Well, this is very late, but I baked some stuff for my Young adults group at church!

Starting with! My favorite dessert to make! Cake!

This one is a white cake, with a crumb coat of plain, vanilla buttercream frosting, followed by lots of almond flavored blue buttercream, followed by using a cookie cutter to make the shape (it wasn't precise, but good enough, plus, I added some sprinkles outside of the shape to make the imprecision look natural and intended) followed by an attempt at using a tip (white, almond flavored buttercream), followed by crushed butterscotch placed on the white and intruding to the blue to make, not just a complementary flavor, but also a complementary color to the blue and white! I don't have any pictures of the process this time (I had to make this and more in the course of a week, at night, so ...) Then, to tie in the rim to the center, I sprinkled some blue into it.

anyway, here's the finishing work:

Yay!

Here's my recipes:

The cake:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/7703/heavenly-white-cake/

The frosting (low-key my favorite recipe):

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/223442/simple-and-delicious-buttercream-frosting/

mods to frosting: Equal parts vanilla and almond (so basically, look at the amount for vanilla, and replicate it with almond)

Now, I also made a double batch of sugar cookies. Same frosting (only vanilla flavored) and some sprinkles from my pantry. Frostings were red and green, sprinkles were green and blue (it's what I had, so ... *shrugs*).

Cookies:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/15295/soft-sugar-cookies-iv/

Frosting:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/223442/simple-and-delicious-buttercream-frosting/

and, in case that wasn't crazy enough, I also sent in a gift for the gift exchange. I bought a mug, and, for whatever insane reason, decided I should make candies for it. Failed, because I ran out of powdered sugar, licked my remains (cause it would dry before I got sugar), and started again the next day. This time, I filled half of the mug with some of the remaining butterscotch candies, before remaking the sugar candies. (Okay, technically, it's a recipe for sweetheart candies that I found because a year ago, I made a huge dragon cake and needed something for the scales. So I made almond flavored sweetheart candies because they had the right texture, shaped them in a circle, cut them in half, and used them as scales.)

anyway, here's the 'sugar' *cough* sweetheart *cough* candies I made for the person who received my gift. Well, technically, these are the ones that didn't fit and haven't been eaten yet.

From top to bottom, the flavors are:

pink - strawberry

orange - maple

green - mint (I just included it because I had the extract in my pantry, but I'm very glad I did, because I tasted and said, 'tastes like Christmas')

blue - vanilla

purple - almond

Basically just used what was in my kitchen.

Recipe:

If the video goes too fast, the recipe is also in the description.

Pro tip: when you go to touch the sticky stuff and roll it like dough, coat your hand with powdered sugar first.

If none of the links work, let me know.

also, while I was making these candies, some ... interesting things happened to my hands and clothing. So, hand, leg, and sock reveal, I guess?

Food dye made my hand look cool.

and I practically dumped powdered sugar on myself.

also, has anyone noticed that my socks don't match? Fun fact, I never try to match my socks. It's just a 'whichever socks I happen to pick up is now a pair' thing.

Finally, just so you know? The food I made for my friends? It was for their Christmas party, which I didn't get to go to. Why so much effort for a party I'm not going to, you may ask, when I'm not even being paid for it?

To be honest, I don't know.

If anyone's interested in seeing my dragon cake, let me know. I think my cake making skills have improved a lot since a year ago, but it's still impressive. It was my crowning achievement at the time.

I'm going to be posting a picture of mine soon! Recently finished it.