Valentine's Day Cookies!!

So even though I'm a tad bit late for a Valentine's Day post, I really wanted to show you guys a few pictures of the sugar cookies that I managed to get before these guys disappeared!

How fun are these?? Not gonna lie, they took me for FOREVER to make. I've never been a big fan of the sugar cookie making/decorating. It takes an hour or so to chill the dough, then you have to dirty the counter to roll them out, and then I always loose a few during the transfer from cookie-cutting to pan (although my average is steadily increasing). And thats just to get a cookie! Then you have to either decorate with sprinkles (which always fall off for me) or wait until they cool and then frost (and normally have to make a couple of different colors to make them look cute). I'm exhausted just typing it.

However, I have recently decided that I wanted to get better at this sugar cookie decorating thing, because they look so dang cute! So, I made my mother-in-laws sugar cookie dough (delicious) and cut out a bunch of heart cookies. I do have to say that using the Silpat to roll out the dough really helped these babies to not stick to the floured surface (yay!). While they cooled, I made royal icing and colored it PINK! I then piped a really thin line of icing to outline the heart. (I sucked at this. Like really sucked.) Then, I added a little bit of water to the icing and filled in the outline (although some turned into bleeding hearts since they leaked outside the icing lines. I was never great at coloring inside the lines anyways....). They didn't look great at this point - the lines weren't really straight and kind of lumpy and the icing filling wasn't quite even, so I decided to hide their flaws with SPRINKLES - and it really worked!! I loved the pink on pink icing/sprinkle combo. I also made some red icing and put the same pink sprinkles on them - the colors didn't turn out in the picture, but I loved the contrast and it was probably my favorite color combo.

I didn't think that these were awful for my first attempt. And I actually had a fun time doing it, until I got to the dirty dishes part. I'm pretty sure they tasted good since they were gone by just the next day on our way down to the beach - we even had to make an emergency trip to a cooking store to buy more cookie cutters so that we'd have some cookies to eat ON Valentine's Day!

I hope that everyone had a great valentine's day (better late than never)!!! Thanks for stopping by!!!

Super Bowl!

I had been looking forward to throwing the second annual Woodruff Superbowl Party for a long time - it was the light at the end of the tunnel of a long month of studying. I decided to serve Indianapolis vs. New Orleans food - complete with jambalya vs. buffalo chicken mac n' cheese. (I never did find out who won the food bowl - they were both all gone by the end of the night!!!)

I also OBVIOUSLY had to do themed desserts as well, and they were OBVIOUSLY all bite sized. I started off with two kinds of cupcakes - a white cake with blue buttercream frosting and a chocolate cake with yellow cream cheese icing. I'm a sucker for chocolate cake and anything with cream cheese, so you can guess which was my favorite. Plus I got to try out my beginning staged piping skills, which actually turned out better than expected after a momentary panic of not finding the right tip (and the only one I've ever used).

See? Not so bad.

The next thing I made, and my absolute FAVORITE were these mini peanut butter pies with graham cracker crust. I had my first slice of peanut butter pie at a holiday party my parents had when I was little, and have been obsessed ever since. Since I can't make an entire pie because I would eat it myself (in probably 10 minutes), I had been brainstorming how to make these guys mini-sized. I ended up individually forming the crusts into mini-muffin tins, but upon inverting the pan to get them out, I lost a bunch of the ends of the crust. I made the next batch in paper cups, scooped the filling into them with an ice cream scooper, and stuck them in the freezer. The next morning, the paper peeled right off no problem and left most of the crust. I topped these guys with chocolate ganache and managed to get a few onto the plate instead of in my belly :)

Since I had a lot of leftover ganache from the mini PB-pies, I had to whip up something to put underneath it (of course). I found a quick brownie recipe from Hershey's that ended up being great, but not as fudgy as I like. BUT the ganache MADE the brownies and I'm not sure that I'll be able to make another brownie without the rich topping. darn.

Doesn't that look scrumptious??

Hope you all had a great superbowl (if you weren't over here enjoying the above treats) and GO HEELS, who happen to be playing dook right now. (I get too nervous to actually watch the entire game without having something to distract me) Stayed tuned for some Valentine's day sugar cookies!