Summer Pool Birthday Party

It is hard to believe that my last post was about "Spring cookies" and now we are about to start SUMMER! Although I am NOT a fan of  the 99ºF degree temperatures, but I do love the fun in the sun and the laid back feel of the season.

If you like to bake cookies, the summer is not the ideal time for the heat of the oven to combine with the heat that’s outside. But if you are like me who needs to bake cookies all year round, we just need to find out when is the best time to spend several hours in the kitchen most comfortably. For me, that is early in the morning, I prepare my cookie dough the night before and it is ready for me to cut out and bake the cookies the next morning, and one good thing about this weather is that the cookies will dry faster! 

I made these Summer Pool Party Birthday Cookies a couple of days ago, and I love them, the  pineapples  are so easy to do and they look really cute. I gave them a twist and instead of using regular sanding sugar I used a sweet and sour sugar candy instead, which give a little punch to the cookies that is really tasty.  

The bamboo wall with the birthday banner and the tropical birds were the inspiration to make some bird cookies, they where my favorite cookies to make, using the pico projector is much easier than the way I used to make this kind of cookie before.  

 When you are planning to make several cookies for a party, you can make a lot of cookies of the more simple designs and just a few of the more intricate designs. Remember that as soon as you put the cookies on the platter your cookies will start disappearing, so the less effort you pour onto them the better.

Here are some pictures of the cookies an ideas on how to decorate a Luau or Pool party.

Love all the decorations, the tropical leaves and the pineapple cookies goes perfectly with the decorations.  Luau Party Set  And the charcuterie board looks so delicious! 

 Spring cookie decorating

Weather  and scenery is changing where I live and it has been time to start making new cookies and new recipes. 

Texas spring flowers are a great inspiration for my cookies and this time I make some super easy fondant daisies to decorate some cookies.  Using molds to make the flowers is very convenient and quite easy, I posted a video on how to make fondant daisies using this kind of molds and how I decorated the cookies using the flowers. 

Here is the video on how to make fondant daisies

You can watch the video on how I cut out this front van cookie using a paper template and also how I decorated the cookie step by step. 

Click here to watch the video

I hope that this tutorials will inspire you to use fondant flowers to decorate cookies for this upcoming Easter. 

How to scare the octopus before cooking?

I love octopus!  And not until two years ago I learned how to cook it and  I am surprise how easy is to cook it and not to mentioned how delicious. 

 My husband likes to help me when we cook octopus, he takes care of washing and taking away some parts of the octopus that you don't want to cook, like the ink sack and the eyes. 

Meanwhile he is washing the octopus, I prepare the boiling water  and some bay leaves, olive oil and sea salt on the instapot.   

To scare an octopus (espantar el pulpo😂)  is a process you need to do to have a tender and not rubbery octopus after is cooked.

Octopus is very rich is collagen and if you just boil it,  the contraction of collagen will make the octopus very hard. When you scare the octopus you will be breaking the collagen with drastic changes of temperature, you will be making brief dippings in hot water and after that is ready to cook. 

Here is a video where you can see how to scare the octopus. 

After we did that, I decided to cook it in an instapot. I cook it for 15 min in the pressure cook mode and did a quick release. I take it out of the instapot and let it cool completely.  Then I sliced it in small chunks and set it aside. 

You can cook it for less time, if you like it more al dente or if you are planning on grilling.  You need to check that it reach an interior temperature of 135 ºF to be safe for eating.