Can I have fries with that shake?

#3) Make a creative cupcake / dessert.
Today's new activity for myself came from Bakerella ! I love her blog. She has the cutest ideas and makes such fab-u-lous desserts! I always read these blogs and think the things they make are so cute. So, today I decided to try to make something from her site. I'm no Betty Crocker, but I think the end result was good enough to say this mission was a success!

I bought a box mix of brownies, yellow cake mix, a roll of sugar cookie dough, food coloring, and then camped out in my mom's kitchen all evening. The most time consuming part was just waiting for each mix to finish baking. Boy, did the house smell good though!
I baked the brownies first, since they are my fav! I normally bake brownies in an 8x8 pan (with a family size box mix) since it makes the brownies more fluffy! The trick to keeping brownies moist is.... as soon as they are cool enough to cut, cut them & then put them in a Tupperware container. 3 Days later they will still be moist! Anyways, for this project I baked them in a 13 x9 glass pan so they would be thinner.

Next I baked the box of yellow cake mix. I used cupcake liners for most, then ran out so I had to just pour the batter into the pan with a little Pam sprayed on the bottom. The ones with the liners turned out much better in my opinion. I only cooked the pan of cupcakes for 33 minutes @ 350. I didn't want the cupcakes to brown too much.

The hardest part of all of this was making the french fries. I rolled out the sugar cookie dough and it kept sticking to the rolling pin, even though I had covered it in flour. (Bakerella had better ideas for this part). I had to put the pan of cookie dough back in the fridge to harden several times. For some reason the cookie dough wasn't cold enough and in turn was sticky. Finally I was able to cut strips of cookie dough out with a pizza cutter, then I put them on another pan and covered them with sugar. In the oven they went for 8 minutes @ 350. Once they came out I had to cut them again, as soon as they came out of the oven. (if you wait too long to cut them it wont work). This picture was before they went into the oven.

Bakerella had a template on her site on how to make the tray for the meal to go in, as well as the container that held the fries. I printed the red tray part on card stock. I printed the french fry holder on vellum, and I used the tray liner on vellum also. On Bakerella's site she geared hers towards Fathers day.... so I only printed page 1 & 4 of her templates. I started off using a glue stick, but quickly changed to double sided tape. It was much easier to do with double sided tape!

When it came time to make the icing for the ketchup, mustard, and lettuce ~ I used a can of whipped vanilla icing then used food coloring to color it.

I divided the icing into three bowls, then kept adding food coloring as necessary.

When I wasn't looking Nonnie let Miss Tooter get a little too close to the icing. I just know she is thinking.... "Act normal, she will never know I just stole some icing!"

OK, OK, mom.... I ate some! Busted!

After the brownies were done I took a 2" cookie cutter to make the hamburger patty.

Then I put all of the icing in Ziploc bags and cut the bottom to ice the hamburgers.

Ta Da! Bakerella used actual sesame seeds. I used bare naked granola instead.

Finished product!

Since I worked so hard at boot camp, I knew I couldn't eat these happy meals and undue all of my hard work.... soooooo... I gave them away. My sister and some friends stopped by as I was finishing up, so they were the lucky recipients of some hamburgers & french fries!

Since Miss Kristi gave the best only answer to what I was up too today, she wins a $5 gift card to McDonald's. Kristi, send me an email with your address. kkgaskill@yahoo.com