Cupcake Wars

Click HERE for Rock of Ages cupcake wars episode. Megan Faulkner Brown (owner of Sweet Tooth fairy) wins the contest!!!

White Chip cookies w/ marshmallow bits & toffee

Got this recipe idea off PickyPalate. 1st off, gotta say, i LOVE her site. She has so many creative mix in combos but I mostly like her site because It seems as though she likes her cookies same way I like mine. Thick, doughyish, , dense, and soft. Jenny almost always uses the same cookie base* that I use: 1/2 cup Crisco, 1 egg, 1.5 cups flour, etc... For me, when it comes to cookies, texture is huge. I don't like flat crispy cookies and I don't like fluff non dense cotteny cookies. They need to be dense doughy thick and soft. Way to get that. More flour, more butter, lower bake time.

Here is the link to Jenny's recipe. I left out the brown chocolate chunks. I'm having trouble* liking brown chocolate last couple years. not sure why. Anyway, MINE turned out delicious. BTW: you get the mini marshmallow bits at Target.

Yellow Cake

I rarely make cakes. I used to try making them a lot but they never turned out right and i'm not into the cake mix type cake. They always comes out to light/cotteny/airy for my taste. But last night I was totally in the mood for a rich dense buttery yellow cake. I browsed up blogger sites for a good recipe. Came across SprinklesBakes post where she had used Martha Stewarts recipe. It looked like what I was looking for especially because it used butter (not oil or Crisco,) whole eggs (not just egg whites,) and all purpose flour (not cake flour.) Cake flour, oil, and whites make for a lighter fluffier cake which is not what I was shooting for so this recipe seemed pretty perfect.I checked a few more sites just to be sure and came across an allrecipes butter cake that looked even slightly more perfect because it called for 2 T more butter and 2 T less milk. It also had very good reviews. The only downfalls to the allrecipes cake was that it called for more baking powder (too much baking powder is unnecessary and makes for a bitter taste) and also it didn't have salt in the batter (which is weird.You need salt.) So I combined the 2 recipes using the best attributes of both and came up with a perfect recipe which is posted directly below. Results: ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS. It was exactly what I was looking for. Tasted like a sugar cookie - cake. Super buttery and rich and perfect.Iv'e had trouble not eating the entire cake. So maybe I shouldn't ever make it again. Just kidding, I definitely will. Because its the perfect cake for a party, a wedding, a nice birthday, or any event that needs a good sturdy delicious cake. Glad I finally have the perfect go-to cake recipe (:  Just realized this is the same vanilla cake recipe that Jessica from "how sweet eats" uses and bakerella!! see i knew it was a good one!
Yellow Cake
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 eggs*
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole milk

Beat butter and sugar till creamy. Beat in baking powder, salt, vanilla, and eggs till well combined. Gradually add flour and milk till thoroughly mixed. Pour/spread batter into buttered glass 9x9 square baking dish. Bake 30-35 min at 350.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

These don't look GLUTEN FREE. they look way too perfect. But they really truly are wheat/gluten free. I whipped these up one night, these and then some non gluten free chocolate chip cookies, and everyone actually preferred the gluten free over the regular. What???? my dad is gluten intolerant. we have tried hundreds of gluten free chocolate chip cookies recipes, and NEVER have we gotten one that we really liked until now. And its not only a "like," its a "love" These are truly winners. Soft, doughy-ish, and non grainy (all the other gluten free cookies are kind of grainy) Ya so, these were gone in less than a day. If you want the recipe, leave a comment or email me at anh5556@gmail.com

Cinnamon Scones

My parents, Caleb, and I all went to San Francisco about 4 weeks ago. While there we stopped at a Starbucks and I bought a cinnamon scone. Ive never bought a scone before due to a bad scone experience that I'll talk about later in this paragraph. But these scones looked way to good to pass up. And they were. So This is where my new found scone fetish began. I bought 2 more (and a maple scone - which was super good too) and then couple days later we came across a Panera bakery and so I ordered a cinnamon scone there as well. Panera's was even "better" than the amazing Starbucks scone. We don't have a Panera in UT so I decided I had to replicate the recipe as close as close as whats possible. So I searched the Internet and the top rated cinnamon chip scone recipe came from taste of homes. A lot of bloggers copied the recipe and had huge success, so I figured that this is the one. I modified it slightly. Like this blogger, Cream instead of buttermilk. and slightly more sugar and slightly more butter. Only complaints on the Taste of Homes recipe was "not sweet enough." My scones came out perfect. I am going to use this recipe always from here on out. Couple years ago I made Barefoot Contessa scones and they were not good. That was the 1st time I'd ever had a scone and so I had always though that scones were just dry and gross. But Thank you to Starbucks and Panera for fixing my dislike of scones!

cinnamon chip scones

3 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup plus 2 T sugar (divided)
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
14 T cup cold butter

1 cup cream
10 oz cinnamon chips
2 T butter, melted
Rainbow Chip Frosting (optional)

Combine flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in cream just until moistened. Fold in Chips. Turn onto lightly floured surface and knead 10-12 times or until dough is no longer sticky. Roll out dough 1" thick, even, and flat. Cut with circle cookie cutters. Brush top of circles with melted butter and then sprinkle with the remaining 2 T sugar. Yields: 12 scones.Bake 375 10-12 min or until LIGHT golden. Serve with butter, jam, frosting, cream... (I like Mine topped w/ Rainbow Chip frosting)

Cookie Baking Tips

I have been making cookies ever since preschool, seriously. I remember I was always so excited when our preschool teacher would let us help her make cookies. I wanted to do every part of it. So as soon as I got a little older, like grade school, I would always make tons of cookies. It was never cake or Brownies or anything else. Just cookies. And I always would try new recipes. Not just different kinds of cookies but different kinds of cookies per type. I wanted to know "the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe" and the "perfect snickerdoodle recipe" through so much experimentation, I finally came up with or found my own favorite of each kind of cookie. For a while Ashley's Chocolate Chip cookies was my favorite (yes I invented that one, and now its famous on allrecipes). Its a really good one, but not my favorite anymore. Here's a list of my favorite cookies per each type. Just Click on the names and it'll take you to their links

Favorite snickerdoodles or HERE
Favorite Peanut Butter cookie
Favorite m&m Cookie
Favorite Ginger Snap
Favorite double chocolate cookie
Favorite sugar cookies
Favorite Oatmeal cookie

Best cookie cookbook
Best cookie scoop

Best cookie sheet


Tips for making good cookies:

do not over-bake. 8 min at 350 is almost always perfect. sometimes i even just do 7.
Take cookies off of baking sheet immediately after u remove them from the oven, otherwise the bottoms of the cookies turn brown.
Too much flour = stiff bready, biscuit-like cookie
Not enough flour = flat cookie and/or cookie that spreads all over pan. For example, nestle toll house chocolate chip cookie recipe always turns out flat. Add another 1/2 c flour to the original recipe and... Bam! perfect cookie.
Basically, if dough feels wet, add more flour. I like to be able to pack my cookie dough into the scoop, w/ my hands.
crisco makes a better drop cookie, in terms of texture
Butter is better than crisco when it comes to cut-out sugar cookies.
For drop cookies: Small, round shaped, cookies, using above cookie scoop, turn out better than big cookies. (I typically pack in the cookie dough w/ my fingers and then push the button to drop the dough on the baking sheet.)
For sugar cookies: Roll dough thick . like 1/2" thick. and only use the bakeat350 cookie recipe. Make sure you don't overbake sugar cookies. 7 min at 350 makes them perfect.
Sour cream or cream cheese in a cookie recipe is never a good thing. It makes for cookies with a cardboardy texture. Unless you like that ): (cream cheese, is however great in frosting)

OFF SUBJECT: But here's a link to my favorite pie crust recipe. I meant to post this a long time ago, kept forgetting. Its called Easy to Remember Pie Crust

Sweet Tooth Fairy

Each Season the Sweet Tooth Fairy comes out with a new design for their amazing sugar cookies. This one is my favorite so far. (they Always use the same recipe, just change up the look per season/holiday) and once again these sugar cookies are soooooooooooooooooooooooo good, especially if you like Soft cookies