Aquarium-inspired baking continues with these under the sea treats. Mike’s coworkers actually asked if there would be treats this week, and indeed, there will. A variety of whales, octopuses, crabs, sand dollars, starfish, and sea life motifs that feature kelp, anemones, and jellyfish will join Mike in the office tomorrow.
These cookies took me forever to ice, but it was nice Zen time, which I greatly needed. Although my whales look a bit crusty (I suppose whales actually are a bit crusty?) and my sand dollars (not pictured here) left a bit to be desired, I’m quite pleased with how they turned out. I hope Mike’s coworkers enjoy them.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 4 cups flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 teaspoons vanilla
- Triple batch Zella’s icing
- Royal blue, pale blue, teal, copper, brown, and moss green food coloring
- Miniature chocolate chips (for eyes)
Preparation
Stir together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.
Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and beat well. Add vanilla and about half the flour mixture, beating until combined; beat in remaining flour.
Note: if your dough is too crumbly, you can add just a bit of water or another ¼ teaspoon of vanilla.
Divide dough in half and knead each just slightly until dough sticks together. Form each half into a disc and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate until just barely firm, about 20-30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees; line several baking sheets with parchment paper.
Roll dough to 1/8 inch thickness and cut into desired shapes; I used a crab, whale, star, octopus, and two round cutters (small to make sand dollars, large to make the sea life motifs). Place on baking sheets about 2 inches apart; for the starfish, gently bend the tips of the star to make them more like a starfish.
Bake for 8-10 minutes, until just golden brown at the edges. Remove from oven and cool on the baking sheets for a few minutes, then cool completely on a wire rack before icing.
To ice, divide the icing into six portions: royal blue, pale blue, copper, green, and brown. You’ll need two small plain tips for the white and brown icings, a small open star tip for the green, and a small closed star tip and plain tip for the copper.
For the crabs, use royal blue icing and add miniature chocolate chips for eyes. For the whales, use a base coating of pale blue, then add royal blue and swirl – don’t wait to long to add your coating of royal blue or your whales will turn out crusty like mine! Add a circle of white and a miniature chocolate chip for the whale’s eye. Combine the blue icing portions and add some teal for the octopuses, then pipe on suction cups with white and use miniature chocolate chips for the eyes. For the starfish, use copper and pipe on white details. For sand dollars, use white, then pipe on pale brown details (mine didn’t turn out as well, so I didn’t include a photo of them). For the large round cookies, frost the base with the remaining blue/teal icing, then pipe on kelp using a small star tip and the green frosting, add anemones using a closed star tip and the copper frosting, and add jellyfish or other sea life with a plain tip with the copper frosting. I realize now that I should have made my jellyfish white, but that’s okay. I can always make these again.
Allow icing to set before storing in between sheets of waxed paper. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Mike and I visited the National Aquarium in Baltimore last weekend after a family party. I love an aquarium – the serene sharks and stingrays gliding through enormous tanks, the colorful tropical fish, the varieties of coral. I don’t scuba dive, but aquariums make me want to. Actually, I always just want to hop into the big tank and swim with the sharks, but I realize such behavior is both a) frowned upon and b) likely dangerous.
You’d think a girl like me who bakes all the time would have made banana nut muffins before. Not until this week, my friends. I guess I always make banana bread with our sketchy-looking bananas, but Mike requested banana nut muffins this time. In they went to his office, providing his coworkers with a classic breakfast treat.
Happy Mother’s Day, friends! Several years ago, while preparing to move to North Carolina, my sister-in-law Kristin encouraged me to take some plants from her yard. Into buckets went hostas, daffodils, and my absolute favorite, tiny shoots of an Annabelle hydrangea that had just begun to grow beneath a tree at the edge of their front lawn.
For a woman who doesn’t drink coffee, I love coffee-flavored desserts. I also love hazelnut and chocolate, which fortunately I’ve worked back into my diet without migraine consequences. Coffee, chocolate, and hazelnut combine incredibly well, so I decided to bake them into these cupcakes.
Brownies are probably one of my favorite things to bake, because they’re so versatile. You can make them plain, add different flavors, put frosting on them…whatever you like. In this case, I chose to mix in some orange zest and a few drops of orange extract, then add a chocolate buttercream frosting. The end result is probably one of the best treats I’ve ever made. Or at least, it’s among my favorites.
A few years ago I saw a beautiful speckled egg cake, probably on Pinterest or in an issue of Real Simple magazine. Since then, I’ve intended to make something like it each spring, and I finally made a cupcake version this week.
We all remember that person from our childhood who made Rice Krispies Treats without enough marshmallows. In my childhood, that person was my beloved Grandma Zella. Despite being a stellar baker, her Treats were always far too dry. Like scratch-the-roof-of-your-mouth, practically-drawing-blood dry. And nobody wants that.
Maureen and Margo, our goddaughters, love unicorns. I don’t remember unicorns being such a big deal when I was a girl, but then again, I was a girl in the 1980s. Back then we had icons like the Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, and Rainbow Brite. Now that I think about it, Rainbow Brite seems like the kind of gal who would have hung out with unicorns. Maybe she did? I honestly can’t remember.