Bored

Since I've been at home taking care of D this month; I found a lot of time to bake last week. It started at the beginning of the week with chocolate chip cookies, then I made rice krispie squares, I made chocolate cupcakes Saturday night from scratch for the kids, but I still had enough batter to make half of a cake. That 6" pan sure comes in handy. Sunday morning after breakfast, I halved the cake and did chocolate pudding for filling with vanilla butter cream icing and chocolate jimmies for effect. :oP It was a request by my son. :o)
I need to find a different recipe for chocolate cake; we like larger cupcakes and this one is too thin to have them bake over the top too much. Right now I use a Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake recipe from Joy of Cooking. Alternatives appreciated.
My husband likes the picture - doesn't it look like the cake is floating in the middle of my kitchen...ooohhhhh. LOL

Our Gingerbread House

The kids helped to decorate with the candies; Stirling was very helpful this year. Madison was very helpful with eating the candies. :o) We finally found time to build it and decorate it Christmas Eve. I forgot how long it needed for the icing to dry. I was a little not impressed with the gingerbread provided. I found most of it warped. Next year I plan to make my own and see if I can do better.

Snowflake Cookies

These are the cookies I made from the Wilton Yearbook. I made a smaller version for Stirling's kindergarten class Christmas Party back in December, of course. I think they turned out well; however, I wish to know how to make sparkle gel; as two tubes almost didn't cut it for the smaller version. The original cookies were about 4 inches across!

(Note: Two cookies glued together and outlined with Royal Icing)
I made twenty of these cookies, as they were still quite big I wrapped them in individual Christmas themed bags. They looked really great! The kids love them!