Happy Belated Valentine's Day!!

We didn't do anything too special. Emma and I baked our favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies, but instead of cookies, we made heart shaped cookie cakes. We already ate the other one. I didn't decorate them, I just wasn't feeling making the icing and digging out all the supplies. They took longer to bake, not sure how long it ended up to be, maybe 20-22 minutes, but they are just as yummy as always. Here's a pic: 

January Updates! Cinnamon Rolls and 22nd Birthday Cake!!!

1/9/26

Em and I took an unexpected break over the holidays. We had family here and really didn’t have the time to do any baking outside of what has already been posted. We did bake some chocolate chip M&M cookies. They didn’t last long, maybe 4 days. We used the same chocolate chip cookie recipe as always, just added some M&Ms. We are hoping to do some baking again really soon, possibly Sunday. We shall see.

We also have a house project going on at the moment, my hubby switched his office with our guest room, so now our living room and front room are cluttered up with all the things that were in the guest room until we can finish cleaning the new guest room and paint.

Em wants to make some cinnamon rolls soon, so be on the look out for that.

1/11/26 We baked the cinnamon rolls, can't remember exactly when, but here is a picture. We used the No Yeast Gluten Free Cinnamon Rolls recipe from Lane & Grey Fare. These were really good and pretty easy to make, a bit time consuming, but they turned out well.

1/20/26

Emma and I have been taking a bit of a baking break. Her birthday is coming up, so we will be making her a cake soon. I have made her birthday cake, cupcakes or cookie cake every year for the past 21 years. Here’s to year 22! That’s the perks of having a cake decorator mom.

So be on the look out for that.

1/28/26

This birthday cake baking experience was a disaster. I am not sure what happened, and have never had this big of an issue with a cake before, but I had to make the cake 3 times.

Em's birthday was the 26th. I started the cake after her birthday dinner and an impromptu trip to the Magic Kingdom on the 25th, hoping to have it done and ready to go on the 26th. Had to trash that cake, got another mix, had to trash that one too. So finally on the 27th, she got her birthday cake.

The disaster: I used a gluten free cake mix that we have used in the past with stellar results, this time, nope. It crumbled and I couldn't even ice it. I am not going to mention which one it was. I will never use it again.

So, I used a different mix that we have also used. It turned out perfect. I know I could have made it from scratch and in hindsight, probably should have because the mixes didn't save me any time, but I was committed at this point. 🤣

I was going to record and post on the Crissy Bakes Things YouTube channel, but by the time I finally got the cake to cooperate, I was just done. I iced and decorated it and called it a day. I thought about just posting the results of the other 2 cakes, but I was so frustrated and didn't want to put that out there.

Emma helped mix the final cake while I was cooking supper. She also helped mix up the colors and it was her cake design.

 

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

 Happy Thanksgiving Eve!!

Here is the latest entry of our baking journey..

Emma made a gluten free /egg free pumpkin pie. She used the Gluten free Pumpkin Pie recipe from Meaningful Eats. She didn’t make her own pie crust, she didn’t have the time to do that so we found a premade gluten free/egg free pie crust. The only tweak she made to the recipe is the egg, she used cornstarch and water(4tbsps cornstarch, 6 tbsps of water).

And I made a Mud Pie. Here’s the way I do it…

Ingredients:

1 gluten free chocolate pie crust or make your own

( I used 26 gluten free Oreos and butter to make my own. I scraped out the crème filling and chopped the cookies up in a food processor or break them up in a plastic bag with a rolling pin or ladle)

1/4 cup melted butter

1 large pkg of chocolate jello pudding or 2 small

2 1/2 cups cold milk(I used almond milk)

1 small container of whipped topping (or make your own with heavy whipping cream)

Directions:

If making your own pie crust prepare that now.

1. Crush the cookies until very fine.

2. Mix together the cookie crumbs and the melted butter until it sticks together.

3. Press the crumb mixture into a pie tin or plate. Gently press the crumbs up the sides of the tin/plate. You can use the bottom of a glass of you’d like to press it down.

4. Bake for 5-10 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Allow to completely cool before making the pudding.

5. Once the pie crust is cooled, prepare the pudding according to package directions for pudding pie.

6. Pour the pudding into the pie crust.

7. Refrigerate the pie until the pudding is set( usually 2 hours)

8. Spread the whipped topping gently on top of the pie.

9. Garnish with extra cookie crumbs if you want.

Keep refrigerated. The pie should last 2-4 days.(It never lasts that long around here)

If you are using a premade pie crust, skip steps 1-4.

Hot Cocoa Cookies

 Here is Emma’s new brainchild.

Hot Cocoa Cookies!!!

We tweaked the Meaningful Eats recipe once again. We omitted the almond flour, split the baking soda measurement between baking powder and baking soda, substituted flax seeds and water for the egg and added 1/2 cup of Starbucks hot cocoa mix (keep it dry, if you add water or milk to the cocoa, the dough will be to wet) to the dry ingredients. We also added some chocolate chips and marshmallows to the batter. We didn’t measure that amount we just eyeballed it, it wasn’t a lot though. Once done, we added a couple of extra marshmallows to the top while the cookies were still warm.

These cookies smell amazing while baking!

Notes: Next time we make these, we will be omitting the marshmallows in the dough and just adding them to the top. The reason is the marshmallows made the cookies spread out quite a bit. There’s a picture below of one of the worst offenders. I also had to not edit the picture with one of our cats napping on the mat. He is our baking buddy, every time we bake, he is right there “helping.”

Enjoy!!

Name Change!! Cakes By Crissy is now Crissy Bakes Things!

I wanted to give an update! As you can probably tell, I haven't been baking and decorating cakes much lately. I haven't had the time to dedicate to it nor do I have many people around to bake for. It is only myself, my husband, and my daughter that have to eat through the stuff we make, my parents on occasion. I will try to post as often as I can, posts may be several days to a week apart. I may consider gifting things to the neighbors at a later date, so we can bake more frequently, but for now, we are enjoying the fruits of our labor. 😆

My daughter is gluten/egg free. (GF/EF) It is very difficult to find foods in the stores that are both gluten free and egg free, you usually get one or the other, not both, and forget about finding baked goods that are both unless you go to Whole Foods or Sprouts and spend a fortune, so all the things we bake will be just that, no gluten, no eggs. She is a singer, so she also limits her milk intake, she is not dairy free, but she doesn't drink cow's milk anymore. We substitute almond milk whenever milk is needed, it is 1:1 ratio, so it works and still tastes good. 

We have been exploring different recipes, tweaking ones here and there and creating our own versions of those recipes. We have made a few really good ones lately, that we will make again in the future. I was gifted a bread machine for Christmas last year, so be on the look out for some breads as well. Not sure when the breads will come, we have a serious sweet tooth around here. 

Our go to cookie base recipe is from Meaningful Eats. It is the absolute best GF chocolate chip cookie recipe we have found and just a great cookie base. 

So, join Emma and I on our baking journey to find good gluten free, egg free recipes that taste amazing and she can actually eat. We are excited to see where this takes us! 

Double Chocolate Chip Brownie Cookies

 New cookies!! Double Chocolate Chip Brownie Cookies

Emma and I made some more cookies last night. We like making cookies, they are easy and we have our go to recipe(s). Again, we used Meaningful Eats GF Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe as a base, it is just the best GF cookie recipe, we use it as a base for most of our cookie variants.  

Our tweaks: added 1/2 cup of 100% Ghirardelli Cocoa powder to the dry ingredients and an extra 1/2 tsp of vanilla to the wet ingredients. We split the chocolate chips amount between semi-sweet chips and white chocolate chips. (in all honesty, we don't measure the chocolate chips, we just eyeball it and put the amount we want in.) We substituted the eggs with the same flax seeds and water(1 tbsp flax seeds, 3 tbsps water) that we did with the chocolate chip cookies. 

I noticed after baking our first batch, that the cookies didn't really spread or flatten out much, which is completely fine, they just turned out a bit fluffier and more brownie like, so I just pressed the rest of them down a bit, not a lot, just enough to flatten them slightly, with the bottom of a glass before baking. They taste like brownies and are amazing slightly warm! 

This is the first batch, I didn't press down. The second picture is me trying to be artsy. 🤣 Enjoy!

 

GF Egg Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

 Here are a couple of pics of the Gluten/egg free chocolate chip cookies we made tonight. I didn’t record us making them, I forgot, when I remembered, it was already mixed together. We have a system, Emma combines the dry ingredients, the flours, the baking soda, baking powder, and salt. While I work on the wet stuff and sugars.

We used the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Meaningful Eats as a base.

Here are our tweaks:

We cut the measurement for the baking soda in half splitting it between baking soda and baking powder. We added one heaping teaspoon of cinnamon. Instead of using cow’s milk, we used vanilla almond milk and for the egg we used flax seeds( 1 tbsp of flax seeds, 3 tbsp of water), we didn’t melt the butter on the stovetop, we just melted it the microwave and let it cool for about a minute.

This is by far our favorite cookie recipe! We haven’t found one comparable.

Long time no see/talk...

 Hello Everyone!

Wow it's been a while. Lots happened, yet nothing happened.. LOL!

Emma graduated high school, and we finally moved to FLORIDA!!! 

I haven't had a chance to look up the cottage food laws here yet, but will get to it eventually. I have been busy getting the new house together. I would love to get new appliances before I do too much planning. 

I have baked more here I think than I did in Minnesota. Emma has been gluten free for almost a year now, so in order for her to get a baked treat, I have to make it. There are a few gluten free premade treats she can eat, but the taste just isn't there. We have found some pretty tasty gluten free cookie and cake recipes. I haven't quite decided yet, but I may only make gluten free cakes and cookies. It is easier since we only buy gluten free flour and ingredients now and I don't want to cross contaminate my pans, utensils and such, although that is not really and issue with her. She isn't allergic, and doesn't have Celiac, she's just intolerant. 

Keep checking back. I will try to update more often. 

Emma's 10th Birthday!!

So my little girl is now in the double digits. She had a special request for her cake this year. She wanted a two tier, tie-dye cake decorated with rainbow colors and a big smiley face. There's not much else to say about it. She had some new friends come to her party this year that didn't know that I am a cake decorator, so they were really blown away when I told them I made the cake. The girls loved it.

Fishing Cake

Bill asked me to make his dad a birthday cake. His dad has been up north at his property for quite a while and has to leave Monday to head back to Nevada before his birthday to renew his license so he won't be here for it. Bill wanted a fish themed cake. So, Em found a picture of a cake she wanted me to make. I just spent about 2 hrs sculpting a little fisherman, a fish and some rocks.  I baked the cake and decorated it this morning/afternoon. 

Wilton Course 2: Final cake

I finished Wilton Course 2 on June 3rd. I remembered to take a picture of this cake before we cut into it.

I am not sure when I will be able to take Course 3. It's looking like maybe September right now, unless I can squeeze it in between dance stuff and vacation. September is probably good though. Em will be in school and she won't have to come to class with me.

As of right now, I don't have any plans to make any cakes. The hubby's birthday is in September, so maybe then. I'll post if anything comes up.