things!) can disintegrate into surfing the internet at 3 am.  I loved this post three years ago when it was first written, and I appear to have made very little progress towards being an adult since then, because I relate to it just as much now as I did then.  Actually, pretty much the entire internet loved this post, and "X all the Y" became an internet meme.

When I bought my thought bubble cookie cutter from a delightful 3D printer (!) Etsy store, I knew it was destined for a BAKE ALL THE THINGS! cookie interpretation of Why I'll Never Be an Adult.

And who needs to be an adult when you can be the God of Cake?

Um, adults stay up until 4 am decorating cookies, RIGHT?

Treat Yo Self

I can't find any flaws with Parks and Recreation's Tom and Donna's Treat Yo Self day. Especially since it starts with cupcakes:

My best friend (and sous chef) was in town for a visit this weekend, which is itself a treat  - and then we treated ourselves to 48 hours of good things: Greek food, burgers, wine, Mindy Kaling's conversational questions, good-bad tv, shopping, and cookie decorating.    It was a two-day treat yo self extravaganza that Tom and Donna would have approved of.

It is said that the effect of eating too many cookies is soporific

“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.” - Beatrix Potter

There is also something delicious about creating cookies.  It probably has something to do with all the sugar..... My friend Meaghan is having a baby, and the nursery is going to be a Beatrix Potter theme.  I'm sure her baby will be almost as awesome as these Peter Rabbit cookies (inspired by these felt ornaments) that I made for her baby shower.

Serendipitously, the day after I made the cookies, I found a Peter Rabbit cake stand, so this happened:

Love is a Mix Tape (Cookie)

I'm not really a joiner - and I generally avoid group activities.  But during university I was part of a pretty fantastic club.  It was a mix tape club - there were three of us who got together every few weeks, hauled all our CDs to one person's giant stereo, and painstaking recorded a mix tape based on a theme.  Even though my music collection is mostly digital these days, I still have a little stereo that will play cassette tapes, and my entire collection of our club's mixes.

I've wanted to make mix tape cookies for a long time, and earlier this year I did a random search for a cassette tape cookie cutter, and FOUND ONE.  Not only did it exist, but it was reasonably priced - and I even found a store that shipped to Canada for less than my university tuition. Sometimes the Internet is really awesome.

 I knew that I wanted the cookies to be black, so that I didn't have to cover them with black royal icing, which is okay when use sparingly, but doesn't really taste the greatest.  My online hunt pulled up some recipes that used black onyx cocoa powder, but the stores that selling it had really expensive shipping.  Sometimes the Internet is disappointing.  I eventually tracked down a spice store in Newfoundland selling what they called black cocoa - it arrived last week, and it's......not exactly black:

 I decided to just use it anyways, with a bit of the black food colouring added to this recipe from Suppers at Sunset.

Cookies and decorating:

Our mix club was called My So-Called Mix Tape Club (can you tell we came of age during the 90s?)

 We had a few really good themed tapes, but the group's favourite was probably "10 years / 10 minutes" - Side A were our newest favourite songs that we had liked for "10 minutes" and Side B were songs we had loved for a really long time (and when you are 22 years old, a long time is 10 years).

 Few people have captured the emotional resonance of a mix tape better than Rob Sheffiled in his book, Love Is a Mix Tape.  Read it. Seriously. "The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.”

Mix tapes are road trips, and seasons, and moments in time.

And now mix tapes are cookies.

Talk About a Dream, Try to Make It Real

Like Springsteen, I believe in the Promised Land - mine just involves baked goods.  My Bruce cookies from earlier this year came pretty close.  And my mind has been racing (in the street) ever since.  I had ideas for more Boss-themed cookies and cake - I just needed a few special tools.  Lucky for me, my mother is a creative - and generous - genius.  And she is probably regretting the day she said that with enough time and the right tools you can do anything.

She started making her own cookie cutters last year, using pliers to bend a circular metal cookie cutter into other shapes.  She made me the anatomical heart cutter I used for this year's Palentine's.  In December, I emailed her and asked if she could make me a Springsteen silhouette cookie cutter.  When I didn't hear back from her, I sent a follow-up email to see how it was coming along - apparently she thought I was joking.  I never joke about Springsteen.  The design I wanted was too complicated for the size of cookie cutter she had been working with; so, I ordered her a refill kit for a "build your own cookie cutter" kit.  She had the tools - just needed the time. Et voila:

While custom cookie cutters are a newer talent, my mom has been stencilling for as long as I can remember, and while I was waiting for my cookie cutters to be produced, it dawned on me she could probably make some custom cake stencils - so I sent off some more requests of iconic Springsteen imagery, and last week I picked up the finished products, which, used with a simple chocolate cake and some icing sugar, result in THIS:

Palentines: I get by with a little help from my friends

So, this happened:

Palentines 2013.  It was my 3rd annual evening of sugary goodness in celebration of friendship, inspired by Leslie Knope's Galentines.  For past Palentines baked goods, look here, though this year things are on a whole other level. A few weeks ago I found a jadeite platter at an antique market, and I thought it would look nice with some pink macrons, and a theme/colour scheme was born.  (Note: "almond meal' sounds gross, and in the end I decided to not even make any macaroons).

I finally had the perfect use for the conjoined twin cookie cutter my friend Julia picked up fro me at the Mutter Museum a few years ago:

 

Owl cookies

Heart cookies:

 

 

 

A....different type of heart cookie.  My mom made me the  cookie cutter.  That's right, she MADE it.  I wish I hadn't run out of steam and had the time to properly ice the cookies...

 

Butter cake  the Miette recipe has never failed me:

 Marshmallows.  Yes, MARSHMALLOWS. Inspired by Gesine Bullock-Prado's work in Sugar Baby.

 Glitter Cookies:

 Owl cupcakes:

Cookie Dough Truffles:

 

Chocolate lollipops.  I couldn't find the light green chocolate wafers anywhere in Ottawa, and Rushika, who tragically no longer lives in the same city as me, earned the title of the Patron Saint of Palentines by picking some up at her local cake supply store and mailing them to me. Though if I got to choose, I would have picked her over the green chocolates.

 

 

 

 

Meringue hearts, which didn't quite turn out like these ones:

Mini candy buffet!  The Candy Store was the perfect resource for this.

Treat bags for the candy buffet, from My Sweet Life:

Cups, with sticker designed by Modern Zebra

Lovely, lovely, lovely banner from Unicorn Parade:

Garland by Scout and Acadia.

Pompoms by Pomtree:

And more, more, more: