Eggless Pumpkin Cookies

I was baking these for a potlluck Thanksgiving lunch..I followed the recipe through this site http://www.egglesscooking.com. I just made some small changes here and there though, like I did not use nuts  as some kids at the party were allergic to it. They came out very nice and kids and adults too enjoyed them a lot!!

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 Cup Shortening
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Pumpkin Puree
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2 Cups All Purpose Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg powder
1 cup nuts/raisins/ chocolate chips (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven at 350F for 15 minutes. In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Add pumpkin and vanilla.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg powder.Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and mix well. If you are going to use nuts or raisins, fold them in. 

Drop the dough by tablespoon 2 in. apart onto greased baking sheets.Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned. Watch closely. The cookies remain soft in texture. Remove to wire racks to cool.

Thomas Train Cake

It was a half-sheet vanilla cake with strawberry mousse filling. I required 3 Betty Crockers vanilla cake packs for this and had got the strawberry mousse ready mix for the filling. It was  Dr. Oetker brand and the mousse came out really nice. It was very soft and creamy. I had got some thomas stickers from the party store and with the help of toothpick I just inserted 3 of them on the top of the cake and I used the remaining stickers for the cake board sides. The tracks are made up of kit-kat bars which I broke into halves. I topped the cake with some flowers and grass and placed the thomas engine on the track!!! The birthday boy loved it!!

Anniversary Piano Cake

The basic cake was a single layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream which I baked in a 13x9 pan. For the chocolate cake recipe follow http://dreamcakeworld.blogspot.com/2010/09/chocolate-butterfly-cake.html and for the vanilla buttercream recipe visit the Wilton cakes section of the blog. After frosting it with the buttercream I spaced the chocolate bars for them to look like the piano keys and placed the dancing couple on top of it. I piped out 2 roses at the corner along with some music notes to go with the theme. It was surely a romantic gift for my husband on our 11th anniversary!!