Sugar Swings! Serve Some: 2017

Friday, December 22, 2017

The Nightmare Before Christmas Gingerbread Men Cookies




Oh man I can't believe its only 3 days until Christmas! 

 Every year I make the kiddos decorated gingerbread men and women cut out cookies.  I almost didn't make it in time this year because its been so hectic and the time is flying by so fast.

BUT 

I couldn't *not* do them this year so I made some time last weekend and got to decorating.  Priorities right?!!

Picking what characters was hard this year - but we had just watched 
The Nightmare Before Christmas recently with my little niece so I got into the Jack Skellington and friends mode!



In case you need a refresher from the top:  Oogie Boogie, Jack Skellington, Sally, Zero, Mayor of Halloween Town, Barrel, Shock, Lock, Scary Teddy, Dr. Finklestein, Santa Jack

I think cut out gingerbread cookies are my favorite Christmas cookie of all time.  This year my twins helped roll out the dough and cut out the cookies.  It's fun to see them getting into cooking and baking as they get older!


Do you like Jack and Sally?


OR

Santa Jack and Sally??


Always love to see them all done and decorated.  Can't wait to bring them to Christmas! 


Oh and since I had some extras I also did my kids (and dog!) in gingerbread form!


Merriest of Christmases to those that celebrate and Happy New Year to you all!

Here are other gingerbread men and ladies from years passed!


Super Hero Gingerbread Cookies




Peanuts Gang gingerbread men cookies


Star Wars Trooper Gingerbread Men Cookies


Rainbow Gingerbread Men Cookies


Star Wars christmas gingerbread cookies


Disney Frozen gingerbread men cookies


Disney Princess gingerbread cookies


Father's Day gingerbread men cookies


mint chocolate chip men cookies

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Pastel Candy Thanksgiving Turkeys in Donuts



Turkey day is coming up this week in the US so that means I attempted cute turkey treats - again!


I found the most fun candy corn this year - pastel fruit cremes!  I loved the colors and knew I needed to do some fun treats with them so scooped up a bag and promptly forgot about it.


But luckily my kiddo found them and asked to try them.  

If you don't like regular candy corn - then you might like these.  Very fruity - still sweet but not like traditional candy corn.  I also had some white Lindor chocolates that someone gave me which I thought I could use for the turkey bodies (and I love it when I don't have to go buy more stuff for an idea!)


The pastel colors are so pretty!


And since I needed them to sit on top of something - I went with donuts.  Baked sweet potato donuts with cranberry glaze, which I thought was perfect for Thanksgiving.  Recipe linked for the donuts and the cranberry glaze is just some cranberry jelly mixed with a little milk and powdered sugar until you get a nice glaze-y consistency.


The rest of the turkey is a skittle chocolate, dab of yellow melted candy melt for beak, red sprinkle for waddler, and black edible marker for eyes.  Candy corn feathers are attached with white melted chocolate.


The turkeys are perched in little donut nests.  Do turkeys sit in nests? Well maybe not but they do look pretty cute all nestled in!


Well are the turkeys cute? Can you make a cute turkey? 

Thanksgiving is my fav holiday because it has all my fav foods.  Turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie - all my comfort foods on one plate!  I will definitely be indulging this week! What's your favorite Turkey Day food? And let me know if you think this year's turkeys are cute!

Here are some of my past turkey attempts! Which is your fav??
















Sunday, November 5, 2017

Star Wars - The Last Jedi Chewbacca & the Porgs No Bake Cookies


Can we talk about the next Star Wars movie coming out this December? 

The Last Jedi opens on December 15th!


And have you seen the newest creature that is debuting? They are called Porgs and seem to be a cross between a puffin and a penguin.  Are they not the cutest?? I mean listen to them squawk:



Well as far as I can tell from the trailers they live on the island that Luke has been hiding out on but in the clip they are hanging with Chewbacca.


Of course I had to make some little porg cookies!


These are no bake and start from Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies.   Use regular sized ones for Chewy and Milano minis for the porgs.


Chewbacca is decorated with melted chocolate, candy coated sunflower seeds for eyes, and vanilla tootsie roll (decorated with brown edible writing pen and tinted vanilla candy melts) for his cross body belt.

Porgs are decorated with vanilla and chocolate candy melts (tint some gray/mustard), black round sprinkles for eyes, and black candy melts for nose and mouth.

These came together pretty quickly especially since no baking is required.


Well are you also pro-porg??!

Only 39 days until we see them on the big screen AND only 49 days until the Christmas holiday - in case you are interested!

Thanks for swinging by and have a great week!

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Creepy Clown (Pennywise from It) Madeleine Cookies


Hey ALL! It's almost Halloween so what better way to celebrate then with some creepy clown cookies??!


Well more specifically, these are Pennywise the Clown from It! I've always been a Stephen King fan and I'm loving his movie/book revival.  And the new Pennywise is pretty creepy:


I made him out of madeleine cookies - although he does look a bit like a spookier version of Ronald McDonald!


I love my madeleine pan and I've used it a million times. They are the perfect blend of cookie and cake.


Bake up a batch and then decorate with melted vanilla candy melts, red candy melts (for mouth and hair), white sprinkles for teeth, red heart sprinkle for nose, and white ball sprinkles for eyes (color them with yellow food writer)


Red detail on the face is made with painting red food gel color on with the paint brush for food or you can use a red food writer.  

Add a straw to make them into cookie pops!


OR plop them into Halloween cupcake wrappers to look like Pennywise is peeking out at you.  


My one kiddo that hates clowns won't even look at these so assuming that means they are pretty creepy for this Halloween! Are you a clown lover or hater??

Happy Almost Halloween!

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Let's Play Ball - Filled Red, White & Blue Baseball Cupcakes!


Holy crow I haven't posted or baked in a LONG time! 

And you know what? That's OK.  Totally OK! 

For the longest time I was putting pressure on myself to post at least weekly.  For anyone that follows along, you know that I have 3 kiddos (10 year old twins and now a 13 year old - A TEENAGER holy cow!) and I work out of the house full time.  This blog and baking/creating edible treats has always been an outlet for me.  A way to relieve stress and do something that was just for me and unrelated to my day job.  That said it was becoming more of another "to do" on my ever growing to do list.  

Just more of my type A personality showing its ridiculous head in the form of "Michelle you know you haven't posted anything really unique in forever so you must be losing the creativeness that people always compliment you on so you know get on with it even though you have kids that want to spend time with you and but they don't know about the ins and outs of the world yet which is a mess and really scary right now so you better model perfect human behavior and empathy but also you have a day job that actually pays you money and health benefits and you have a new boss so you better show what you can do at work and maybe start volunteering at a soup kitchen because you know your life is good and you should be giving back but your tired and over scheduled already but that's no excuse and you also need to spend some 1:1 quality time with you husband of 20+ years because you're both always tired and only complain or talk about schedules and kids and stuff keeps breaking down in the house oh and your daughter has a heart transplant and even though she's perfect and doing great is she going to have a normal life and will she have side effects from the plethora of meds she takes everyday and you spend $600 at Costco every 2 weeks but that's cool because at least you only have to physically buy toilet paper every 3 months" and then after thinking that or very similar everyday for a year your tell yourself to take a moment to breath (really BREATH) and to stop anything that doesn't have to get done and that's OK.  

It's totally OK.

SO.....I did!  And guess what?? Life went on.  I didn't make or bake anything ALL summer.  No stress on myself for not posting or baking and it was nice and actually a relief.  

Now work is still stressful and the kids are back in school (also a stressful) but now I miss the baking/creating.  So that means it must be time to go back! And I did tonite!

In all transparency these filled baseball cupcakes are from the June.  (LOLZ) And that's OK!


I made them for my kiddo's end of little league season in June.  I knew I wanted to do baseball cupcakes but with a little something extra inside.

Take out the center of your fav baked cupcake and then fill with buttercream.


I used red, white, and blue tinted vanilla buttercream to layer inside the homemade vanilla cupcakes.  Add first color with a squirt of buttercream and follow with the other colors layered on top of each other.


Totally optional as the baseball stitches work just as well on their own.


But the layered filling is very fun for 4th of July or for your favorite baseball fan.

We're huge Yankee fans here and they're doing pretty well this season so we're hoping for October baseball this year! Might need to make these fun filled cupcakes again!


So what did you do this summer?!! Are you ready for all that is pumpkin spice? I am!