Easy Decorating Tip 8,367

 So here is yet another easy decorating tip for another Holiday, Valentine's Day!
I whipped up some brownies the other day and decided I wanted to make them festive.

What you may need:

• Fresh Baked Brownies or Store Bought Brownies
• Powdered sugar 
• A fine mesh sieve or any mesh strainer
• wax paper, parchment paper or any paper you can cut
• scissors 
• Valentinesque sprinkles, I just bought this from Wilton.

So bake or unwrap your brownies, take what ever paper you are using and cut out a heart. Lay the heart you just cut out where ever you want on top of the brownies.

Load up your mesh strainer sieve or whatever it is you call it with powdered sugar and gently shake it over your brownies. When it is to your satisfaction remove the paper hearts and Viola! All done. 

You can add some sprinkles so jazz them up little. So simple and now you have fancy brownies. Sort of.  Oh well enjoy! 

Baking Tip List - Cookie Week

The final recipe for Cookie Week has been posted, but we're not done yet! We've compiled a few baking tips to help you in the kitchen this holiday season.



1. Out of powdered sugar? You can can make your own if you don't want to brave the stores. Just put regular, granulated, sugar 1/2 a cup at a time in a food processor or coffee grinder and pulse until you have powdered sugar. Voila!


2. If you’re like me, you forget to take the butter out of the fridge for softened butter in recipes. Cut butter into even chunks and microwave on low for 10 seconds. Check the butter and repeat if necessary, be careful to not let it melt. Properly softened butter is the secret to many a good cookie recipe!


3. If you have multiple pans in the oven, do not let them touch. It can create hot spots and the touching spots might over cook.


4. When melting chocolate for dipping or coating, WATER IS EVIL. It will cause the chocolate to separate and that is a terrible thing. Also white chocolate is more prone to burning, so watch the temperature.


5. When I have a lot of chocolate dipping I need to do, like if I am making cake balls, dipping fruit or other food, I use a mini crock-pot for melting. It’s the perfect size, and it keeps a constant temperature.


6. Coat candy or fruit with flour before putting into batter. It will keep them from sinking to the bottom of the cake or cookie.


7. When baking cookies, it's important that they are all the same size to ensure even cooking. For drop cookies, use an ice cream scoop or cookie scoop, like this one, to take the guess work out of evenly sized cookies. (Hint: Do the same thing for cupcakes & muffins!)


8. If a cookie recipe isn't as soft or crisp as you'd like, adjust the baking time. Pulling the cookies out of the oven when the centers are still a little gooey will give you a softer cookie. Leave them in longer if you like more of a crunch (but not so long that they burn!) Also, you can make a cookie softer by swapping in a little light brown sugar for regular, granulated sugar. 


9. Parchment paper makes clean up a breeze. I use it all the time instead of greasing my baking sheet!


And the most important baking tip...
10. Turn the oven off after you're finished baking. We don't want any fires now, do we?


Do you have any baking tips to share? Post them in the comment section!

Quick and Easy Holiday Decorating tip

You are probably busy, running around all day, working, trying to get everything on your "To Do" list accomplished. With Christmas quickly approaching there just doesn't seem to be enough time to do everything. Christmas quickly coming up also mean you or someone you know is probably doing a lot of holiday baking.

I don't know about you but I bake when I am stressed. I'm guessing for others, baking is stressful. So if your boyfriend/girlfriend/in-laws/other miscellaneous family or friends are visiting and you want to impress them with wicked baking skills all you need is a tub of frosting and some sprinkles. Oh sweet sprinkles. How you can make anything look festive. 

What you need: 

Sprinkles, any shape, color size depending on the holiday or your mood

A tub of frosting an flavor

homemade cupcakes or cookies OR store bought or cookies  

See this sad,pathetic cupcake? He is all naked and vulnerable and DANG IT! He doesn't like it one bit! 

So mister cupcake, this is what we will do. COVER YOU IN SPRINKLES!

I feel the holiday spirit blooming already. 

There are so many varieties of sprinkles. I had no idea. When I was little my parents only bought the colored sugar. I never knew about the delightful world of sprinkles. There are all sorts of colors of jimmies like the one pictured above. Really, you could find any shade you desired if you looked hard enough.

There are sprinkles shaped like snowflakes. I feel like I'm in a blizzard of sprinkles.

Here is the standard colored sugar. There are so many colors available. Red and green (and white if you so choose) make this ordinary cupcake extraordinary and christmas like.

You can smear a cookie, store bought, homemade or semi-homemade with some frosting and throw on some nonpareils! What exactly are "pareils" and why can't these little guys be them? Just doesn't seem fair. 

There are these large confetti sprinkles just hoping to help some poor old Scrooge feel the Joy of the Holidays with their giant size and colorful appearance. 

And finally here are some festive red jimmies, some white stars and green tree sprinkles. 

It's so festive it makes me want to slap a clown carrying christmas presents. I don't really know what the means but thats not the point. The point is, they turned the plain cupcake into a christmas extravaganza in a mere 2 seconds. 

No need to stress over doomed christmas baking! Just buy some sprinkles, and slather on a good layer of store bought or homemade icing and cover that sucker with sprinkles and everyone will think you are a baking genius. 

Bake it Pretty has a fantastic selection of sprinkles and other baking goods. I'll probably end up in the poor house because of them but at least they will be able to stay in business.

Kay