The Nifty Foodie

::offers plate of beachy cookies::

Hi everyone! Remember me? Well, I used to be Skinny Food by Amy, but it turns out that I bake too much, and it would make me a liar to post such buttery foods on a site that promises skinny food. So, I decided to make the move.

It’s a big move, but no worries, my posts won’t be changing. I just wanted a title that felt like a better fit.

I hope you like the new layout. I find it kind of, well, nifty.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and heck, add me to your readers while you are at it.

Oh and if you have any feedback on the new look, I’d surely appreciate it!

Crawfish cookies don’t seem to be as popular as Christmas tree cookies or Teddy bear shaped ones, so finding a cookie cutter for these just did not happen. I was sad, but I had my paring knife on me and went to town.

I found a print out of a decent crawfish and generalized it for cutting purposes. I was going to pipe the details instead.

This took me about an hour to cut out 16 crawfish shaped cookies, but the overall shape looked good to me, so I baked them up.

Hilariously, these cookies are the two WORST colors to make on icing. Red and black are hard colors to get, and you have to use almost 1/3 of the bottle to attain the color. (Note: If you need to make red icing, buy no taste red or you’ll end up with bitter icing.) Just remember, let the icing sit a little after dying it. Lighter colors get richer when they sit!

At this point of piping and filling, the hubs pointed out that they look like ants. Great…

However, after the details were put in, they looked pretty much like cutesy crawfish! So, if you can’t find the cutter you are looking for, definitely consider getting a template and cutting from there!

In case you are wondering how to decorate cookies and what recipes I use, click here.

I might be a week late with these, but here’s proof that I did make Christmas cookies!

I excitedly drew up plans (which I did deviate from a bit) on my lunch break one day, and went to work the week before Christmas on these bad boys!

I was so excited to use pearl dust for the tree trunks. I mixed a little bit with some vodka, and just painted it on after the flood icing dried. It leaves a really pretty shimmery finish!

If you’re curious about the recipes and techniques that I use to make these happen, check out my tutorial here.

This past weekend, I made red velvet cupcakes for a local nestie GTG. I was so excited to make these from scratch for the first time, and so, I enlisted the help from another southern gal, Paula Deen. Sadly, Paula Deen let me down with some dry, flavorless red velvet cupcakes. I was a little embarrassed to bring these, since I hate presenting flop recipes to anyone, but I didn’t have time or ingredients to try again! So, what’s a girl to do? Make them look pretty!

I decided to make a simple cream cheese frosting (block of cream cheese, stick of butter, vanilla extract and powdered sugar until you get the right texture). Then, I colored the batch red and green. You know where this is going…

Yep, I wanted to swirl colors. Let me tell you..the pastry bag and I usually have a good fight over getting icing in the bag without getting it all over the top of the bag, my hands, etc. So, I found this tip on Cake Central’s forums about how to swirl with wayy less mess! Let me tell you…get your saran wrap ready, because you will want to make everything swirl colors after seeing how easy this is!

First, place a good sized sheet of saran wrap on your counter and plop icing in the center.

Roll the saran wrap into a thin log, cutting off excess wrap on the ends.

Slip the two colors (or three if you so dare) in the pastry bag, and squeeze icing out until the colors all appear.

Then, pipe!

Easy peasy swirl colors without the mess!

For Thanksgiving, I knew I had a great excuse to try one of Bakerella’s creations again. I thought these were so so cute, and looked easy enough, so I started my adventures across Baton Rouge to find these cute decorations to make my turkeys!

I found everything I needed at Wal-Mart and Michael’s, so thankfully, it was easy to find what was needed.

I decided to start with making a basic white cake and add golden yellow and orange food coloring to each 8″ cake for Thanksgiving colors.

Turkey Cake Pops
Source: Bakerella

Ingredients:

• 9×13 baked and cooled cake (any flavor)
• chocolate candy melts or bark
• 2 cups of buttercream (any flavor)
• espresso beans (makes turkey’s head)
• rainbow chip sprinkles (makes turkey’s beak)
• red heart sprinkles (makes turkey’s snood…and yes, I googled to find the correct term for that body part LOL!)
• stick pretzels (makes turkey’s legs)
• caramel candy corn (makes turkey’s feathers)
• black gel decorating icing or black food coloring pen (to draw eyes)
• lollipop sticks

Directions:

1. Using your hands, crumble cooled cake into small crumbs in a bowl. Add buttercream, one dollop at a time, mixing thoroughly, until the mixture can form easily into shapes. Be careful, because putting too much icing will make the mixture very sticky and difficult to dip into chocolate.
2. Form the cake mixture into balls and then stick them in the freezer for about 20 minutes to set.
3. In the meantime, put your chocolate in a double boiler to melt it. Take the cake balls out a few at a time, and put the lollipop stick in through the bottom. Then, dip in chocolate and set on a cookie sheet to dry.
4. After all cake balls are dry, using chocolate as a glue, affix the decorations onto the cake ball to turn it into a turkey!