Well I’m glad that’s over with!
If you’ve seen some of my recent posts, I’ve been gearing
up for my son’s second birthday party (a.k.a. Operation Elmo) that occurred
this past Saturday. Thanks to this handy dandy Internet (and Pintrest; which
I’ve only just gotten addicted to); I was inspired to make WAY too much really
cool stuff for the party! Cake and Cookie Pops, Flooded Sugar Cookies, Cake
Batter ‘Puppy Chow’, Cookie Dough Dip, the crazy ass Elmo head fruit plate AND
the cake. The 3 tiered, all from scratch, Elmo cake!
So, as you saw in my last post “Commence Operation Elmo”, I
managed to get my fondant embellishments made and dried for the big day! I also
succeeded in creeping the hell out of my husband one day when he peeled back
the paper towel only to see two little fondant Elmo Eyes staring up at him from
a cookie sheet on the counter!
I had an itinerary for party prep starting last week Monday.
I began with the best of intentions, I was going to blog every step as I
usually do; cleaning up the kitchen, moving stuff so it looks semi organized
and less like a real person’s kitchen, etc. Yeah…didn’t happen! I will,
however, share my secret (?) family cookie recipe with you; right here:
Mom/Grandma's Christmas Cookies
2 Cups Sugar
1 Cup Shortening or Butter (I used Shortening)
2 Eggs
1 Cup Buttermilk
1 Tsp Baking Soda
1 Tsp Baking Powder
1 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Vanilla or Almond Extract (I use Almond, of course!)
4 Cups Flour
Cream together sugar, shortening/butter, eggs and buttermilk (adding buttermilk 1/2 cup at a time). Alternate adding wet/dry ingredients together. Chill dough for 2-4 hours (or overnight in my case). Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.
I’ve only attempted this recipe a few times and I’ll tell
you why…it’s a messy, pain in the ass to make. My Mom and Grandma have been
making this for years and probably have it so down to perfection that they can
make it in their sleep. I can only hope, one day, to say the same. But, it’s a
tasty little concoction, and I wanted sugar cookies, so I made them.
I threw together my cookie batter, wrapped it up and chucked
it into the fridge to chill until Tuesday evening…
Hello Tuesday.
It’s time to make the cookies! I HATE this part. Every other
time I’ve made these I’ve struggled with rolling the dough, getting the cut
outs right, and then there’s getting the little bastards onto the stupid cookie
sheet. WHY did I decide to make these? Grrr! I’ll tell you why, because I’ve
fallen hard for this whole outline and flood icing technique and I really wanted
to try it out! I know that I could have just bought the dough from the
supermarket, but I love the taste of these (they taste like Christmas, *happy
sigh*), and I’m all about this whole “from scratch” thing now, so what the
hell…
I discovered that it’s best to flour the crap out of my
surface, roll just a little bit of dough at a time, and get enough flour on top
of the dough (and the rolling pin) and just roll it out with the rolling pin a
few times to keep it from sticking. I
dipped the cookie cutters in flour also before cutting and gave the cookie
cutters a good wiggle to make sure that the cut outs would get off the work
surface in one piece. I used a thin, metal spatula to get the cut outs from the
counter to the cookie sheet. What made me sad was how much dough I had to
discard. I only did two ‘rollings’ of each dough hunk so as to avoid them
getting too much flour and getting too dry, because that’s happened to me in
the past…
It’s times like this that I’m so happy to have double ovens!
I can get one batch into the oven, set the timer, cut out more cookies, get
them into the other oven, lather, rinse and repeat! Works like a charm! The
cookies just need to start getting a tiny bit brown around the edges to be done
and actually turned out quite moist and fluffy (FOR A CHANGE). I guess I AM
learning a thing or two with all my recent baking escapades!
Once the cookies were cooled, it was into a nice sealed
container for the night. Time to kick back with a nice brewski! Oh, and in case
you’re wondering – one, unfrosted, cookie is 6 Weight Watchers Points Plus!
Wacky Wednesday.
Time to ice the cookies! YAY. My resolve is weakening
slightly. I haven’t been looking forward to this. Up until now, my method of
icing cookies has been just “spread icing with knife, dip into sprinkles, eat
cookie”. Now, I was setting out to, not only make an icing I’ve never made
before, but a take on a new technique I’ve never done before. Yikes. I used the
Color Flow recipe from the Wilton Yearbook. I mixed up my icing, complete with
the Wilton Color Flow powder and about an entire container of “No Taste Red”,
and I STILL didn’t get the color as red as I wanted.
I did manage to outline the cookies pretty well. The first
few were pretty disastrous and were set aside for Fox (my son) to eat in the
days before the party. I also found that putting the tray of cookies on my cake
turntable and sitting down instead of standing was helpful!
Once the outlines were done and set aside to dry I needed to
thin out the icing. The Wilton directions said to add just a few drops of water
at a time, mix well and drop some icing off of the spoon back into the bowl.
Once the dropped icing takes until a count of ten to disappear back into the
rest of the icing, then you’re ready. THIS TAKES ‘EFFIN’ FOREVER! I was getting
so very impatient! But I was afraid to add more water at a time. The thing is,
once it was FINALLY ready per the instructions, I still think that it could
have been thinner! I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Also, the icing tastes
much better once it’s dried (weird) than when it’s wet, so don’t freak if you
taste it and go “ew” like I did!
I didn’t actually figure this out until I was almost
done…PICK UP THE COOKIE to spread the icing out after you pipe it into the
outlines. It’s MUCH easier than trying to spread it out on cookies that are on
a tray. It was late. I was getting tired, so I think I get a pass on that!
The cookies looked pretty good! Not bad for my first try,
and I think I would make them again! They tasted great too!! Next birthday
party though; I’m doing a half batch!
Thirsty Thursday.
Now we’re getting busy! Its cake night, time to make the
cakes and get them into the freezer overnight so I can assemble and decorate in
the morning.
This is a three layered cake with three flavors. I’ve baked
and blogged all of these recipes pretty recently so you’ll be able to find the
recipes pretty easily if you’re so inclined to whip one up!
Let's just say that my kitchen was a DISASTER AREA!! But a few hours later, I had them all baked, wrapped and in the freezer for the night!
Frantic Friday.
It's 4:00AM. I'm awake and can't get back to sleep. I've taken the day off of work to prep for the party. Maybe my mind is just racing too much with lists of everything I need to get done today. After tossing and turning for an hour, I just decide to get up and take a shower. I shower, eat breakfast, get Fox dressed for daycare and give him and Daddy a nice send off to work and school for the day. I am now left to my own, crazy, devices. It's cake time.
I start off by making buttercreams. One tripled recipe of my
go-to vanilla and one batch of
cream cheese. I, foolishly, thought that tripling the buttercream would be plenty....NEGATIVE! I wound up making it 3 times for a total of nine batches of buttercream. THAT's NUTS! But it worked! The sheer quantity of butter for just one (tripled) batch of buttercream was mind boggling!
On top of the butter was the powdered sugar! I used SO MUCH POWDERED SUGAR! There was a thin film of white powder all over my kitchen. It looked like I was running a cocaine cutting operation by the time I was done. It leads me to wonder how much powdered sugar one cans safely inhale before a dust mask starts to sound like a good idea.
To top things off, my sifter broke. I had to resort to sifting all of my powdered sugar with a colander, which worked better than I thought it would! I just kept sifting all of my powdered sugar into a big bowl and measured it out with my 1 cup, one cup at a time.
Now to assemble!
I learned the hard way this long October morning...frozen cakes are hard to torte! I think that I should have, at least, torted the large one before freezing it! It was a bit of a beast! But I managed to get all my layers filled and crumb coated before letting them set a while to rest.
While my cakes were resting I started in on my cake and cookie pops. I had managed to snag my cake pop maker at Kohls for cheap thanks to a sale, a 30% off coupon and some Kohls Cash! Yes, I used a mix for this...I know. Bad baker, Bad!!!! But I think I'd exhausted my scratch baking on the cake and buttercreams!
Much like that first batch of pancakes, the first batch was more of a practice round! I found that the sweet spot, as far as time, turned out to be about 2.5 minutes per batch. I melted some Wilton's Candy Coating, dipped the stick, inserted, and allowed to set up for a bit in the fridge before I commenced dipping and decorating.
I also threw together some lovely Oreo Pops. These were pretty easy to make. Separate the cookie, put the stick into the cream filling, reattach the cookie and hope it sticks! Dip and decorate. I found this giant bar of Ghiradelli White Chocolate coating at Sam's Club and it did the trick!
Now that I had a nice collection of pops, it was time to decorate the cake! I had really wanted to try out this Viva Paper Towel Method of smoothing icing I had found on the net, but it didn't work for me. I, instead, opted to do it the way I watched my mom do it for years, Really hot water, dip spatula into hot water and spin the cake on the turntable while smoothing. I probably used more buttercream than I really needed, as it was a little thick. But it turned out looking pretty good!
Not bad for my first, really big, cake huh? My biggest compliment was when Fox walked into the kitchen, saw the cake and gave a resounding "ELMO!!!!!!" He sang Happy Birthday all day long!
Now for the final reveal:
The birthday boy was pretty jazzed! He even shared with his cousin! Such a good boy!
Although...I think that he ate too many cake pops because he didn't want any cake once the candle was blown out. He was far more interested in his new bulldozer!
All in all. It turned out great! Fox was thrilled and everyone loved the food and decorations!
I'm looking forward to the next party...as luck would have it, my husband is turning the big four oh next year....does anyone know how to make really good black icing?
