Once Upon a Time...

I hope you're ready for a magical adventure!  Today you are invited to a virtual baby shower featuring tons of cookies and tons of amazingly talented cookie designers.  Did you come hungry?  The theme of this virtual collaborative shower is Once Upon a Time with 22 amazing cookiers participating.  Each cookier featured a different fairy tale and each cookie is a work of edible art.  I do hope after enjoying my little contribution {please help yourself to some nibbles; the pimento loaf is just lovely!} you'll go to the rest of the party at the other blogs and mingle.

My fairytale to capture in cookie was Goldilocks and the 3 Bears... or as I like to call it "Goldie and the gang."  I was delighted to find in my stash 3 bear cookie cutters in graduating sizes.  One had a santa hat, but a quick flick of my wrist {and some sweet ninja knife skills I might add} I had a hatless baby bear.  All right, it's story time!  Gather round everybody.  My memory is not perfect, but I'll do my best: 

Once upon a time there was a family of bears.  Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear.  The Bear family has just returned home from their stroll in the woods and are very surprised 

to find their house in disarray. 

Papa Bear thinks someone had been sitting in his extremely hard chair while they were out enjoying the foliage (Don't ask how he knows!  He just does alright?  bears possess an extra sense) 
 and maybe even tasted a bit of his very hot porridge.  
RUDE!  

{He hopes they burnt their tongue}

Mama Bear thinks someone has been sitting in her super comfy chair as well and there is definitely some cold porridge missing from her bowl {she prefers it cold, don't judge}.  

DOUBLE RUDE!

Baby Bear bursts into tears!  He KNOWS someone was sitting in his chair, because the little bear finial thingy is wobbly and HE sure as heck didn't do that last week when he was accidentally playing ball inside the house!  And worst of all someone not only took bites of his perfectly room temperature porridge, but they picked out all the berries that Mama Bear had so lovingly stirred in.  Waaaaaah!

TRIPLE RUDE!

With breakfast ruined and that creepy feeling that someone came into their house during their woodland jaunt still lingering, they decide to put the very distraught Baby Bear down for a little hibernation session.  Papa Bear eyes his firm bed suspiciously...  "is that a rumple in my covers?"  Mama's eye is caught by a smudge on her perfectly puffy confection of a bed and thinks, "is that a berry stain?"  Baby Bear is about to fling himself onto his "just right" bed and grab his teddy ...when something under his covers moves!

It's a GIRL!  a HUMAN girl!  She is sawing logs, her tumbled blonde curls fan Baby Bear's pillow while she dreams of glittery pink unicorns.  hmmm, that unicorn has bad breath...

 She is suddenly aware of the three hungry bears surrounding her.  She slowly rubs her eyes and says, "Sorry about the porridge guys!  {yawn}  but I make a mean batch of waffles."  

The 3 bears nod in stunned agreement and admit to a deep and abiding love of waffles. 

And so began Goldie's weekly tradition of making Saturday morning waffles for her new friends, 

the Bear family.

and they ate waffles happily ever after!

THE END

I know, I know... I should have made a waffle cookie!  This set was so much fun to make.  I loved imagining what Goldie looks like, what a surprised bear might look like, what a mama bear might wear and what kind of chair she would pick out.  Her chair looks awfully cozy to me.  If I came upon this little house in the woods and had stuffed myself full of someone else's hot porridge {2 spoons of brown sugar please!} you can bet I would ensconce myself in that little green number.  Leopard print snuggie optional.

I only had one problem.  I didn't have a Goldilocks cutter.  hmmmm...  I was inspired by this girl cookie from Klickitat Street using a snowman cutter.  Genius!  One upside down snowman cookie later and we have Goldie.

Thank you for joining me on this fairtytale adventure.  I hope you enjoyed yourself.  Now scoot along to the other awesome fairytale cookies (after leaving an epic comment of course, you weren't just going to leave my party without a goodbye squeeze to the hostess were you???  Of course you weren't!)

Summary of all the projects at Flour Box Bakery blog
Little Red Riding Hood - Oh Sugar!
The Wizard of Oz - The Painted Cookie
Aladdin - Life's a Batch
Rapunzel - Color Me Cookie
Alice in Wonderland - Mt. Lookout Sweets
Prince Charming - TheRedCooky
Jack & the Beanstalk - Laura's Cookies
Princess & the Pea - Flour Box Bakery
Pinocchio - Hungry Hippopotamus
Peter Pan - SweetArt Sweets
The Frog Prince - Sweet Hope Cookies
Jasmine - Sweet Creations
Little Bo Peep - Lorraine's Cookies
Tinkerbelle - Cupookie
Cinderella - The Cookie Countess
Hercules - Songbird Sweets
Sleeping Beauty - Palestine Painted Cookie
Robin Hood - Sweet-T-CakeS
Thumbelina - Sweet Sugarbelle
Mulan - Cookies with Character
Ariel - LilaLoa

Thank you Anne Yorks of Flour Box Bakery for being head hostess and putting all this together and thank you to Yadira of One Sweet Party for designing the sweet bag toppers featured throughout some posts!

Will You Go to Winter Formal With Me?

A while back I was lucky enough to be a part of a prom-posal when I made cookies for Logan that helped him ask a girl to prom.  {you can find that story here}  I got to be a part of another romantically involved adventure yesterday and this time it was for the Winter Formal.  Girl wanted to make cookies that represented the Boy's likes and dislikes making this a very personal collection of cookies.  Very creative!  So here is the story.  It's a classic :

Girl meets Boy.

Boy likes snowboarding and water polo.

Boy does NOT like Calculus.

Girl wants to ask Boy to Winter Formal.  

Girl has Liz make these cookies to ask him:

... Boy said "Yes!"

Kids are getting dang creative these days!  There are so many great ways to ask someone out on a date.  I got a very fun surprise the other day when I found out my {Logan's} prom cookies were featured on The Tip Junkie's "20 Creative Ways to Ask Someone Out".

You've got to go check out all the AMAZING ideas out there.  You'll love it if you have a teenager, ARE a teenager, were ever in your life a teenager!  I wish I was that brave when I was in high school.  

Heck!  now that I think about it, you could be 97 and still use these fun ideas if you have a special someone you're thinking of asking to the Senior Ball at the rec center.  I will amend the above and say:  You'll love the ideas if you are a human.

So... will you?  Will you go out with me?  I've had a crush on you for a while now...

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, or forgetful

I've been gone much too long.  I'll blame most of it on Mr. John who had the gall to get me a new computer for Christmas.  That led to all kinds of things, like me feeling I needed to re-arrange every single one of my billion photographs the way I always wanted to so I could transfer tidy files.  Then, I was without any computer for a while, which was sort of nice, because I found myself doing things I wouldn't normally do.

So I don't have much time this evening, but I thought I'd share a quick photo I took today of a cookie I've painted.  I have lots of projects to blog about and some fun new projects coming up.  This year is looking to be a busy one!

I had a little extra dough from a set I did and I cut a cookie out with my new fairy cutter.  She sat there for a couple of days with a blank white covering of frosting and I got a chance last night to paint her.  She turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself.  I took some pictures of her on a plate, but I realized she'd look much better out in nature.  So yeah, I put her on the ground.  10 second rule totally applies here especially since I put her there on purpose.  

ta ta for now!

Happy 2012! Yeah, I'll start my resolution tomorrow...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!   I love this feeling of new beginnings!  Fresh starts and new goals.  I've been feeling the need to improve my eating habits with all the Christmas indulging I've been doing... but, I decided that could wait until tomorrow!  I thought I would make a little something special for this new year's morning and I saw the Boudin loaves of bread Mr. John brought back from San Francisco yesterday and inspiration hit me:  French toast! 


Now, I'm not usually a french toast fan.  Soggy bread?  no thanks.  So I found a recipe in my Betty Crocker's Christmas cookbook that baked the french toast.  That sounded promising so I changed up a couple of the ingredients, used a french sourdough, and drizzled it with a quick mixed berry syrup.  The results?  Crispy and out of this world delicious!  This is definitely the way to do french toast!

Hope your New Year's Day is happy and full of yummy food...  those resolutions can wait one more day!

 Oven French Toast

4 eggs
1 C milk
1 TBSP sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon

french bread loaf, sliced 1/2" thick

Preheat oven to 400*
Beat all the ingredients together in a smallish bowl.
Dip bread slices in egg mixture and place on a plate.
Lightly grease a cookie sheet (I just rubbed some butter on it) and heat it in the oven for 1 minute.
Put your dipped slices on the hot cookie sheet and bake 5-8 minutes.
Turn them over and bake 2-4 more minutes.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and syrup

Berry Syrup

1 about 1 lb of frozen berries
1 C sugar

I had several bags of frozen berries in my freezer and I imagine any berry would be delish. I happenned to have loganberries from my parents garden, some blackberries and some blueberries.  {Next time I want to try raspberries and cranberries!}  I thawed one of the bags in the microwave, drained the juice in a saucepan and added the cup of sugar.  I boiled that for 5 minutes then added all the thawed and frozen berries.  Let that simmer for about 5 minutes until all the berries are thawed and yummy.  Drizzle over those delectable slices and enjoy!