Grandma Mac Cookies

A couple times per year my mother makes Grandma Mac cookies. Who is Grandma Mac? Grandma Mac was my father’s grandmother and she made some pretty awesome sugar cookies! I never personally met her but I know she left quite an impression on my family with her cookies.

These sugar cookies are my Dad’s favorite and about a week ago I made them for his birthday. Being that these are not drop cookies makes them all the more fun as they can be cut into any shape. Usually we make them for Valentine’s Day and Halloween so we cut them in hearts and pumpkins. Then they get iced in different colors.

For this occasion I cut the cookies in circles and iced them in yellow icing, Dad’s favorite color. Some of them got sprinkles while others simply rocked the yellow icing. My Dad was so happy to receive these cookies for his birthday and I can’t wait to make them again at school to share with my friends.

The recipe for these cookies was put into a recipe book by my Aunt Pam and I took a picture so that everyone can also make these delicious cookies!!

Meatloaf and Popcorn?

Every winter break when I’m home from school I take a trip up to Connecticut to visit friends from school. Freshmen year I was dubbed the Cake Boss since I like to bake and am from “Joisey”. After receiving this nickname I knew that I would need to bake a cake every time I visited CT. The first baked good that I brought up to CT really embraced the reasons I got the Cake Boss nickname. I called it the Joisey- Butta Cream cake.

This is a simple white cake with butter cream frosting. New Jersey was made using a stencil open to the state where green sugar was filled in.

My second visit to CT the next year proved a little more difficult when coming up with an idea for what to bake. I thought I had to top the year before but what would I make? Perhaps I could make a cake that looked like a meal, normal food. My friend’s favorite food is meatloaf and I took on the task of making a cake look like meatloaf! I even added on side dishes: some mashed potatoes and gravy as well as mixed vegetables. A complete meal!!

This is a pound cake filled with chocolate icing on the inside to give it more height. The cake is covered in dark chocolate frosting that was mixed with chopped chocolate, giving it more texture. The mashed potatoes are mini cupcakes covered in vanilla frosting. The gravy is a mixture of brown sugar and milk. Mixed vegetables were made out of green Runts and cut up orange Starbursts.

This year I again spent time wondering what I could make to bring to CT. I thought of favorite foods again and realized that I could give a small gift at the same time! My friends love popcorn and cupcakes…perfect pair! I had a friend decorate and personalize a popcorn bowl and then I proceeded to fill it with cupcakes. The top row of cupcakes was decorated to look like popcorn, made out of marshmallows. Would you believe I fit 16 cupcakes and 12 mini cupcakes in that one bowl?

16 cupcakes and 12 mini cupcakes fill this bowl! The marshmallows were made to look like popcorn by slicing a mini marshmallow in thirds, arranging them in a cloverleaf form and sticking another marshmallow on top of those with icing.