The Best Sugar Cookie Recipe

This is the best and easiest sugar cookie recipe you will find.  Back when I was a cake decorator a fellow decorator shared this recipe and now it's the only one I use for sugar cookies.  I love it because it's great for last minute rolling.  Usually you need to refrigerate your dough for several hours before you can roll it out, but not with this recipe.  You can mix it up, roll it out, throw it in the oven for 4 minutes and you're ready to decorate.  I like to roll mine out a little thicker for a soft cookie.

Sugar Cookies:

1 Cup Soft Butter

1 Cup Sugar

2 Eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

3 Cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. cream of tartar (this is the secret ingred. for allowing you to roll them out right away!)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Combine the butter and sugar.  Add eggs and vanilla.  Mix well.  Add dry ingredients.  Mix well.  Roll out.  Cut out.  Bake at 400 degrees for 4 minutes.  Enjoy!

Frosting

I like this frosting the best.  But if you want to do the piping like I did in the pictures below you will need royal icing.  Sorry to be confusing, but I like the taste of this frosting best.  Royal icing doesn't taste the best, but it makes for the prettiest cookies!

3/4 Cup Soft Butter

4    Cups Powdered Sugar

3    T water

1    tsp vanilla

1    egg white

Sift powdered sugar.  Combine butter sugar and water.  Mix well.  Add vanilla and egg white and mix well.  Add food coloring if you'd like.  Have fun frosting the cookies!

I wanted to do a tutorial on how to do flood work with pretty designs, but it's kinda tricky to photograph at midnight!  I made these cookies for my dear friend's baby shower.  We were celebrating the anticipation of Lucy Wren.  I didn't get a chance to snap many pics from the shower, but it was gorgeous.  I have some talented friends who know how to throw a party.  I made this little embroidery hoop sign.

And here are the pictures from the valentine cookie decorating party at my house.  

Wedding Cheesecake

I made a cheesecake for a wedding this last weekend.  I've had more than my fill of cheesecake!  I wanted to make a practice one, and I wanted to experiment with the pans I had, so I made 3 different cheesecakes, then the two for the actual wedding.  I think it turned out well.  On the practice one I did some white chocolate curls. Due to the humidity and temperature they really weren't working for me for the actual wedding one, so I went with simple, classic look of just strawberries.  There was a giant white peony that went on the side.  The lighting was poor, so my pictures of the actual one (top) are no good!  I must work on figuring out how to take better pictures in low light. 

cake: baked, decorated, devoured

The cake is finished! This was a red velvet cake filled with ganache and cream cheese icing. This was probably the least stressful cake I've done. All made in one spot, and only needed to be walked out the door, what an easy delivery!
One more wedding to go, 4 more days!

Wedding craziness

It's been incredibly crazy the last few weeks. It's finally starting to settle down. So I just had to focus on one task at a time, or my head would explode! So we stayed with T.J. for about a month, but since he was getting married we had to move out. One night was spent at an awful, dirty, icky, motel. The next two nights we stayed at a better place with a pool, so I could swim off my stress. I've never had so much anxiety in my life. So we moved every other night. Then we stayed at a cabin Sam's parents rented on Lake Wissota. I had a major meltdown that afternoon. I was planning on possibly making the wedding cake for TJ and Andrea there. When I saw it I knew that wasn't going to happen. I'm surprised I lasted that long. I had kept all the stress in, until that afternoon. So plan B. My wonderful Grandma let me use her apartment. The reason I didn't use her apartment in the first place was because the oven in her place is unreliable. She arranged for me to use June's oven (downstairs right below my Grandma's place) I also had an empty refrigerator to use in their meeting room. Of course this meant mad triangles from my Grandma's, to June's, to the refrigerator. I had everyone in that complex wondering what was going on with that crazy girl who had cakes in her hand running down the halls. Grocery store- to Michaels- to my grandma's- to the rehearsal dinner. Thursday and Friday was a baking blur! That was the most down to the wire cake. I didn't know if it would get done in time. Luckily my sister Heidi aka stylist/sous chef came to my rescue. Sam is usually my little cake buddy, but he was busy with best man duties. So Heidi came with an outfit for me, complete with shoe selection and a bag(well she forgot the bag, but that's ok) We rushed to the reception site and then to the wedding, just in the nick of time to see Andrea walk down the aisle. phew!

Wedding Cakes

I'm recovering today from making 7 cakes! I made these cakes for Mike Mckinley. He got married yesterday out at his gardens. Sam has been friends with him and also has been working for him on and off for about 6 years as a groundskeeper. I hope to go out there this week and get some pictures of his property. It is absolutely gorgeous. It's like a little getaway right here in Eau Claire. My mom and I had fun finding some milk glass platters to display the cakes on. Sam and I went around the gardens and picked flowers and raspberries to put on the cakes. I had fun doing "country style" cakes. Most of the ones I have done have been very elegant, so it was fun to do a different style. I made choc. cake, white cake, and carrot cake. It was this very time last year, when my good friends Jess and Jeff got married. Happy 1st anniversary you two!

Weddings, Reunions, and Cakes, Oh my!

Ok, ok! So I said I was going to blog more often, and then July happened! Last weekend was absolutely crazy but it's all over with now. I have many, many things to update you all on! First off, the cake pics. The bigger one is a fondant covered cake I did for Matt and Heidi's wedding. I apologize, the lighting was so dark and terrible, so the photos are not great. I'm really hoping the ones from my SLR will turn out better. So we're off to our Bible study. My apologies, I'll fix the sideways pic when I get back, and look forward to more fun posts soon!
Alright, the photo is now straight, much better! So I need to update you all.


So here are a few pics from the reunion we had. It's been five years since I graduated! Crazy, so since our class was really small we got together for dinner. These pics are of the last stragglers to leave the restaurant, and we totally forgot to get a good picture of everyone! It was fun catching up with everyone.
I am so glad that weekend is over! It was stressful. I had to work, on top of making two wedding cakes and attending the weddings, a friend also had a bridal shower that weekend, and we had this class reunion. So yes, I did say I was going to post more often, but you can forgive me, right?
So what do you think of the polka dotted dress? I got it very quickly at WetSeal. It was $11. Polka dots are not usually my thing, but it has cute big buttons and I thought it was fun, and hey, you cant' beat 11 bucks. This is a perfect segue into my next post! It's going to be all about the shopping and my addiction to sales!

Picnic in the Park

Of course the camera died right after I took a few pictures of the food. We had yummy chicken salad sandwiches on New French Bakery bread. I looooove their bread. So no cute anniversary pictures of the two of us. I also made a wedding cake recently. It was a very simple cake. I'll post more often! Take care!

I make Cakes

The first one is my friend Jess and Jeff's cake. The second (green cake) was Kim and Kyle's, the third (the white with orange) was mine. No I'm not completely crazy, it was a dummy cake, so I made it ahead of time. The last fun mad hatter pink and orange cake was done for Jenny's Sweet 16!