So today is baking day. Tomorrow is Mason’s actual birthday and we are serving cupcakes and cookies instead of cake. It’s a monkey themed party so we bought all the necessary ‘monkey’ decorations. The first task was heading to the grocery store to pick up all the ingredients.
The sugar cookie recipe was pretty simple but the cupcake ingredient list had a few things that I did not have:
- Coffee (never bought coffee before). Was a bit frustrating as I didn’t want to spend too much on something I’d never drink
- Butter or sour milk. Could they sell it any other size besides 1 litre!
- Food coloring (which Walmart didn’t have!)
- Marshmallows (Mason is a vegetarian so he won't be sampling)
- Brown Sprinkles (Safeway hardly had any selection, as did Zellers and Walmart. Save On Foods had them)
- Vanilla Wafers (the only place that sold them was Save on)
- Ritz crackers (mini's)
Once I spent a zillion dollars on baking items, I headed home. Clayton and Mason just pulled up the street and we started our baking adventure around 12:41pm.
I figured since the sugar cookies were the easiest, we’d start there. I had an idea to make my own cookie cutter out of a tinfoil pie pan but failed miserably. I just couldn’t get it to the right shape. If you want to try yourself, the how to is here.
The cookies were rolled out, cut by hand (just used a small knife) and placed on a greased cookie sheet. The recipe called for 10 mins but they are done in 8. Not burnt but a bit overdone. They tasted great. When they were cool, we got to work with icing them but used a lot more than the 1-2 drops of yellow food coloring than the recipe called for. One or two drops didn’t give much of a banana-y color.
Once the cookies were done, we were on to making the cupcakes. Clayton did most of this recipe while I iced the rest of the ‘banana’s’. Once he got to the coffee part, he stopped. I didn’t buy decaffeinated coffee because a) I don’t drink it and b) I didn’t think of it. I also don’t have a coffee maker. So I ended up putting paper towel in a sifter and pouring hot water over the 2 tbsp of coffee that it called for. I repeated this step a few times. Turns out that my towel absorbed too much coffee and I ended up watering it down. Hopefully it won’t affect the kiddies too much lol.
The cupcakes turned out in about 15 minutes and looked great. I filled some of the cups too full but nothing stuck to the pan. They were just a little ‘top heavy’. I was so excited to decorate them but recommend waiting so the icing doesn’t melt or drip. We had fun making monkey faces. Clayton got creative and made different shaped mouths and left some of the marshmallows off as Mason can’t eat them.
I bought more than enough supplies for decorating and will have to return some. All in all, everything turned out great. The recipes were very tasty and the themed baking was fun to create. I forgot to put the brown ‘tips’ on the banana’s but I don’t think a bunch of 2 year olds are going to care!
And without further ado….
My kitchen during the baking
Clayton taking a cat nap while the oven is baking
The Harbour-Weir family showing off their baked goods!
And the monkey cupcakes and banana sugar cookies, all ready for tomorrow's party
