Fleur de Sel Caramel and Vanilla Cream Fondant Spirals

Wow, that's a long name for a candy.  Anyway, I bought the cookbook Sugar Baby a couple of weeks ago and have been dying to try some of the recipes but I wasn't able to find the time until yesterday.  I don't have a whole lot of experience cooking sugar, so I was a little bit nervous about it.  I decided to start off with this recipe for delicious caramel swirled with vanilla bean fondant, both of which require cooking sugar.  It was a lot of work (and oh, the dishes!), but they turned out perfectly and taste delicious! 

You might remember that I mentioned that I had TMJ, and that I just got my braces off that were meant to fix the TMJ.  So today, I really put it to the test.  If I had eaten these two years ago, I would have had immediate jaw pain and that achy jaw feeling for at least a day or two.  Today, after eating two of these (and they're actually pretty big), I feel zero pain!  Thank you, Susie (my orthodontist)!

Chocolate-Covered Mint Patties (St. Patrick's Day Version)

These were very spur of the moment, which is pretty much a rarity for me.  Since I do most of my baking during my little guy's naps, I usually plan everything out in advance so I can get as much in as I can before he wakes up.  But I guess I was feeling spontaneous yesterday.  And my husband was home, so that makes it easier to make a sweet treat when I get the whim.

Today we're having lunch with my baby's honorary grandparents, and all they wanted us to bring was chips and drinks.  I felt like I needed to bring a little something extra for them, but not something so big that it trumps the dessert they said they'd provide.  And honorary grandma can't eat gluten, which limits the possibilities since, apparently, everything I make has gluten.  Except for these babies:

These are my chocolate-covered mint patties.  I decided to try something new (man, I was spontaneous today!), so instead of the usual peppermint extract, I tried some wintergreen flavoring.  They tasted good, but I think we both prefer the peppermint.   Actually, my favorite version is when I make it with raspberry extract instead of mint...yum!  Anyway, of course I had to make the filling green for Saint Patrick's Day, because as I mentioned last time, they love the holiday.

My First Attempts

Ok, so this all started last March when my mother-in-law and I took cake decorating classes at the local Michael's.  Here's my first cake:

My son's first birthday fell within a few days of this class, so I made it into a birthday cake.  Not so pretty, but he didn't seem to mind.

Then I made a similar cake for my husband's birthday.  He's a Star Wars fan, so this was his selection:

Then I took the second course on flowers.  Here was the final cake for that class:

 And then there was the final class on fondant and gum paste.  I'm not much of a fan of fondant, but it was interesting to learn.

From there, I started playing on my own with cookies.  I first saw it on Our Best Bites.  I started out using their glace icing.  Here's my first attempts: cookies for Fourth of July.

 Then for Halloween, I made some pumpkins, bats, and spiderwebs that I thought turned out pretty cute.

And then for Thanksgiving, I made some acorns, turkeys, and maple leaves. 

This was my last attempt at glace icing.  Although I like the taste of it more than royal icing, it was so hard to get nice detailing with it.  The only way to get good definition (for me at least), I had to make it so stiff that it was hard to pipe.  Also, I noticed that a day or two after the icing dried, it got a sort of cloudy look to it that wasn't so appealing.  So then I tried my hand at royal icing.  My first attempt was for my first paying order that I mentioned yesterday.

It went ok.  Some of the cookies dried a bit splotchy, and I've figured out that my piping icing was a bit too stiff, so it didn't flow very smoothly.  On my next order, I thinned the piping icing quite a bit more, and it went a lot smoother.

Which brings us to my latest project.  We were invited to the first birthday party of our realtor's little girl, so I made her some cookies:

I thought they turned out pretty well.  Not perfect, but definitely improving.