This year’s holiday season is rapidly approaching with Thanksgiving, New Year’s, and Christmas are right around the corner, leaving many scrambling for ideas to fill this holiday season with festivity. I’ve been baking since I was little, and have always wanted to be on one of those British baking competitions for kids. Obviously, I never got to do it because if I had I would be bragging about it right now instead. I used to bake all year round, but nowadays I just end up making desserts whenever a holiday comes around. I’m not complaining though, I seriously love baking this time of year.

If you’re also interested in baking or you’re just looking for a place to buy freshly baked desserts, I strongly recommend giving the Six Little Teacups bakery a try. I made the decision to start celebrating the holidays a little early this year by decorating cookies and cupcakes with the owner of Six Little Tea Cups and Central graduate, Kim VanHoozier. I thought it would be a blast to rate the desserts that I tried, and make a list of the best holiday recipes. So here goes my short-lived career as a food critic:

Sugar Cookies

Whenever I went into VanHoozier’s kitchen, the first thing we did was decorate sugar cookies. Some of them were frosted with homemade buttercream icing. The cookies’ appearance reminded me of the ones at Crumbl. However, it’s easy to say that these taste so much fresher.

Cupcakes

Right after we had finished the cookies, we used more buttercream frosting to ice some vanilla cupcakes. Some had chocolate frosting, some vanilla. Being a hard-core chocolate fan, I’d have to say that the ones with the chocolate buttercream frosting were my favorite. If you’re familiar with making icing at home, you know that the tiniest difference in the ingredients can easily make or break the consistency of your icing. I’ve learned that the hard way many times. When I tell you that VanHoozier has her icing recipe down-pat, I mean it. Even her cake-decorating techniques are next-level. As soon as I picked up a piping bag the first question she asked me was, “Do you know how to make florals?” I had texted her a while back saying that I was good at baking, but this made me have some second thoughts.Jokes aside, she taught me how to do roses and tulips on cupcakes, two of the many other flowers she can create. I really enjoyed doing the roses because it was easy for me to get the hang of it, and was much easier than I had expected. The tulips were definitely more of a struggle. She also taught me how to make leaves and unlike the tulips, I was very proud of what I had with my first attempt.

Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes

This one instantly made me think of my mom because she loves strawberry shortcakes, and I definitely need to take her to the bakery to get some for her. These are regular vanilla cupcakes with a strawberry puree filling and colorful buttercream icing. We sliced strawberries and placed halves on top of each of them. Finally, we sprinkled crushed graham crackers on top for a finishing touch. These were honestly the cutest cupcakes I’ve ever seen.