Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

  This is a super easy and fun recipe to make! This one I love to make with the kids because there is no "perfect" ways to make it. The are a drop cookie, meaning you just simply grab a spoon full of cookie dough and "drop it" right onto the cookie sheet! Perfect recipe for getting your kids (or husband) cooking!
    What you will need:
1 Lightly greased cookie sheet
1 Large mixing bowl
A rubber spatula for all who want to stir (I let each of my kids stir this one...2 spatulas was a must in our house!)

   Recipe:
Ingredients:
  1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
     1/2 cup vegetable shortening
     1/4 cup butter, room temperature
     1/4 cup water
        1 egg
  1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
       3 cups uncooked quick-cooking oats
       1 cup all-purpose flour
     1/2 teaspoons baking soda
     1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
     1/2 teaspoon salt
        1 cup raisins
  
    Preheat oven to 350' F. In large bowl, cream together butter and shorting. Add sugar, water, egg, and vanilla. Mix until well blended. Add oats, flour, flour and baking soda and just fold together until all ingredients are combined and moist. Add raisins*. Drop about a tablespoon of dough onto lightly greased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake for 8-10 mins until just lightly golden brown. Cool completely before removing from pan and storing.
* Optional additions: 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, 1/2 cup flaked coconut.

Feel free to ask me any questions about this, or any other recipe!

XBOX 360

   This XBOX cake was created for one of my husband's friends. The console was a chocolate cake with chocolate icing filling, covered in a thin coat of butter cream so the fondant wouldn't show chocolate icing. The controller was a vanilla cake with buttercream icing, and I  must say, the vanilla cake was the best I have ever made! I could eat ten of these cakes...YUMMY!

Geaux Saints!

    Saints football helmet cake! As cool as this cake looks, it tastes even better! The cake is a cream cheese pound cake with butter cream icing! It is covered in a yummy marshmallow fondant and I got the chance to use my new airbrush machine to paint on the gold!

Pac-man

    How cool! A retro Pac-man cake! This cake actually was VERY scary for me to make, I had never carved a sphere from cake before! Not to mention, all of the horror stories about sphere cakes being structurally unsound and falling apart ahhh!!!!!! I think it turned out great though! The cake was made of a vanilla pound cake, with vanilla butter cream icing. I used a bowl to get that top dome shape, and then baked cakes in round pans and carved to get that spherical shape. The little ghosts I made from gumdrops! I just made a few cuts in the bottom and pinched the little flared shape on them to give them that "wiggly" ghost look!

Lemon Cake

    This cake is not a custom cake, I know, but I had a request for one and how could I say no!? The little roses are made of the lemon peel, with a few sprigs of mint for garnish. I think this cake came out very cute, and as always, I had a blast making it! Who doesn't love lemon cake!?

Mini lemon cake with butter cream icing

   Okay, this is the absolute BEST lemon cake recipe in the world! I dressed the little lemon cakes like pumpkins just for fun (running around with ideas for fall, except the real pumpkin cakes later will be covered in orange fondant). I found the recipe on foodnetwork.com, by Ina Garten. However, her recipe called for WAYYY too many lemons, giving the cake a bit of a sour taste, and by a bit, I mean enough to make your lips pucker! So, I doctored the recipe, added a bit of  "me" to it, and I am very pleased with the results! This is what I am going to call the "Perfect Lemon Cake"! The butter cream I made was also a new recipe and will now be MY butter cream that I will use regularly! It has a nice texture; sweet, but not so sweet you can only have one bite! (actually, I had lots of left over icing from this cake that I couldn't stop eating alone!) If you love lemon cake, this is the cake for you! Sorry about the very blurry picture...Its mainly just for fun!

Topsy Turvy

YAY!!! I finally got the chance to create my very first topsy turvy cake! It turned out sooo cute! My son helped me make some of the little fondant balls around the bottom, (and also helped me eat the scraps from carving!) This is actually my first butter cream covered cake too...That is just butter cream and no fondant with the exception of the ribbons and polka dots! Hope to make another soon! Oh, and the cake tasted really good too, a vanilla pound cake with vanilla butter cream :)