december is for baking (cakes and cookies)

December was a big baking month for me. Here’s a recap!

Birthday Cake #1 for my friend, Laura:

This is a yellow cake with raspberry and cream filling and a milk chocolate frosting. The flowers are sugar flowers I got at the local cake decorating store – I can’t make these by hand. I could maybe learn someday, but in the meantime, I just buy them.

Birthday Cake #2 for Alyssa:

Alyssa didn’t have a themed party this year, so I was off the hook for making a crazy decorated cake. I almost forgot how to decorate a “normal” cake. Again with the sugar flowers, I thought they made a nice tone on tone decoration with the little white balls of sugar (I got those from a swap from someone in another country, so I’m not sure what they’re called). This is a red velvet cake with traditional cooked flour frosting. These two cakes were made within a day of each other! Phew.


And now, for cookies and chocolate covered things:

I baked three kinds of cookies this year: (L-R) snickerdoodles, shortbread with vanilla icing and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I also made some “mock thin mints” out of Ritz crackers covered in chocolate (with peppermint extract) and Andes mints on top but I didn’t take a picture of those for some reason.

I also made chocolate covered mini ritz bits again. Last year I did the mini smores (ritz bits with chocolate) and the peanut butter ritz buts, but I did all peanut butter ones this year, since they taste better with the salty-sweet combination.

And that’s the jist of my December baking. Holy god. And yet, I bought chocolate things that were on sale for the holidays since I already have some ideas for some other cookies I want to try. And I thought I would get sick of baking… sheesh.

I actually meant to post this on my other blog, and now I’m too lazy to go and fix it, so you guys get to read it here. How nice. I leave you with this:

I am not good at icing cookies. Happy holidays!


4 thoughts on “december is for baking (cakes and cookies)

  1. I love the US tradition for cookie baking at Christmas. Must try and get it going here in Scotland. Your big gorgeous cakes remind me of my summer vacation in New York when we visited the Magnolia Bakery for cup-cakes – absolutely delicious!

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