Eggnog Sugar Cookies

A couple of weeks ago, I go the chance to spend part of the day with my niece, who happens to be the most adorable little girl in the entire world!

What was even more amazing than that, was that we had our first baking experience together! We made Eggnog Sugar Cookies and man, were they good!

1/4 cup butter

1 tbs oil

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp rum extract (optional)

1 2/3 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

(I didn't get to take any pictures of the process because I was having way too much fun with my niece!)

Pre heat oven to 350'

Mix butter, oil, sugar, egg, vanilla and rum extract into large bowl.

Mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt into smaller bowl.

Pour dry ingredients into wet and mix until formed.

Roll out dough and use festive cookie cutters and sprinkles.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

Enjoy with a sweet little girl!

They turned out so cute and were super tasty!

She even got to use her Ariel cookie stamp!

Making sure everything is washed and clean! She's so helpful!

I love that her dress is all covered in flour! Looks like she bakes like I do :P

My sis serving up cookies and soy milk for us!

I'm so thankful for my day with them! I truly love being Auntie Brae <3

Bakerella in Toronto!

Last weekend, I had the wonderful oppertunity to catch Bakerella at her book signing right here in down town Toronto.

I've been a fan of her blog for quite some time now. She always has just great ideas and I always want to try them out! It was actually one of the reasons that I started Bake Star Wars For Me in the first place.

If you don't know who Bakerella is, you are truly missing out! She has recently taken the world by storm with her creation of Cake Pops, as you can see here below.

I was super glad to discover that she is just as sweet in person as she seems to be on her blog.

She wasn't wasn't even suppose to come to Canada on her book tour, so it was a nice surprise to find out that not only was she coming to Canada, but to the William-Sonoma down the street from me!

Bakerella told us that she had never been to Canada before, especially not in the winter. It was super cold that weekend, so I can't even imagine how she felt. She had to buy her first set of mittens EVER!

We has a great Q & A with her and I got to ask her 2 questions. I asked about how she takes her pictures, which was quite informative, considering I'm not very good at it, and how she got her name. I ended up standing next to her mother (As seen below in the back ground) who in turn spent most of the Q & A telling me insider tips. She was super great as well. We had a lot of fun giggling together.

Finally the book signing came. I was #36 in line. It took awhile to get to the front, but at least there was a cider tester on the way. It made everything better.

She loved my Sneaky Like Ninja cupcake shirt and we had a nice chat about blogging.

She told me that my questions were really great and said that she was glad that I came out.

Me too, Bakerella, me too!

Here is my lovely new Cake Pops book

Everyone loves Cake Pops, even my cats!

The book must've smelt good, because my cats wouldn't leave it alone.

She just loves the camera

Look, she even signed in pink!

you can check out her post about the event here. Also check out the slideshow for more pictures of yours truly :P

Ace Of Cakes - Star Wars Droid

Ace Of Cakes makes me wish I had cable. From what I've seen from parusing the channels at my parent's house, I could easily get hooked on this show.

Duff Goldman, the star pastry chef who loves Star Wars, was recently asked by Lucasfilms to be the voice of the baker droid in one of the new episodes of The Clone Wars. He sat down with Bonnie Burton of The Star Wars blog for this great interview:

Food Network's Ace of Cakes rock star pastry chef Duff Goldman has made everything from a Han Solo in carbonite cake for a Star Wars fan's birthday to a beeping R2-D2 cake for George Lucas, so it was only a matter of time before he was made into a baker droid in The Clone Wars episode "Evil Plans."
StarWars.com chats with Goldman about his new role as a baker droid, his critique of the animated cake, whether R2-D2 or C-3PO would make a better pastry chef and why he would love to bake a cake for Jabba the Hutt.

As a long-time Star Wars fan, how did it feel lending your voice to The Clone Wars? What was it like being a baker in droid form?
I'm so excited! We were at Lucasfilm and they were filming The Clone Wars and there was a baker droid in it! It was like, "Of course, you should be doing the voice for the baker droid!" I love doing voice over work anyway. It was incredible! I've been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember. And even just to have one little part in the Star Wars universe is just amazing.


What other voice acting have you done before this?
I played a dumb jock bully version of myself on King of the Hill. We did a cake for the big series finale they were having and they wanted us to do voices and I got to play basically myself in high school. And I do a lot of voice over work for our show and a couple of other food shows.

When you were told you'd be a baker droid, how did you decide to do the voice?
I saw a rough sketch of what the droid looked like, but I didn't want to have that influence me too much. I actually tried to do a robot voice, and then they reminded me that they have a digital processor to do that sort of thing.

Now that you've seen the animated cake, does it meet your standards?

I think that if I was a baker droid in a galaxy far, far away, a long time ago, that would be a cake I'd be very proud of.

What would you add or do differently?

I would borrow the part of R2-D2 that plays holograms and I would stick that on top of the cake and do a hologram of one of Jabba's dancing girls.

I love that you would make the equivalent of a dancing girl popping out a cake for a politician!
Of course!

Who would you rather have helping you in the kitchen -- R2-D2 or C-3PO?

If I was baking a cake, I would have C-3PO in the kitchen because he's very precise and you need that when following a recipe. I would put duct tape over his mouth though. It's really hard to bake with someone yammering at you. If he was telling me the odds of the cake baking correctly, I'd turn his voice box off.

Now if I was cooking a meal, I would want R2-D2 in the kitchen because when you're cooking, you're really cooking from the hip. It seems like Artoo made decisions as things happened. Artoo is more of a chef and Threepio is more of a pastry chef.

If you lived in the Star Wars galaxy, which character would you be honored to create a cake for?
I would do a gigantic victory cake for all the Wookiees and roll it out to them and watch them totally rip the cake to shreds.

You just want to see Wookiees covered in icing, don't you? Are you assuming Wookiees don't have proper table manners?

They're Wookiees, come on! Of course they don't have table manners! You saw Chewbacca in the cantina and that was it.

 

Is there anyone you'd be nervous making a cake for from the Star Wars universe?

I think a good test of my skills would be making a cake of Han Solo frozen in carbonite for Jabba the Hutt. We've made that cake in real life, and did it really well. But I would want to make it for Jabba but then stand on the grate on top of the Rancor pit and that would be the ultimate test. If he didn't drop me into the pit, I would know that Jabba would be a repeat customer. If you had to face the Rancor monster or angry Wookiees if your cake wasn't good enough, you'd do a really good job!

What kind of cake would Jabba get from you?
Probably a sweet cake with bits of frog in it! (laughs)



Cupcake Tuque

Brrrr.... It's beginning to get cold out, especially up here in Canada. Although the snow hasn't started to fall yet, you can tell that it soon will be. Winter coats and scarves are seen adorning the young and old alike. I've never been one for tuques, considering they always seem to mess up my hair.

But a cupcake tuque from Fredflair might just change my mind about that! Especially considering that it comes in 3 delicious flavours!

Chocolate

Vanilla

and Strawberry



The only question left is what flavour do I want? That's a tough call!

Which one would you pick?

UPDATE: It also comes in this great ice cream swirl!

 

Cinderella Dress Cake

It's cakes like this that made me start this blog. One day I hope to be able to make something this beautiful! I've always loved this dress ever since I was a little girl, so the thought of it being a cake and serving it with tea in my Cinderella tea cups, makes my heart happy.

Ban Bakes has such an amazing talent, don't you think? You can check out more of these wonderful cakes and cupcakes here.

Maybe if I work really hard, I can figure out how to make something like this for my niece's 5th birthday!

Thanks to The Disney Princess for bringing this to my attention and for loving Disney as much, if not more than I do!

Halloween Cookies

The company that I work for just started a Social Committee. I love that stuff, so I signed up right away. One of the first orders of business was, of course, Halloween.

I wanted to have a Costume Contest, but since we only have limited funds, we really didn't have anything to give as prizes.

I had just gotten all sorts of baking goodies for my birthday and was dying to try them out, so I offered to make sugar cookies for the winners. This idea was met enthusiastically.

Birthday Goodies

Couplers (6 of them!)

A tip brush

a pack of 8 gel icing colours

Disposable/reusable decorating bags (12 pack)

a set of 28 decorating tips!!!!

All of it from Wilton! What a great score!

ooh, I also picked up a set of Betty Crocker 101 cookie cutters from Kitchen Stuff Plus

So I pulled out my faithful sugar cookie recipe and got started.

I decided half way through that it would be fun to tint some of the dough. So I grabbed out my colour gels and started mixing. It was messy and very hard work to get the colour all mixed into it evenly.

But in the end, I ended up with regular, black and orange dough. The colours were really bright, but lost a bit of their colour as they baked.

It was great having so many couplers, because it allowed me to have 5 colours of icing going at once.

I used all of the Halloween shaped cookie cutters.

Ghosts and Mummies

Perfect pumpkins

Moons and Witches

Bats and Cats

Finally, after I was done and all the icing had hardened, I packaged them up so I could take them to work with me as prizes!

And you know who won?

ME!

Yes, that right, I won my own Halloween Costume Contest and my own cookies. Don't worry, I shared them with the rest of the Social Committee.
You'll never guess my costume though...

well you might

Are you surprised?

 

Glee!!

I was stuck home sick all week, with little to do other than curl up on the couch and watch DVD's. Lucky for me, a friend of mine had just lent me the second half of season 1 of Glee.

Being sick sucks, but Glee makes it a little bit better, heck, it makes everything better. Had a bad day? Pop in some Glee and let the music take you away!

This show almost makes me wish that I had cable so I could watch it every week as it comes out.

Anyway, imagine my glee when I came across these aborable cookies the other day on EpiCute, one of my favorite websites for adorable foods. I have no idea who made them, but I wish I did so I could give them full props!

And for those not in the know:

Top row: Finn, Artie, Quinn

Second row: Will, Rachel, Sue.

Third row: Mercedes, Puck, Tina.

Last row: Terri, Kurt, Emma.

UPDATE: I found out who made these wonderul cookies, it's none other than Susan from Diamonds For Dessert! I should have known! She always has such great stuff!

She even has a tutorial about how to make them yourself! Check it out here!

I think I feel a baking project coming on!