Bethie Crocker?

So I've just been baking away this week. Brenae and I have throwing a baby shower for my dear friend Lora on Saturday and she requested cookies & cupcakes as the treats for her shower. How can I say no to that?! Thus the baking. Last night I went to my friend Carrie's house and we made funfetti cupcakes from scratch. It was a first for me, the from scratch and funfetti parts. We had some interesting results but all in all everything tastes really good (of course we had to test them!!) and they are happily living in my freezer until it is time to frost them on Saturday. I am having a blast hanging out with Carrie again and she is teaching me everything she knows.

For those of you that don't know, Carrie is a friend that I met at EFY when I was 14. We clicked (along with Joanie and Chelley) and became the best of friends. We've always kept in touch although better at some times then others but after I moved back to Utah this summer we committed to being better and hanging out often. We have been doing a very good job and I love it. I love Care, I love being with someone that has known me for such a long time and that I can be myself with, I love her cute girls and I love that we can talk for hours and get to know each other better as adults. Anyway, that was a tangent, but Carrie is amazing and I am so grateful to have that close friendship back and I wanted you all to know it! :)

Some pictures of the cupcake baking fun:

Carrie with one of the good cupcakes! (sorry for the eyes closed pic Care! The other one was really dark.)

I'm getting quite good at taking pictures while still getting both heads in them. And yes we are laughing, I'd explain but it probably wouldn't be funny anyone else and it would give away one of my greatest secrets. :)

Tonight I made cookies. I'm going to put some cookies in little chinese food containers (provided by Carrie along with all of the decorations THANK YOU CARE!!!!) so I made mini cookies. At first I was baffled as to how I would do it. I even googled "bite-sized cookie receipes". Nothing fit what I was looking for and then I realized that, doi, I could just make my favorite cookie recipes and make them smaller. I'm a thinker, I know. Anyway, the sweet little bite sized morsels make me want to cry. They're so cute. Why do mini things make me so happy!? I have never eaten a mini hamburger (or a slider I guess...) but I love to look at them. I used a melon baller to scoop the cookies. The chocolate peanut butter ones turned out perfect. They are the perfect size. The choc chip caramel ones are a little bigger then I was hoping but they still taste good and will fit into the containers fine. Tomorrow I will probably make one more batch of a different variety. I know what you all are thinking. "Uh, Beth, how many people are coming to this shower? You're going to have way too many cookies." Yeah..I know, but I want a variety and I work in an office with 60 men. The leftovers will be eaten, that isn't a concern. I'm babbling about nothing, the point of this post is the pictures. And here they are!

Caramel chocolate chip cookies. Yummy!

Chocolate Peanut Butter chip cookies. Aren't they cute?!?!

And sooo little! True love...that's what I feel for these cookies.

And the lovely machine that made the process so much easier. Thank you to my favorite neighbors for lending this beauty to me.