design website

After making websites for 13 years (can you believe it?  I was 12 when I first started!)  and doing it for hire for the past 5 years, I have finally put together a design portfolio website.  It was a trip to go back and look at screen shots of all of my sites - I have pictures of all of them since the beginning!  Also, terribly embarrassing.  I decided to stray a bit from my usual Simple And White design and do something a little more colorful and fun.  So without further ado, here it is!

DESIGN.KELLY-BURGESS.COM

shortbread buttons

I've been trying out some new recipes on my coworkers and last week's big hit was shortbread buttons!  You can check out the listing in the Etsy shop.

I learned a lot by making these; namely, do not touch food coloring with your bare hands or you will look like you have some bizarre mottled blue and red skin disease.  Also, if you handle shortbread dough for too long and don't refridgerate it for long enough, it will be melty and pretty much impossible to cut into shapes and get on the cookie sheet/off the spatula.  I was forced to eat many deformed red buttons, as I did not want to give a bad impression at work.  Shucks.

I adopted an abandoned standmixer from my parents' house when I was visiting during the holidays.  The mixer had been banished to the basement after being upgraded to a Kitchen-Aid mixer.  I gave 'er a good wipe down and transported it back to my apartment.  Up until now, I have been using an ancient hand mixer that would get very warm during prolonged usage and smelled suspiciously like burning rubber after you turned it off.  The stand mixer has pretty much changed my baking life.  No longer am I (or my walls) covered in flying bits of butter, my hand doesn't get tired, and I'm not fighting with my vintage Pyrex bowls with the too-shallow sides.  It's really a miracle how much has changed in my process.  Definitely upgrade; thanks, Mom.

things on sticks

Cake pops I made this weekend

So you may have noticed a lack of recipe updates lately and just assumed that I had gotten tired of keeping up this blog or that I had stopped eating anything but microwavable chicken and cereal (closer to the truth).  Well, I have been baking up a storm!  However, with my decision to start selling baked goods on Etsy, it seemed like a wise idea to not post baking recipes on my blog.  So I will reserve recipe posts for those savory items that won't be going anywhere but my stomach.

Christmas came and went and I was gifted a large amount of supplies to start making cake pops.  I had never had a cake pop before, but I saw blogs and Etsy shops posting about them with an alarming frequency.  I was skeptical at first; why would I want just two bites of cake when I could have an entire cake?

Was I way off base.  Me oh my, these things are delicious!  I have made both variants of pops: ones where the baked cake is mashed up with frosting and then dipped and another where the batter is placed inside the Bakerella Babycakes Maker and it creates little bite-sized cake balls.  The ones mixed with frosting are my favorite, as the cake is super moist and dense.  I love me some dense cake.  The Babycakes (saying this word fills me with dread as it was an unwanted nickname during my college years) kind were good, but in a different way.  The cake was still moist, but spongy with less give when you bite into them.  Not quite as sweet.  Different strokes for different folks.  I will be offering both for sale.

I made 72 cake balls and went a little crazy purchasing different chocolate dips and decorating sugars and sprinkles.  I have yet to list any in my shop, but I'm trying to practice.  I'm using my office-mates as (willing) test-subjects.

The cake pops were a huge hit