Project 365- Day 10

This cookie has the power to change some girl’s life.

Cake Pops from Queen’s Confections

Cake pops, they are everywhere. Everyone is making them. You love them. These little balls that are a mix of cake and candy. Seemingly like the perfect food that are just irresistible. Every party that I have been too this year, there they were, cake balls. Sometimes on sticks, some times not. I love these little balls of heaven.

When a friend of mine started a business and started to post pictures of her treats, my mouth started to water. Then she said vegan, and I was drooling, then gluten free and there was puddle. As if that was not good enough she became my favorite person in the world when she said that she would send me a sample! How did I get so lucky?

There was then a transformation in me. I became like a dog. I waited by the door everyday for the mail to arrive. Getting excited to see the lady with a blue uniform come up on my porch. They came in the mail on Friday. I almost hugged the mail lady!

I opened my package and there were the most beautiful cake pops that I have ever seen. Individually wrapped and packed so carefully that they made the journey and to my door step in perfect condition.

This was the first one that I tried. I took a bite into it and my eyes rolled. Oh My God! These were just perfection on a stick.

These are a Lemon Lime cake pop! Can you just imagine? A grown up flavor. It is a wonderful combination of flavor and texture. Not to sweet. I have never had a cake pop like this. I am telling you, if there had more, my family would not have found me for days, because I would be hording them under the stairs. But I did share with my family. My son, who loves anything that is lemon, wanted me to order a dozen. If he hadn’t already talked to the big man in red, I think these would have made his list!

My daughter, the child whose second word was chocolate (first was shoes), what did she think? She gave them a thumbs up! She was so happy that there was a treat that she could share with my father’s wife who is on a very restricted diet. “Mommy we GOT to get her these for Christmas!!” But then she noticed in the box, there were chocolate ones as well.

Is your mouth watering? It should be! There is white cake inside flavored with orange oil. The coating, dark chocolate! Orange and dark chocolate, I took one bite and my knees when weak. These are not your average birthday party cake pop!

I could go on and on, but there is one left that is just calling my name! If you are looking for gorgeous gourmet candies that will make your knee’s go weak, then head over to Queen’s Confections. You will be so glad you did!

The wonderful smell of fresh baked cookies….

And new Photoshop toys! I love downloading free things to go with Photoshop. I like  free things because quite frankly Photoshop is so darn expensive, I can not afford 30$ a piece for new action or texture set. I have found a wonderful blog that has lots of free Photoshop and Lightroom freebies. Check out her site and blog, The CoffeeShop .

As I posted previously, I am letting the kids take over Christmas. Lexy needed to have cookies made for Girl Scouts for their Christmas party. She decided that she wanted sugar cookies, and I have a super secret sugar cookie recipe that is not to overly sweet but still yummy and hard to mess up. We decided to make a double batch and went to work. She just got for her birthday a new baking set with this perfect sized rolling pin. I stepped back, out of my control freak shoes, and let her roll out and cut out the cookie shapes. Baking with mom.

Now we go full circle. I saw an update on Facebook that The CoffeeShop just came out with a new texture set called “Baking with Mom”. How perfect is that! I just had to get them and use them. So here is my picture with the texture called burnt almond.

(Just a side note, at the bottom, I am completely new to adding links to other blogs from this blog, so if I did not do it correctly, please let me know)

Decemeber 14th

Today we did some crafts to get ready for our Yule/Hanukkah festivities next weekend. We made up some yule logs out of toilet paper rolls and some colored pop sticks. Gryffan had lots of fun, and kept thinking of things he could make out of the combination. If you are on his gift list, watch out, he is getting creative. Lexy was not to pleased with the glue on her fingers. She kept asking to wash off her hands. I always loved glue on my fingers, then when it dries, you can  peel it off and have a glue finger print.

working carefully

 

Other than that, it was pretty much a lazy day. Tim was at work and the kids and I just lounged around. I have to get moving on making cookies for gifts, or in the very least getting the doughs ready. I wonder if they would stay fresh if I vacuum seal the cooked cookies?

Only a few more days till our baby turns 4! Hard to believe that she is growing up so fast. I still remember how much I wanted her, and how my heart ached for another baby. I asked her today about her birthday wishes, she wants pink cupcakes with pink icing and she wants cake for her birthday dinner.

December 7th

It is only 6:30 but I wanted to post because I am so excited! Gryffan did wonderful. The assistance coach said the kid he wrestled looked like he out weighted him by 5 lbs, but that did not matter.

Getting in the mood. We set up his ipod with tons of fast songs to get him all reved up.

Gryffan, his friend Ramsey and Lex

 

Here are some from the match. There are no winners or losers on exhibition, but the other child would have won on points, but he wrestled hard for 3 minutes, and he did not give up once.

Get Ready!!

Take down

Get him off you!

The man in the black is his coach, Coach Besser.

Bad pic, but I like it.

And here is one of Lexy in her get up. She loves to cheer for Gryffan.

putting a new sping on cheerleader.

And the best news of the day is that all of my cookies were sold! YEAH BABY! Although I sliced my finger open, pretty bad, trying to decorate the box to take in with me. I was even debating on going to the hospital, but in the end, the cookies got delivered and I butterflied it back together.

December 5th

I baked cookies all day. I started off with just making one batch, but they were easy and tasted good, I decided to make a double batch and donate them to the wrestling team on Sunday. The boosters use the money they make from the concession stand to pay four tournaments and end of the year gifts for the kids. Last year they paid for 2 tournaments, and this year I am hoping they will pay for more. We have only 3 away matches this year so that means they need lots for the stand. Hopefully these cookies can help.

O Christams Tree

 Back to huge pictures again. I think it is a bug in WordPress since they just updated the site, so bear with them.

Anywho, you want to know a secret about those cookies? Oh course they are vegan, but guess the secret ingredient! TOFU! Why did I use tofu in cookies? Well I was surfing blogs yesterday and saw some really sweet sugar cookies, and thought that would be fun with Lexy. I set out to find a vegan recipe, but almost all of them want you to use an egg replacer, and I think that stuff is gross. Makes me want to take out my tongue and clean it off with sand paper, gross. Eventually I found a recipe on one of those mass recipe sites that did not have that in them, it used mori-nu tofu which is the tofu that is not water packed. What luck, I picked up a pack the last time I was in Bloomsburg. I was planning on making chocolate pudding for the kids, so I had the debate, pudding or cookies and cookies won! And you can not make sugar cookies with out royal icing to decorate them. Did you know that royal icing is made with eggs? I did not. And you do not cook it. Talk about ewww. Since I did not want to get everyone sick, I found a vegan version of the shiny stuff. But then I came to my next dilemma, I was all out of my soy milk, I had no more rice milk, the only thing that I had left was hemp milk. The hemp milk purchase was a impulse buy, I really wanted to try it, but it was so expensive. We saw it on sale and I picked it up about 2 months ago. Don’t worry it is the shelf stable kind. Now my problem is this, Tim is subject to random drug testing at work, and I really did not want to have him fail because of cookies. I went searching the companies website and found out that there is no THC in hemp milk so there is no way of failing a drug test.

So tell me, am I totally bad for making some delicious cookies that are made with tofu and hemp milk and pawning them off on small town, sport minded, omin’s with out a clue? (Insert Evil Laugh!)