A Giveaway and some Easy Baking! June 27, 2009

A cute little giveway for all my 3 peeps .  For your consideration I have this little matching red set: a memo pad, a tin filled with chocolate and notecards and envelopes.  Leave me a comment and I will enter you to win. Mention me in your blog and let me know about it, and I will enter you again.  I will put numbers into a bowl and my handsome son will pick the winner next friday July 3rd. (Sorry I don’t know about random integers??)  Now on to some easy baking!  Last weekend we had an end of the season Baseball party, a Birthday and Fathers day. So I was busy baking for all 3.   I give thanks to Bakerella for a couple of great ideas! And thanks to Winco for such low prices on baking supplies!

I saw this cute burger and fry basket idea over at Bakerella.  I copied, but did it the cheap and easy way.  I didn’t put sesame seeds on the buns( I didn’t think 11 and 12 yr old boys would care), and I only did “lettuce” frosting. Bakerella also made yellow and red frosting for ketchup and mustard.  Even though I took the easy route, the baseball team as well as the parents loved them.  I used 2 boxes of brownie mix, prepared in my 1/2 sheet cake pan for the patties.  I made cupcakes with yellow cake mix and used milk instead of water in the recipe for the buns.  I used 1 container of white frosting and colored it green for lettuce.  I used a circle cutter for the brownies to turn them into burger patties. I then cut the cupcakes in half and plopped the brownies right in the middle, topped with some “lettuce” frosting. And voila! they really did look like burgers!  I used 2 packages of sugar cookie mix and followed the directions for making cut cookies.  I rolled the dough out into an oblong and cut into fries.  As you can see my fries came out more “home fry” than Mc Donalds. So note to self for next time “CUT Thinner fries!”  I bought a package of 250 fry baskets at Smart and Final for a little over $5.00 and that was it.  If you want to try this at home, call me I have lots of fry baskets leftover! :0 )

For the birthday, I did a big cookie instead of a cake. This was super easy, inexpensive and pretty cool. I used 2 packages of chocolate chip cookie mix for less than $4.00 at Winco.  I lined my Pampered Chef bar pan with foil and spread the prepared mix and baked.  It did take longer than regualar cookies. I am sorry, I don’t remember exactly how much longer, but I had to keep checking on it every 4 minutes or so. When it was cool I lifted it out by the the foil. Guaranteed no sticking!  I decorated around the edges with frosting and used purple gel for the writing.  I like this one!

For Fathers day I made lemon bars from scratch! Yes peeps that is right! I didn’t buy the bar mix!!! And it was pretty easy! I saw the recipe at Bakerella .  Go over to her blog and scroll down a bit for this one.  The crust was crumbly and flaky and yummy and the lemon was sweet and tart and just the right consistency.  Sorry, I didn’t get a picture of these. But they look better at Bakerella anyway.

Hope all this easy baking information has inspired you to make something sweet for your sweeties! Have a great weekend!

Tina