a broken heart..

I haven't been baking much lately and here's the reason why.

I lost one of my best friends and her baby, he was like a nephew to me this past week. I've gone to funerals, lost some loved ones but never two people at once, and never anyone I was this close to. My heart is aching as I know I can't see them as often as I could if they were here on earth. I'm thankful that they are in Heaven with Jesus and that we will again, see them someday soon.

I ask that you would please be in prayer for The Ray family. As they lost like I said not only one, but two of the sweetest blessings God has ever given.

Thank you in advance.

&& Thank you to God for the relationship I had with sweet Becca&Coco. I love you both very much. Till we meet again, your always in my <3


This is Beccaboo, Coco & Me at my sister's wedding a month ago(:

What's better than a good ol' Chocolate Chip Cookie

..not much, in my opinion! ;) I love me some Chocolate Chip cookies, as does my husband. My husbie has been craving some good ol' chocolate chip cookies lately, and I've been looking for a good recipe. I came across Nestle's original recipe and I have to say, it is the BEST! I might be a little biased, seems how this precious fellow,


also know as our son, his name is Nestle :)

Back to the cookies. You have got to try this recipe. I made some with just chocolate chips, some with walnuts and some with cranberries. Yum! They are all equally delicious! I also made some small and some great big ones :) My favorite thing about this recipe is, somehow the chocolate chips, no matter if they're straight out of the oven or have set over night, melt in your mouth!!




The one with a bite out of it, has walnuts, choco chips, & cranberries!





Hope you're having a great weekend!

I've Been featured at..

I've been featured at My Creative Way. Go check it out :)

Created by Diane.

If you've never checked her blog out you need to visit it. She has some of the best recipes I've ever seen. I've made quite of few of her creations, including the one I'm going to blog about today.

For Thanksgiving, I made Diane's Mini Cranberry Pecan Pies. They were a big hit. I will warn you, if you don't like fresh cranberries or tartness, then you might not like these. My husband like them, but would have rather not had the cranberries. My mom, Nanny, and I loved the cranberries!!! Anyway, here are the pictures of these darling creations.






If you would like to try this recipe, hop on over to Diane's blog.

Corn Flake Wreaths

A few years ago a friend of ours shared with us a recipe for corn flake Christmas wreaths. I just love these things. They are so festive, simple and taste just like a rice krispie treat :) Enjoy!











Prep Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
Servings: 12

Ingredients
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 package (10 oz., about 40) regular marshmallows
- or -
4 cups miniature marshmallows
1 teaspoon green food coloring
6 cups Kellogg's® Rice Krispies® cereal
Canned frosting or decorating gel
Assorted candies

I didn't use frosting. I just stuck red hots to the wreaths as they were cooling.

1. In large saucepan melt butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat. Stir in food coloring.

2. Add KELLOGG'S RICE KRISPIES cereal. Stir until well coated.

3. Using 1/4-cup measuring cup coated with cooking spray portion cereal mixture. Using buttered hands each portion into small wreath. Decorate with frosting and/or candies. Best if served the same day.

MICROWAVE DIRECTIONS:
In microwave-safe bowl heat butter and marshmallows on HIGH for 3 minutes, stirring after 2 minutes. Stir until smooth. Follow steps 2 and 3 above. Microwave cooking times, may vary.

It's that time of year..

Thanksgiving is almost here and my favorite follows close after...CHRISTMAS! You guys, I have loved Christmas from my very first breath. There is something so magical, inspiring, and amazing about Christmas,our Savior's birth, the season and the feeling I get just thinking about it. I truly LOVE this time of year. With that being said, I've been so busy this past week. Saturday my sister got married and I was her matron of honor! Her wedding turned out beautiful and I think it was everything she could have ever dreamed of!

Thursday night all of the girls got together and went out to dinner at Olive Garden to celebrate and I was asked to make cupcakes. Orginally, I made homemade Chocolate chip cupcakes with Diane's cream cheese icing. Unfortunately, the baking powder I used was WAY out of date, so I wound up make a yellow cupcakes out of a box, b/c i didn't have time for anything else. I topped them with pink sanding sugar and green fondant hearts and flowers. I didn't take a picture b/c i left my camera at home. Everyone loved them. They're favorite part was the cream cheese icing! You're right Diane, it's such a hit!

Lastly, I made a Soapapilla Cheesecake. For those of you who don't know what that is, or haven't tried it. You don't know what you're missing. My husband LOVES this stuff. He pretty much ate all but one serving of it. Here's the recipe i used for it.

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 (8 ounce) packages refrigerated crescent rolls
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:

1.Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Prepare a 9x13 inch baking dish with cooking spray.
2.Beat the cream cheese with 1 cup of sugar and the vanilla extract in a bowl until smooth; set aside.
3.Unroll the cans of crescent roll dough, and use a rolling pin to shape each sheet into 9x13 inch rectangles. Press one sheet into the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Evenly spread the cream cheese mixture into the baking dish, then cover with the remaining piece of crescent dough, and brush with melted butter. Stir together 1/2 cup of sugar with the cinnamon in a small bowl, and sprinkle evenly over the top of the cheesecake.
4.Bake in the preheated oven until the crescent dough has puffed and turned golden brown, about 30 minutes. Allow to cool 10 minutes before serving

recipe adapted from allrecipes.

Hope you enjoy and have a wonderful weekend (:

Brown Sugar Cupcakes

This weekend I was looking for a recipe to make for my Children's Church class on Sunday. They are my little taste testers. Believe me, they're as honest as it gets ;)
Anyways, I came across Cookies and Cups recipe for Brown Sugar Cupcakes with Chocolate chip cookie dough icing. I wound up not feeling well on Saturday night so I made these this morning instead! You can find the recipe here. Be sure to follow her link to the buttercream icing. I had to tweak the recipe b/c I accidentally had a blonde moment,no offense, and made the recipe without clicking the buttercream link and it tasted not right, so I went back over the post and found that I had forgot the most important part, lol.




Make sure you let them cool completely. I was a little eager to try them so my icing melted, just a little and I had to try one, so that's why there's one missing :)




Hope you enjoy! Have a fantastic week, everyone :)

Happy Halloween!

This past week I made 3 different batches of my Magic Cookie Bars! They were such a hit, like posted in my previous blog post. I did change up on of the recipes a little bit, by adding Honey Nut Shredded Wheat for the crust in place of the graham crackers! It was a great switch, just didn't stick together as well as the graham crackers.

Friday night we went on a camp out with the youth group from our church. I wanted to bring something to take along so I made homemade caramel popcorn. Recipe from Brown Eyed baker. It was something fun and tasty and the kids liked it! Then Saturday night I made some halloween cookies for my Children's church class on Sunday. They were chocolate break and bakes with white ghost in the center. I forgot to take pictures on everything, unfortunately b/c i had so much going on! That's pretty much what my weekend consisted of!

Hope everyone had a wonderful halloween!

Magic Cookie Bars!

Our church has a group of people that get together on Tuesday nights for a prayer meeting. We come together and talk about what's going on in our lives and we ask for prayer request and pray over the list we have. We used to alternate and make dinner for everyone but the group got so big, which is great, and now we just make dessert. Tonight I made magic cookie bars for the group tonight. You can find the recipe below. I've made these so many times before and they are such a hit. They're also quick and easy.



Magic Cookie Bars

1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cups of your choice of nuts
2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup of shredded coconut
1/2 cup-1 stick of butter
1 cup of graham crackers(crumbled, I used my new food processor that my husband bought me for our One year wedding anniversary, this past Sunday!)


This thing has a HEMI in it ;)

Preheat your oven to 350*, 325* if you're using a glass pan.
Melt your stick of butter.
Crumbled the graham crackers, measure out 1 cup and pour them over the butter and spread them, to cover the bottom of the pan.
Then pour the sweetened condensed milk over the top of the graham cracker/butter mixture.
Next, pour the chocolate chips, coconut and nut of your choice over the top.
Last bake for 20-30 minutes depending on your oven. Mine was about 20 minutes.

** I also added peanut butter chips to mine and they were delish.**

Halloween Cupcake Stand :)

I've got to say, this is the most exciting post I've ever done! Today was Homecoming at our church(our church's anniversary!). We always have a big potluck dinner after services. This year, we were asked to bring a meat dish, veggie and dessert. As always, I was so excited about the dessert. I had picked up a cake mix at the store with the orange & black confetti in the batter and couldn't wait to use it so I decided to make cupcakes with it! Exciting, right? but that's not the best
part.

I've been following Stephanie @ SweetCreationsByStephanie for about a month now! She is so talented! I came across her tutorial for a cupcake stand a few weeks ago and knew from the moment i saw it I had to make one. Now, I, myself am not that crafty but my husband on the other hand is the most craftiest(is that a word?) man you could ever meet. Name something and he can build/make it! So since I had decided on making the cupcakes for our dessert, I showed him the cupcake stand Stephanie had made and asked him if he would help me build it! To my suprise he was like, sure! You see, he'd rather build things with his welder or take apart our rhino(4 wheeling golf cart thing) but he said yes. So ALL DAY yesterday we built this darling(if i might say so myself) cupcake stand. It was a HUGE hit at church! So thank you Stephanie for the tips on how to make it, and thanks to my hubby of (1 year exactly TODAY!) for helping me! Now for the fun part! Here are the pictures of it. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take any picture with the cupcakes on it. I could have cried when I realized that after it was all done. I made confetti orange and black cupcakes with chocolate icing and black and orange sprinkles with black, orange, and green cupcake holders that said boo. It was so cute! I'll check with everyone at church to see if anyone took a picture and i'll post it later if they did. enjoy and have a great week!





















Ps. I had to add a picture of my cute leopard print glue gun ;)

GOOOO Rangers!

I just wanted to post a quick blog to say I'm so proud of my Texas Rangers! We FINALLY made it to the WORLD SERIES!!!! GOOOOO RANGERS!!!!


I've got my antlers up! How about you? ;)

Royal Icing

Hi there y'all!

I'm on a mission to find a Royal Icing recipe that will work for me! I've tried several and it seems like it's either too thick or too thin and it's very frustrating! I follow so many cookie decorators on blogger that are so talented and seem to have it down to a tee! If any of you wonderful bloggers would like to share your recipe with me. Please leave a comment below! Thank you so much.

As for baking, in the past few weeks I've baked pumpkin bread, and cake pops! I made some really cute pumpkin bread mini loaves using a decorative pan my parents bought me from walmart. It's better homes and gardens and it is just down right adorable. I totally forgot to take a picture of the finished product, though :(

Next up, I hosted bunco this month at my house and was so busy getting ready for it, i forgot to take a picture of my darlin' cake pops when they were finished(all of them together) but I did run and snap the last few so y'all could see!






I coated them with Wilton Orange melts and bakers chocolate and then dipped them in some halloween sprinkles :) They were a hit!

Hope everyone is having and Oooberly awesome October!

Candy Melts vs. Baker's chocolate

So I have a question for all you baker's out there!!!

This past weekend I was making Cakeballs for my kids in Children's church and I've always used baker's chocolate to dip them in. Baker's is much smoother and easier to work with than wilton's candy melts--which i have used in the past and I used for some of the cake balls this weekend before changing to baker's. The question I have is..baker's chocolate like this picture below. does it come in different colors besides white and black?



or is there a technique or ingredient that I could add to the wilton melts to make them more flexible and smooth like the baker's chocolate?


If you have an idea, please leave me a comment below!
Thanks and have a wonderful week :)

Wilton: Beginners Class; Course 3

This class we learned how to pipe leaves, drop flowers, dots, and zig zag lines. Like I said we were behind from the class before, but that's ok we acutally had time to play this class :) Here's a picture of my cupcakes, that I decorated this class!


I forgot to mention. We also learned how to pipe mums. I'm not a fan of mums, I think they look kind of silly. For the the cupcakes that have green, yellow and blue i just mixed a little of each color in my piping bag and I just love the way they turned out :) I also used Duff(from Ace of Cakes) food coloring for the vibrant blue color!

Course 1

Here are the pictures from course 1 class 2. We were taught how to ice a cake. It's a lot harder then it seems. Our instructor is a little new at what she does, and she likes to talk, alot. So, needless to say every week we're behind and have to carry over to the next class the things we were suppose to learn in the class before. Over all we are learning new things and I'm so excited to practice and carry on to the next class :)




not bad for my first time icing a cake!


The inside of the cake. I just colored the buttercream brown for the inside.



The cake tasted great. I'm going to keep practicing and hopefully get better and better!

Wilton Decorating Basics.

So I'm sure from the title of this blog post, you can gather that I'm taking the wilton decorating class. I'm taking it with my Momma, sister & Nanny! What better way then to take a class learning to better what you love doing, with the people you love. I'm so excited to learn more about decorating and baking.

Our first class went great. Our teacher is a little talkative, which is good but we ran out of time and didn't get to decorate our cookies. I'm looking forward to next class where we will actually get to decorate a cake! Have any of you ever taken any of the Wilton classes? I'd love to hear feedback, if you have!

That's really all the post is about and one more thing. If you wouldn't mind saying a prayer for my daddy, it would be greatly appreciated! He has a nodule on his lungs(they think)(went in for a ct scan today) and we're waiting for the results to see what they want to do about it. We serve an awesome healing God and I know that he will take care of my daddy, so please just lift him up in prayer!

thanks y'all
:)

Cupcake Icing..

So I've been dying to know how you get your icing to look like the icing on these cupcakes. I know it's a round tip, but I can't seem to figure out the number and type of icing that will pipe like this. If anyone knows please leave a comment below! Thanks in advance, and have a wonderful week :)

Goodies!

So this is going to kind of be a long post with lots of pictures! Yay! I love pictures and my camera is so awesome :)

So this past week, you could say I got my baking on! I baked Banana Cupcakes, with a honey-cinnamon icing. I got the recipe for Mini Baker's blog. I love her blog and recipes! I don't know how to link her site or I would. Here is a picture of the yummy cupcakes!




Then I decided last night that I wanted to make homemade marshmellows. Why? I'm not really sure b/c I'm not a huge marshmellow fan. I LOVE mini marshmellows that come in your hot chocolate. They are the bomb, but regular marshmellows are just ok. I got a little clever and decided to dip them in coconut and some in crushed graham crackers like smores! They were pretty good after all. The recipe made a ton of them though! Here's what they look like!



While I was making the homemade marshmellows, my husband and I were enjoying the storm. Like I mentioned earlier, my camera is AWESOME so I had to run outside and snap a few pictures of the lovely clouds and dark sky!



Last but not least. My bubs(little brother) is going back to college tomorrow, so we went shopping yesterday to get all the stuff for him to take back. Walmart and target have a great selection of back to school things. I'm not going to school but I love to look at all the neat things they have and the bright colors! I was so excited when i saw this personal coffee maker in their sales ad for $17. For my momma's birthday in February we bought her one of the Keriug coffee makers. If you know what I'm talking about you know they are expensive, so when I saw this I was like heck yes! So we went to walmart yesterday and they only had pink. My husband wouldn't be too happy if i brought a pink coffee maker home so I decided I would wait. Well today we ran to a different walmart and they had green and black and since our kitchen is done in black and stainless steel my husband said we needed to get black so here she is...


I can't wait till the fall/winter when I will be drinking coffee every morning :)

Anyways, I guess that's all I wanted to share..except for I went to sign up for Wilton Cake Decorating classes today and Hobby Lobby, Jo Ann's, and Michael's were all booked or had already started the class :( So we have to wait till September. I'm super excited about that!

Have a great weekend everyone!
-Kate

So it's been awhile since I last posted a blog. I haven't been baking much lately b/c of the weather here. It's crazy hot, and who wants to turn on an oven when it's already hot enough. Well that has come to an end. I'm having withdrawls from not baking, so I should be uploading some pictures and another post to come soon.

My momma and I went to JoAnn's today and I picked up a new Cupcake decorating book. I'm so eager to use some of their ideas!

Anyways, it's late so I'm going to head off to bed!

Have a great rest of the weekend!!!

Easter Cookies!

Ok so all day Friday my momma and I baked and decorated cookies for our church Easter Egg Hunt. I didn't get to snap but one picture of just a few of the cookies I decorated. I wasn't too thrilled about them, but hey they are cute and I got lots of compliments on them and how they taste :)

I'm still working on getting down the "right" consistency of flooding my cookies. It seems as though it's either too thick and clumpy or too thin and runs over the sides. (any suggestions are welcome?!) So with that being said, I want to thank everyone who has helped me and given me advice thus far. It makes me want to keep on going and just work at getting better everyday and for that I thank each of you! I wish I knew how to link your blog but i can't figure it out. If you know how please let me know.

here's the pic of the cookies. They were set on top of each other before compeltely dry, so some are smeared.




I hope all of you had a wonderful Easter and a terrific week!

-Kate

HAPPY EASTER!!!!!

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

I Timothy 3:16

What an awesome verse about the Easter story! Happy Easter to you & yours and remember what the meaning of Easter is!!

I encourage you and your family to go to church tomorrow! I promise you won't regret it!

*Be Blessed*

Kate

a change..

So as most of you can tell, I changed the name of my blog and the layout and a few other things. I figured since it is the internet and anyone can access this page, I don't want it to be so personal. I'm fairly new to blogging so I haven't learned much about how you can keep it more private, so I first thought, I'd start a new blog because really I just want a blog to share my baking adventures..but then I would loose my followers and I'd have to go back through and find everyone. So at last, I decided to just change things up here!

Anyways, last night I was up till about 1am decorating/baking cookies. The cookies turned out awesome! They were so buttery and fluffy, but didn't spread too much, it was awesome. Now the icing was a pain, to say the least. I ran out of piping bags, and the first batch I made was too thick and the second was too watery. So I had to make do with what I had and I left about 10 cookies to play with later tonight! I'm trying to get better and better quickly so I can make some cookies for a friend's baby shower. My husband asked me this morning.."Can you please make some cookies, other than onesies, stollers, and baby feet, so I can take some to work and people won't ask why I'm eating baby shower cookies". Ha ha! So I better get good soon so I can move onto other cookies so my hubby will be happy :)

So anyways, I'm off to read up on The Pioneer Women's blog. I love her! My cousins got me her cookbook for Christmas. I read like 60 pages the first week I had it, and I don't like to read, at all :)

I'll leave y'all with a piece of my heart!!!

Cake Balls & Cupcakes

Here's a couple pictures of the cake balls and cupcakes I made over the weekend for my Momma's birthday and for my Children's church class! They were both a big hit! I can't wait to make more and get better at decorating :)