Treehouse Treats

The "Treehouse" is a nickname I gave my apartment a while back because it's so quaintly tucked away in the trees above a garage. Sitting in my living room, aka a closed-in porch, you literally feel like you have just shrunk to the size of a squirrel and are perched atop a tree. Ironically, my one bedroom getaway is also in the middle of everything for an LSU student! I can even walk to campus. The best of both worlds if you ask me.
Being that my apartment is 30+ years old and teeny-tiny. My appliances are not suited to cooking above the quantity of "eating to live"...for one. However, I make due baking with my half-size oven and hand mixer just fine minus the sharp increase in cook time. I store all my baking stuff on the top shelf of my cabinet, which I can't reach, so pre-baking requires climbing on the counter.

After I received 2 paid-orders, one for cookies and the other 2 cakes, I seriously considered advertising, baking out of my apartment and calling my company "Treehouse Treats." I found out shortly that devoting 20 hours of your weekend to baking is not really suited to college life especially during LSU football season. I decided instead just to keep business open for "freelance" baking when the opportunity or friend presents itself.

Also, I have decided to stop boring you all with my recipes and instructions. Firstly, it is way too time consuming for me to write making it a chore for me and secondly, I know half of my friends just look at the pictures (because that's what I would do). So from now on, I'll just be giving a general discription with lots of pictures. Plus, if I come up with some crazy good secret recipe, I don't want all of you knowing!

Healthy Monsters

An original recipe I'm still tweaking since these came out a little sticky. Basically it's a peanut butter oatmeal cookie with healthy trail mix. Uses half the amount of sugar as my traditional monster cookie recipe and no butter, shortening, or dairy. I like to think its a cookie-granola crossdresser.



LSU Sugar Cookies
Thick, buttery, almondy, sugarly deliciousness. No health short cuts here ...just pure fattening deliciousness. Still an amateur with the decorating but learned how to make a cookie icing! All cut-outs were done by hand since every fleur de lis cookie cutter in Baton Rouge had already been gobbled up by all the housewives hosting Saints parties. However, I will admit I used a cardstock template cut-out of the NOLA Saints logo as a guide. Think I'll work on molding my own cookie cutters from scrap metal soon.

White Strawberry Cake
A two-layer white cake with strawberry filling, whipped cream icing, and topped with fresh sliced strawberries. I've never done a strawberry cake before so this was a first. Wasn't really sure what to do for the strawberry filling, so it came out more like strawberry preserves. I also wasn't brave enough to add anything to the whipped cream besides sugar. The white cake turned out fabulous though. Next time I'll do more research and come up with something a little more original. I love my new square cake pan I used for this one!

Tried-n-True Carrot Cake
Maybe the one baked good I can honestly say I have mastered. Thanks to the passing down of this recipe to my mother from some great cooks & women of Lutcher, I have "stood on the shoulders of giants" minus the discovery of gravity. I have made this cake about 10 times now and tweaked the recipe a bit each time to find out what's best. For any of you who are unfamiliar with carrot cake, one it does not taste like carrots, two it's made with oil and no butter, and three it is my favorite cake so you need to try it! I decorated with cream cheese icing, pecans (which I should have toasted but forgot) and little icing carrots.
The customer liked this one so much I'll be making another one for her this coming Monday!

I still have an original recipe, LSU blackberry surprise mini cupcakes, that I need to post but those will come later! Until then, happy eating!