As American as...

Apple Pie Cookies!

Happy post-Independence Day, everyone! I hope that your day was filled with good food, lots of fun, and few fireworks-related injuries.

Yesterday, my Dad decided we were going to have a "cookout." At our house, that usually entails Dad cooking outside, yes, but he's the only one who ever sets foot out the door. The rest of us stay inside and patiently wait for the fruits of his labor. So, okay: cookout. My father also invited my boyfriend--who accepted the invite--so this meant the potential for embarrassing stories and/or tons of really corny jokes and weird comments. The usual family-meeting-the-boyfriend silliness.

I figured that, in order to deflect attention from the crazy, I should cook up some sort of distraction--literally! So I made an old favorite, the Apple Pie Cookie.

It's been a long time since I first made these cookies. I think the last time might have been in Jessica's kitchen at UF--well over a year ago. But I pulled out my recipe and ran off to Publix (the most glorious grocery store on Earth!) for the essentials.

Unfortunately, while I did (finally) remember to pick up some nutmeg and allspice, I forgot the cream of tartar. (This was the first mistake.) I did not realize this mistake until I was halfway through transforming a gloppy mass of shortening and sugar into cookie dough. Now, if you've never heard of cream of tartar, you're probably not alone. It's a white powdery substance that forms on the inside of wine barrels. When the wine is emptied, the powder is used to stabilize egg whites and as an acid to enhance the leavening power of certain products like baking soda. You can find it in the spice aisle of all reputable grocery stores.

My lack of cream of tartar was a problem--leavening is kiiind of important in this sort of cookie dough. So I did a Google search of cream of tartar substitutes, and found that there really are no good ones...however, in a pinch, and in certain recipes, so long as you have an acid you should be okay. An acid like vinegar or lemon juice. Jackpot. In went 1 teaspoon of lemon juice. And I prayed that a) it would work and b) it wouldn't make the cookies taste awful.

I also had some difficulty with my apple pie filling. First of all, the butter nearly exploded out of the saucepan because the stove heated up too quickly. Then the sugars started to caramelize, even though I turned the heat allll the way down. But I managed to catch it in time, put in the apples, and transfer the filling to a nice, cold bowl.

The cookies were easy to put together, and I dusted the top of each with cinnamon sugar before throwing them in the oven.

They came out looking exactly as they were supposed to...and so I crossed my fingers and waited until my first taste-tester arrived.

The good news is that, despite the substitution of lemon juice for the cream of tartar, the cookies came out beautifully. They were indeed a hit (as they always were when I made 'em at UF).

I guess the sugary distraction worked, because a great time was had by all (myself included). Yesterday was honestly a perfect day.

The Cookie!



Enjoyment of the Cookie
The Boyfriend



The Father

Tasty, Healthy AND Kosher for Passover!?

Somehow, April is almost over, and Passover is just about here. I figured that, since I have some friends who like to keep kosher for Passover, I should try to find a way to make Kay's Cookies kosher so they can continue to enjoy them this weekend. In that same vein, my mother has been nudging me to make a healthy cookie, especially if it's one that my brother, who has an oat allergy, can eat.

So.

The other day, I saw that Heidi of 101 Cookbooks had posted a recipe for Black Bean Brownies. I did a double take. Black beans in a brownie? Believe it or not, yes. I used her recipe (but, as usual, with a few artful tweaks by yours truly) and they were amazing. The most fabulous part about these brownies is that they're made without flour OR sugar. Sure, there's a sugar substitute, but it's actually quite quirky: Agave nectar. I found some at Mother Earth, and I'm kind of excited to see what else I can do with it in the future.

As for the un-oatmeal oatmeal cookie, I think I hit the jackpot on my first try. While searching for the agave nectar at Mother Earth, I stumbled upon a box of Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) flakes. Quinoa is not only gluten-free, but it's also kosher for passover. I made a basic oatmeal cookie, but substituted quinoa meal for all-purpose flour and quinoa flakes for the oatmeal. ...And then I added melted semi-sweet chocolate...AND cocoa powder.

I'm so happy the way they turned out:

Black Bean Brownies and Double Chocolate Quinoa Cookies


I'm still hoping that there will be time to try making some coconut macaroons before Passover, but starting tomorrow at 3 pm, I will be setting up camp in the Black Box theatre. Speaking of which, if you're in Gainesville (or its surrounding environs) and want to come and see my play, "Where the Bee Sucks, or Christopher Marlowe is Dead," then you should probably head on over to the Florida Players website and reserve your *FREE* tickets. My show is on Wednesday, April 23rd at 8 pm and Saturday, April 26th at 12 pm.

I'm so excited!

Kay

Pick Me Up and Drop Me...

I apologize for the lack of updates over the past week; this has been a ridiculously busy and emotionally overwhelming couple of days for me. Suffice it to say that, after a trip back to South Florida to see my incredibly talented younger sister's musical and to sort out my life, I am back in Gainesville and officially finished with my undergraduate career. That's right: I turned in my thesis today. It's over.

Now that things are falling into place in terms of my future employment and my monetary and living situations, I'm starting to realize that I graduate in three weeks. That's it. Only three weeks left until I officially have no more excuses. This is the real world, baby.

The worst part about the whole "graduation" thing is that I have to leave my friends. So I've been a little down in the dumps about that. I've been needing a pick me up.

And what better pick me up is there than tiramisu? Tiramisu is a lovely little dessert, the origin of whose name is derived from the Italian for "pick me up." I went out and bought myself some mascarpone cheese and decided to use kahlua and espresso instead of brandy or Marsala wine. And then I made a cookie.

The actual dessert is a combination of ladyfingers soaked in an espresso syrup and covered in layers of mascarpone cheese filling, shaved chocolate, and cocoa powder. So I had to do a bit of maneuvering to make the tiramisu cookie taste just right. I substituted a kahlua-caramel sauce (which I made up) for some of the sugar in my basic sugar cookie recipe, to imitate the taste of a ladyfinger soaked in espresso syrup. Then I put the cookie dough into muffin tins and filled the dough with a mascarpone and kahlua filling as well as two semi-sweet chocolate chips.





Then I covered the cookie with another layer of cookie dough and dusted the tops with cocoa powder. The result was pure yumminess. I am so happy that these came out well...they were a complete experiment, and I pulled the recipe completely out of the air. But when I took them to my friend's house last night, they disappeared in a blink of an eye. So I'm happy with that. Talk about a pick me up!

Tiramisu Cookies


Now, this is a little belated, but I'm slowly catching up with my posting, so:
The other night, my friend asked me to make him some savory drop biscuits. I'm not averse to making savory foods, but I'm much more into baking diabetes-inducing sweets. So this request was a bit of a challenge. But I am not one to turn down a friend's request, so I went on a quest for the perfect Bacon Cheddar Drop Biscuit.

After reading through several different recipes, I couldn't find one that seemed to do the drop biscuit justice. So I tinkered for a bit, combining recipes, changing measurements, and dicing bacon into little, drop-able pieces, until I got a moist, tasty, savory drop biscuit. The house smelled incredible when they came out of the oven...My friend gave 'em two thumbs up--although I, being a semi-vegetarian am not going to be trying them out any time soon! Maybe a regular drop biscuit will be in order in the next few days...mmmm.

Bacon Cheddar Drop Biscuits






Alrighty then. I'm off to use up some tiramisu filling before rehearsal...
Kay

Coffee Cake...in a Cookie.

I thought I couldn't top the last cookie. But I think this one (almost) literally takes the cake.

I didn't have much on hand yesterday, but I had the itch to bake a batch of somethings. So bake a batch of somethings I did. I remembered that a friend of mine happened to be a huge fan of crumb cake, and that he'd been having kind of a bad week. It seemed the only thing to do was bake some crumb cake-like cookies. My only problem was how to get the crumb cake part on the cookie. With my red velvets and boston cream pies, I fill the insides with the frosting. With the strawberry shortcakes, I fill the insides but sort of work the strawberry cream throughout. But a crumb cake is topped with a mixture of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and all purpose flour. If I filled a cookie with that, it would just bake into the cookie, all uneven and fairly awkwardly. If I just put a crumble on the top after the cookies baked, it would all fall off. Not my idea of a good cookie.

So I decided on coffee cake. More specifically, coffee buttercream frosting, which would allow me to press a crumb cake-like topping onto the cookie, which would keep the insides awkward-free and the tops attached. So I took my basic cookie recipe and quadrupled the brown sugar, took down some of the white, and added a little bit of espresso for taste. I didn't have my usual buttercream recipe with me in the kitchen, so I improvised. Oh Oh OH my god. It's SO good. (Related anecdote: I came home after rehearsal last night, and my roommate asked me, "Kay, what is that stuff you have in the fridge." I replied, "Leftover Coffee Buttercream Frosting, why?" Quoth she, "I hope you don't mind, but I tasted it. And then took a big spoonful. It's amazing.")

I went through two batches of these last night. Two! And both times they just...disappeared. I'm SO happy with these. I love when mad experiments work out right. I love baking cookies. And most of all, I love sharing them with my friends. When they're smiling, so am I.

Baking could easily be a religion. I think it might actually be mine. After all, pure vanilla extract is the ultimate Good.

Here's a (visual) taste of the Coffee Cake Cookie:




Kay

Best Recipes....EVER.

I cannot even begin to describe how good the two recipes you are about to read taste. Just...wow. Really.

So, let's start with yesterday's cupcakes, which I made for this month's Cupcake Hero contest. As soon as I heard that this month's special ingredient was marshmallow, my mind began to whir. I had no desire to do a rocky road or some sort of spring themed marshmallow-y cupcake. I wanted to do something different. And then I thought,"What flavors go well with marshmallow?" The answer? sweet potato. The result of an afternoon of experimenting in my kitchen was an extremely sticky, absolutely sinful, spiced Sweet Potato Cupcake with Marshmallow Creme Filling. Oh god. The responses from my friends ranged from "Oh my god, this is by far your best recipe ever" to contented silence because their mouths were full of cupcake. I'm SO happy with this one. The marshmallow creme was a pain in the rear end to work with, but the end result was worth the sticky hands and the insane clean up.


Say hello to my sticky little friends...




Today's kitchen adventure was even more rewarding than yesterday's, and that's saying something. I finished the first draft of my thesis at 3:30 this afternoon--and I was in the need of a little catharsis. I ran to my kitchen and flung open the refrigerator door. I was confronted by a carton of strawberries, which were so gorgeous and ripe and waiting to be baked into a cookie. Thus was the Strawberry Shortcake Cookie born. A regular strawberry shortcake is made by putting whipped cream and fresh strawberries between a pastry or a scone. My cookie is a very soft sugar cookie filled with a whipped pastry cream and fresh strawberries.

I had a hell of a time making the whipped cream, mainly because I don't have a mixer and have to whip the cream by hand. But it was so worth the effort. When I brought the cookies to rehearsal this evening, I watched my friends' eyes grow big and bright as they took their first bites. These are the best cookies I've made to date, I think. And I still have a ton of whipped cream left. I'm thinking that I'll have to make at least another batch. At least.

Strawberry cookies forever!




I'm contributing these amazing little morsels of strawberry goodness to the Strawberry Seduction roundup. Check it out after April 4th!

I'm so happy with these two recipes. Now the question is: will I be able to top them?

Kay

A Perfect Day for Bananafish (Cookies)

I believe very strongly that fiction has the ability to change lives--in fact, I've had my life changed by several authors, whose works I continue to read and reread whenever possible. Among them are included: Norton Juster, who wrote The Phantom Tollbooth, which made me first fall in love with the power of the English language (and decide that I wanted to be a writer); Kurt Vonnegut, whose Cat's Cradle I encountered at a very difficult spiritual time in my life and learned that I was not alone in my feelings of cynicism and (then) almost hostile agnosticism (which came from a mixture of feelings of abandonment by god and shock at being duped into believing all my life); Mikhail Bulgakov, whose The Master and Margarita is still, to this day, my absolute favorite work of fiction; and Tom Stoppard, who wrote The Real Inspector Hound, which inspired me to become a playwright and The Real Thing , which is one of the most simply complex and powerful pieces of theatre I have ever encountered.

So when I saw the Novel Food round-up being hosted by Champaign Taste and Briciole, I had no idea how I could a) pick a piece of literature that has had a profound enough impact upon me to inspire a recipe and b)write a recipe that could represent a work that means something to me. But I've been thinking long and hard about it, and it came to me this past weekend: J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."

"Bananafish" is not a novel, but a short story, which is the first of his published Nine Stories. The first time I read it, I cried. It's one of the most powerful short stories that has ever been written...and yet it is so simple, so utterly honest that it has enchanted, and continues to enchant, me completely. After "Bananafish," Salinger wrote the novellas Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour, as well as the novel Franny and Zooey, which all revolve around Seymour, the young man who spends his last day on earth on a beach helping a little girl look for a bananafish. Among other things.

I don't want to give anything away, because I highly suggest that you find a copy of this story and read it. Then read it again and keep it somewhere that you can grab it whenever you feel the need to have your reason for being alive reaffirmed.

Until then, enjoy my Perfect Day for Bananafish Cookies:






The cookies are a sort of variation of the checkerboard cookies, although they're SO much softer and, I think, much tastier. The banana flavor is not overpowering by any stretch of the imagination; in fact, my roommate, who says she's not a fan of banana flavored anything, loves them.

It took a long time to make the cookies, because a) they're refrigerator cookies and had to be frozen before the dough could be manipulated and then refrozen once they were shaped, and b) I had to find a way to make the fish shape stay when I wrapped the chocolate banana dough around the regular banana dough. It was a struggle--I went through two different variations of the banana cookie recipe before I was satisfied--but SO worth it.

"On the sub-main floor of the hotel, which the management directed the bathers to use, a woman with zinc salve on her nose got into the elevator with the young man.
'I see you're looking at my feet,' he said to her when the car was in motion.
'I beg your pardon?' said the woman.
'I said I see you're looking at my feet.'
'I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor,' said the woman, and faced the doors of the car.
'If you want to look at my feet, say so,' said the young man. 'But don't be a God-damned sneak about it.'
-"A Perfect Day For Bananafish by J.D. Salinger

Kay

Cocktail Cookies!

After the success of my Cuba Libre cookies, I decided to continue experimenting with the leftover alcohol that's been sitting on the top of my fridge. (Since I'm not going to drink it, I might as well put it to good use, right?)

Yesterday I created my own bar mix (which is basically a simple sugar syrup with lime juice--you can buy it prepackaged at the store, but where's the fun in that?) and used that in the place of some of the regular sugar in my recipe. And, of course, I added a couple tablespoons of rum and/or a tequila triple sec mix. The cookies are topped with a glaze that is basically just a cocktail with a little extra sugar.

I made two different batches; the first is a Mojito cookie, which is a mix of rum, lime, and mint. They turned out absolutely wonderful--the rum bakes beautifully, and the cookies are soft and puffy. I also made a Margarita cookies, which is tequila, triple sec, and lime, although I don't like the way tequila bakes. That's not to say that the cookies didn't turn out well; they just don't taste as soft and cakey as the ones with rum. I think I also need to add more lime to really enhance that margarita flavor. They're a little sticky and shiny because of the bar mix in the glaze, but that makes them all the more fun.

Mojito and Margarita Cookies



Also, I made a new website. It's from a free web host, so it's not fantastic, but hey! It's got a much more interactive menu, where you can check out the four different types of cookies I offer as well as the recipes you've all seen on this site in a handy-dandy list form.

Enjoy: Kay's Cookies

Kay

Mmmm Peanut Butter

The other night, a friend of mine mentioned that he loves cookies with peanut butter cups inside of them. All it took was that one offhand mention, and suddenly my mind was whirring with the possibilities. Peanut Butter Cup Cookies. Mmmmmm.

But, of course, since I'm insane (and bored out of my mind...and avoiding my thesis), I made my own peanut butter cups. I have a candy mold from Wilton, that amazing, wonderful company that has pretty much corned the market on baking supplies, and I had a jar of peanut butter, chocolate chips, and graham cracker crumbs.

Once I'd frozen my peanut butter cups, the only logical next step was to decide what kind of cookie to stuff them inside. The only logical answer, of course, was peanut butter cookies. I made the dough, formed them into balls and then made a small depression in the center with my thumb. I sprinkled a little bit of that graham cracker into the depression, and then pushed a peanut butter cup into the cookie--and then sprinkled with a tiny bit more graham cracker. I tested them out on my friend last night and I think we have an A+ plus cookie here.

Enjoy:

Peanut Butter Peanut Butter Cup Cookies







I have SO many new cookies I want to try. I wish spring break were over so I had more people to feed!

Kay

Check, Mate!

I officially hate Spring Break.
It's been exactly one day, and I'm already bored to tears. All three of my roommates have gone home, and most of my friends are off on exciting trips to New York, Europe, or various beach-y locales. I'm stuck here--although, fortunately, I will be visited by two of my best friends from high school at various points this week.

I began working on my thesis yesterday, but I was so thoroughly uninterested in it that I took a break to bake. I ended up making a very neat little confection, known as the checkerboard cookie. The cookie is made up of chocolate and vanilla dough, enhanced by a splash of lemon juice and some ground walnuts. I mean, that's not what the original recipe calls for, but I thought I'd take some (very important) liberties with it. I also played with some spices to make the basic sugar-cookie-type recipe a little more exciting.

The best part about this cookie is that the dough is meant to be frozen and kept for future use, so I baked a small batch, but I'll still have enough dough left in reserve for when my friends come home. And they just look so damn cool:









Yum.

Kay

An Apple A Day...

I'm going to blame it on my little sister Katie. It started when I baked an apple pie for Christmas dinner...a pie that soon became an integral part of Katie's every meal for the next week. As soon as the pie was gone, however, I could sense the air of dejection that followed her into the kitchen. It seemed silly to bake another apple pie, especially since I had wanted to bake some fancier New Year's desserts, but I knew I needed to give Katie her daily apple pie fix.

The answer?

Apple Pie Cookies, of course!

The recipe is comprised of a pastry/cookie shell filled with a traditional apple pie filling (loaded with little pieces of crisp granny smith apples) that has been thickened with extra brown sugar. The cookie is filled with lovely fall-type spices: allspice, nutmeg, and, since I'm obsessed with it, tons of cinnamon.

Katie (and the rest of my family) LOVED them. So it's a recipe that I've kept near and dear to my heart these last 2 months.

And then I stumbled upon the "Apple a Day" blog event:

so I thought that now would be the perfect time to whip out the apples and cinnamon and get to work. I can't give away the recipe, so I'm not participating in the event per se, but lots of luck to the ladies and gents who bake up some brain food!

Thusly:

Apple Pie Cookies





Gotta love 'em.

ALSO you should seriously consider checking out my headshot blog, which I'll be updating even more in the next couple of days due to some amazing photo sessions with some truly lovely, amazing people. Click HERE.

Love and Cookies,

Kay

Dreaming in Black and White (Cookies)

I love New York City. I haven't been back (home) since early November, and I won't be going back most probably until July. But today the temperature dropped and I could almost remember the feeling of early spring in the city, so I decided to celebrate it with an icon of the good ol' Big Apple: Black and White Cookies.

Black and White cookies are amazing. When my sister and I were young(er), our parents used to take us to South Florida's version of a New York deli, Toojay's, where Ari and I would split a black and white cookie. There's something truly wonderful about the taste of a black and white, a cakey, spongy base with the sugary goodness of the icing, all with a just-barely-hidden bit of a lemony zest.

I've tried making these before, using an internet copycat recipe that claims to be the recipe used by Zabar's, but I've never had any luck with them. They always come out too dense and hard to be real black and white cookies, which, as the story goes, were originally made from leftover cake batter.

So I tried something new, and the batter came out amazingly cakey and spongy, just as I'd remembered. The icing's consistency required a little tweaking, but I think I got it right. And then I gave one to my roommate, who has never been to New York--she gave it a two thumbs up. Now I just need to find a true New Yorker to give it an authenticity test...

New York Black and White Cookies







I also made another loaf of rosemary focaccia bread last night to compliment the super veggie noodle soup I made for my sick roommates:



And now, I am off to ready myself for rehearsal number three, as well as for my second night of work at Domino's Pizza.

Kay

Where the Bee Sucks...

...There suck I. In a cowslip's bell I lie.

Sometimes I think I should have called this blog "Misadventures in the Kitchen," because I am Miss Adventure herself. I tried my hand at gum paste today, and, though the end product turned out quite nice, I had a heck of a time trying to acclimate myself to the medium.

Today was the first rehearsal for my play, Where the Bee Sucks, or Christopher Marlowe is Dead. It's my first full length play, and it's being produced by the Florida Players. My friend Michelle is directing, and we have the best cast and crew I could have asked for. So there's that.

Since I'm a crazy baker with a reputation for force feeding the actors and the crew on whatever show I'm working, I knew that I had to do something extra special.
So I went with the line from Shakespeare's The Tempest, which was the inspiration for the title of my play. A cowslip is a conical yellow flower, one that doesn't make for easy replication in cookie form. However, I found a really neat recipe that ended up working out wonderfully: Butter Horn Cookies.

I'm not really sure if they count as cookies...they're the strangest hybrid of recipes I've ever tried: 1/3 pastry, 1/3 yeast bread, 1/3 walnut meringue cookie. To make them, you cut butter into a flour mixture as if you're about to make a pie crust, but then add a yeast mixture to the flour and then let the dough rise in the refrigerator. Once that's done, you roll the dough out into circles and cut the circles into wedges, which are brushed with a meringue (prepared during the rise) and rolled up into cones.
Trés weird.

But once baked, they still didn't quite evoke cowslip for me...so I dusted them with yellow sugar and then made the flower petals from gum paste. Once they'd been potted, I make little gum paste and chocolate chip bumblebees to adorn the flowers.

I'm really, really proud of this one:

Butter Horn Cowslips







Oh, and the reading went wonderfully. I love my cast, and I think the changes that I made to the script are going to work.

So happy right now.

Kay

The Violet Hour

Last night, I went to see the Florida Players production of Richard Greenberg's "The Violet Hour." It was one of the first shows I've seen in a while that I had not read or known about before going into it. And I think that it might actually be the best way to experience theatre--to just experience it, to let the plot and the characters sort of wash over you instead of coming in with expectations.

Anyway, they did a lovely job, and now I'm going to go and read the play so that I can continue to experience it, having seen it.

The stage manager for the production ordered a cookie bouquet for the actors and 2 dozen Better than Chocolate Chip cookies, which turned out gorgeously. I love coming out of a show and hearing the techies gushing over the treats they stumbled upon backstage...







Also, I'm working on updating my photo blog, so check it out! ( Here! )


Okay. I'm off to finish writing a play....

Kay

alfajores!

Let me just begin by saying that this dulce de leche turned out to be more of a headache than I'd expected--but so worth it, I can't complain.

I bought a new can of sweetened condensed milk this morning, having baked the basic cookie yesterday, and proceeded to read the directions thoroughly this time, submerging the can in boiling water...for three hours. While I waited, I baked a batch of red velvet cookies, frosted them, and then bleached the kitchen. Technically, I could have waited another hour so that the dulce de leche would be thicker, but it was of spreading consistency (albeit a tiny bit runny), so I figured I'd just go for it and see what happened.

What happened was wonderful. The cookies came out absolutely amazing BUT the seemed somehow...plain. Despite being slathered in sugary caramelized milk and dusted with confectioner's sugar. The remedy? Why, dip them in a layer of dulce de leche, a layer of melted semi-sweet chocolate, and then top with a healthy coat of sweetened coconut, of course!

Delicious. Simply and utterly delicious.
Or, to be more ethnically correct, delicioso. The cookies are called "Alfajores," and there are a multitude of minor variations on the theme that have circulated throughout Latin America, but the recipe I used was a basic butter cookie with a tiiiiiny bit of rum (which I used instead of the suggested brandy) and a little bit of cinnamon (my choice) for flavor. Quite, quite yummy.








All right then. Enjoy those while I go and learn how to be a pizza delivery person.

Kay

Housekeeping...

I just realized that I had all of these (low quality) photos on my point-and-shoot that I've neglected to upload. So I'm uploading them now.
Enjoy the miscellany.
(Below: Kaitlyn's Birthday Cake, Betty Crocker Boston Cream Pie and Pancake Cookies, Mini Chocolate Chip Cinnamon Coffeecake Muffins, and a Sunflower Sugar Cookie...)











I'll post a real update later...
Kay

Cookies and Cupcakes and Icing, Oh My!

I was in the kitchen today from 9 am to 7 pm, just working on two batches of cupcakes. I think I might be insane. Especially because I was in the kitchen all night working on carrot cake cookies.

Why have I been so insane? Well, I had a ton of carrots left over from last week, when I made soup for a sick friend, and I didn't want them to go bad. And I wasn't in the mood for baking a cake, so carrot cake cookies seemed like the best way to go.

I pretty much modified my basic sugar cookie recipe by increasing the amount of brown sugar and adding a bunch of lovely spices (like cinnamon and cardamom), and then mixing up a batch of cinnamon cream cheese frosting and sandwiching it between two cookies. Beautiful.

This morning, I broke open my new set of cake decorating tools and made my carrot cake cookies legit--and then, with the leftover icing, I decorated some sugar cookies.

After that, I got my Buck's Fizz Cupcakes started. Tomorrow I'm doing a cake tasting to decide on the recipe that I will use, so today I spent my 10 hours in the kitchen making custards and cupcakes and frostings, and praying that something would come out right.

The two versions I ended up with are Orange Custard filled Champagne Cupcakes with Orange Buttercream Frosting and Champagne Custard filled Orange Buttermilk Cupcakes with Champagne Buttercream frosting. My roommates keep eying the cupcakes as they walk into the kitchen...I'm excited to see what my friends think tomorrow.

And now, the photos:







Champagne Cupcakes with Orange Filling







Orange Buttermilk Cupcakes with Champagne Filling




And my lovely sous-chef, Frida (who helped me eat the leftover carrots)

Kay