Birthday treats for my little boy!

My little boy turned four on Friday the 13th, and was quite excited to be doing so. He'd been counting down the number of "sleeps" until his actual birthday, as well as to his birthday party with his friends, which came the next day.

To help him celebrate his birthday, I baked up some cookies for him to bring to the recreation program that I work at, which he attends with me, before he heads off to school in the afternoon.

Together we made these froggy sugar cookies, baked on a stick for easier eating. I had gone out and purchased a bit of piping equipment so I could pipe icing onto the frogs, the remainder of the butter cream from the previous weekends cake. As I piped the icing around the frogs, and gave them a bit of icing for the eyes, he carefully chose the confetti dots to go on that icing.

This was one of the first times I have every tried using a piping bag for icing, so I was a bit nervous and unsure about how they would turn out. I think for my first time they turned out fairly well, but I will need a larger bag than what I purchased initially. And a few more tips.

I hadn't intended to be making frog cookies when I first started this. Initially I was going to make all stars, again on sticks. My star cookie cutter, however, is big. Big enough that one star cookie is about the same as 3 cookies. I did think to test it out, made a few, then decided, oh yes, that cookie would be way to big for these 2, 3 and 4 year olds. They would be perfect, however, in place of a birthday cake that evening, while we were at a friends house for dinner (though she did get him a cake as well, and he ate both cake and cookies, happy as can be.)

These cookies were my second attempt at piping icing, and I was very happy with how they came out. A smaller tip would have allowed for more detail, though there hadn't been one available when I purchased this one. Oh well, reason to go shopping again!

All this icing work had been in preperation for the "cupcakes" requested for the party. As I said in a previous post, it had been suggested to me that I not bake cupcakes from scratch with the kids, most of whom were not going to eat much of the cake anyways since they never do at a party.

I had also had the request of a specific type of cake, chocolate with vanilla icing, but knew some kids wouldn't eat that, so I went with a mix of flavors, chocolate with vanilla icing, then with chocolate icing, as well as vanilla with vanilla, then with chocolate. And I put them into ice cream cones to make eating easier.

Learned a bit here. When you are making cupcakes in ice cream cones, underfill them. I think in the end I ended up with about a tablespoon of batter in each cone. On the ones that had more than this, even with my leaving room for expansion, the batter puffed, over flowed, and lent a realistic image of the ice cream having melted down the side of the cone.

Oh. And next time I need to find a better way to carry these out to the party. The tray worked fine when I didn't have to move the cupcakes, but as soon as I did, a bunch went flying. Good thing I had made lots of extra. Though the ones that made it to the party did not look as pretty as the ones I started out with. And again, I had fun piping icing, with the star tip this time.

The kids didn't care that they weren't as pretty, and were happy to have a cupcake that they could hold without getting their hands all dirty. But most importantly, the birthday boy was happy with his birthday party cupcakes, and was proud to hold one in his hand while we all sang happy birthday to him!

Now I think I need a few days break from baking sweets! Or at least birthday treats! Only four months to go before the next child's birthday party!