Purple Pastries for Lupus Awareness Month

I've certainly done plenty of kvetching about my health (or, lack thereof)..sore and painful joints, difficulty walking, and the overall drop dead exhaustion that kept me away from mini making for months (definitely NOT a good thing for my mind either because miniatures make me sooooo gosh darn happy). My very active lifestyle, a vital piece of my former self, evaporated before my very eyes as complications set in and worsened over the last two years, and somewhere along the line...I rediscovered minis and polymer clay.

For more than a decade I've ridden the roller coaster of complications caused by several autoimmune diseases, and lupus is one of them. Over this last year especially it's been kicking my butt!! Then it hit me (an idea, not the lupus ;). May is Lupus Awareness Month! Time to put on the purple. So I had an eensy ounce of energy and I decided, heck yeah! Let's make a couple of awesome purple desserts!

Purple purple everywhere! Vanilla cupcakes with purple tinted frosting...

Purple macaroons, purple checkerboard shortbread, and a yummy vanilla layer cake adorned with purple and white flowers. 

Here's to more treatment options and research, better and faster diagnostics, and a much better quality of life for lupus sufferers everywhere. :)

Miniature Bakery Finished!

Well my fellow bloggers and bloggettes, the silent auction piece was finally finished thanks to LOTS of construction help from my hubby. I have tons of patience for polymer clay, not so much for hammer and wood. Heh! And much to my delight everyone who passed by my mini-bakery today SMILED when they peeked in...even the ones who didn't place a bid. Isn't this what minis do to a person? I think one of the blogs I follow titles their blog..Minis Make Us Happy (or something like that :)

And they really do...make us happy that is.

A charming little bakery, somewhere in mini-land....

Ah! How true, how true! 

A view from slightly above...

Sniff sniff! I finally parted with my little mini cash register...

And yes, my little pink mini mixer too (we still have the red one and the white one :) It was all for a good cause anyway, raising money for our school. 

Hey - I thought "squares" were out in the 1960s?? Well here we have some fruity square shaped cakes (I was getting bored with making round cakes :)

That is one messy baker who occupies this kitchen! Look at that cupboard!

I thought the faux window was a nice touch. Thanks to Gibby's Dollhouses and Miniatures in Westminster for the idea!

Tried some donuts too, and a Swiss cake roll - easy peasy! (Not as difficult as those pesky little cupcakes) 

And I still have leftover cupcakes for future displays!!!! And it's a good thing too, those cupcakes are painstakingly time consuming to make, but they do look oh-so-good in a display. :)

Thank you all for looking and for leaving such wonderful comments. It makes my heart soar and my motivation surge to read the feedback. I see I have 84 followers now! OMG!!! I think when I hit that magic number - 100 - I'm going to have to do my first giveaway. When I first started this blog last year I never dreamed I'd have any followers besides myself. LOL Thank you all!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chips ahoy everyone! The silent auction is this Saturday! And there's still a LOT to do in the mini-kitchen/bakeshop. Today was all about cookies, chocolate chip cookies - my all-time favorite!

I used a different technique. Last week's batch came out so-so......soooo.....I tossed them. The problem was their one-dimensional, really fake looking appearance. The chips didn't stand out at all because they melted right into the polymer clay cookie "dough." The whole appearance was rather "flat."

This time I made teeny tiny chocolate chips first, baked them, and THEN added the baked "chips" to the unbaked polymer clay cookie "dough" so the "chips" wouldn't lose their shape or smash flat when I texturized the unbaked "dough" with my brushes.

I am MUCH more pleased with this result! :)

And! The technique works for M & M cookies too!