Cookie Cake: Minecraft Edition

Hello friends!  Another beautiful weekend has come to an end, and we're not sure where all the time has gone.  Probably into the kitchen, where we've spent a good chunk of our weekend.

We had a fun task this weekend of making a very different birthday cake: a Minecraft themed cookie cake.  Carson's birthday party is Tuesday, but he's not a fan of cookie cake.  That's ok, though, because his mom told us he was a huge lover of cookie cake (who isn't?)  She wanted to know if we could make a cookie cake themed after a video game he loves, Minecraft.

If you've never played Minecraft, it's an interesting concept.  It's like Legos meets survivor meets Erector Set.  The game involves building homes out of different "element blocks", creating things through mining, and pretty much wasting a bunch of time you already don't have.  What's interesting about this game is how many people are flat out addicted to this game.  Kids as young as 5 play it, as well as some of our friends who are in their 30s.  It really doesn't have a limit to what it can do, unless your imagination limits it.

The graphics of the game is somewhat different and takes some getting used to.  Everything's very geometric and simple looking.  We felt like the game walked off our 1992 family computer.  Once you get past that, though, it's easy to become addicted.

With the idea of cookie cake as the background, we wanted a tasty cake that was decorated well.  We decided to make it 3D with some fun cookie blocks we built, that really kept true to the spirit.

So what do you think?

These pictures seem a little blank, and it's true, they're missing some things.  There are some Minecraft figurines that need to be added to the cake too, but they won't go on the cake until it's ready to be eaten.  We'll post some updated pictures later this week.

Happy birthday Carson!  Hope you have a fantastic day!!

And to the rest of you out there, hope you have a wonderful week.

**UPDATE**

Finally got a picture of the completed cake.  Looks like it was an awesome party!!

Open the Floodgates!

Since Pittsburgh has been receiving SO many flash flood warnings these past few weeks, we thought it would be funny (funny ironic, not funny hahaha) to bring some flooding into our own bakery.  We decided to flood some cookies.

Now our guess is the majority of you read that last sentence and pictured us dumping some delicious cookies into a bucket of water.  Why in the world would we ruin perfectly good cookies like that?  No, flooding cookies is a method used to ice certain cookies, usually sugar cookies, and it's something we love to do and never seem to make time to do it.  Well we made time finally and flooded up a storm...er...maybe it's the other way around since storms cause flooding.

...anyway...

If you've never flooded cookies before, it's a fairly straight forward process.  There are a few things we suggest to all first-time flooders:

1. Use sugar cookies (they bake with a flat top, which is essential to get a good cookie iced this way.
2. Use simple shaped cookie cutters.  You'll see in the pictures below we used a random assortment of woodland creatures (thank you Ikea!)  DO NOT USE CRAZY COOKIE CUTTERS LIKE THIS IF YOU'VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE.  Stick to hearts, or squares, or another geometrically simple shape.  Trust us.
3. Practice makes perfect.  It will take you probably a few cookies to find your groove. Do not despair if your first few look like your kids finger painted all of them.

If you have some cooled sugar cookies, you're pretty much ready to go.  Oh, but first you need some royal icing.  Of course, searching for "royal" anything this week brings up nothing but William and Kate's baby. 

 

No, Google, we DON'T want to read another story about this.  We actually just want a recipe we can share with our readers for royal icing.

If you've never made royal icing before, click here for a super simple recipe.  Ours is slightly different (and slightly better in our humble opinions), but we don't like to give trade secrets out on the world wide web.

The trick to flooding cookies is to build a dam to stop the icing from spilling over the side of the cookies.  And what do you build the dam with?  Why icing, of course?   This is where you will need some practice if you don't have a steady hand.  Be patient, it will become easier.  And you will find that not all of your cookies look awful after they've set.

So once you've dammed up the cookies, they look like this, nice and yummy and ready for flooding...

We think that's a bear cub.  These Swedish cookie cutters are questionable, though.

To flood, you take the same royal icing, water it down, and drip it carefully into the center of the cookie.  The hope is that your icing will spread around the top of the cookie but not overflow thanks to the wonderful white-walled icing dam you have built.

Here we're watching the icing spread.  If you're impatient like we are (who has time to slowly watch this spread??) or if there are little nooks and crannies you just can't seem to get the icing into, you may have to help it along.  You'll find tools that work for you, but we often suggest starting with a tooth pick.  Just be careful the white icing outline stay in tact.  

You will eventually get it to spread over everything, and it will be finished and ready for drying.

Once everything's spread across the cookie, it's a good idea to look for any air bubbles and pop them as well.  Again, we suggest a toothpick, but find what works for you.

If you get really fancy, you can start to add details to your cookie that will help define it better.  Below we took a snail, added a swirl, and gave it a little more character than the bear cub up above.

Once it dries completely the snail will be the cutest little thing.  You can add other items too, sprinkles, candies, you name it.  It helps to really make flooding cookies a ton of fun.

So now go practice!  Take an evening and try it out!  Let us know what you think, and how successful it was.  And if you happen to be using the same Ikea cookie cutters...give us a call!!

Happy Wednesday!!

Yep...It Happened

Welp, folks, our morning started off really well.  Wanted to try out a new recipe, and we figured what better day to do it than an overcast Sunday in Pittsburgh.

Then...well, then this happened...

One cookie cake in 20 pieces on our counter.  Yep.  Happy Sunday to us!

We've told you many times for every wonderful thing we make we make an equal mess that ends up in the garbage.  Here's proof.

If you're in the area, though, it tastes delicious.  We added 3 types of chips, dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, and butterscotch, as well as some walnuts.  Yummmm!! :-)

Dog Days of Summer

Man, guys, it's so hot!!

We hate this stretch of the year, when the heat and humidity just kill any motivation to bake that we have.  It's no small wonder we love baking in the winter, when it's super cold outside.

Our sister is a photographer (shameless plug, click here to view her ridiculously good photos) and she always talks about how her wedding business has a "down time", usually in the winter where not a lot of people choose to get married.  We wish we had the same "down time" in July with our baking, but alas we don't.  It seems you people always want to eat cake!

So through these hot months we crank up the air conditioning and pray for cooler days.  As in, nothing like this past week.

Nevertheless, baking still goes on.  We have quite a few orders in these hot and humid summer months, which is great news for us.  Starting a business is a ridiculously slow process (we think we've seen paint dry quicker than this business take off), but we're happy to see things starting to snowball. We have more orders now than we did a year ago, and it's a trend we're looking to continue in the coming months and years as we move into the next phase of our "Build a Bakery" stage.

We have another themed birthday next week that we're excited to tell you about in future posts.  If you follow us on Facebook you might already know what the cake is going to look like.  It should be a blast to make, and will allow us to do something we've never done before.  This blog is all about new experiences, so we're happy for the chance.

We're also trying to find some good reasons to spread our skills around for reduced or no costs.  If anyone reading out there knows of a good cause in or around the Pittsburgh area that might have need for some baked goods, give us a call.  Your talents and gifts are wonderful things, but they mean so much more when you share them with others.

We're out to go cool off the kitchen.  Wheeeew-eeey, this heatwave needs to break!

Stay cool, friends!