Turkey Platter (November 2013)

Since Thanksgiving and Hanukkah were the on same day this year (so crazy), I had been cookie-ing overtime lately.  Here is what I decided to bring to Thanksgiving this year: a Simple Thanksgiving Turkey Platter, ala Sweet Sugar Belle. 

I used a snowman cookie cutter for the body and a leaf cookie cutter for the feathers.

Seriously, very easy.  But...not so impressive without the platter.

With the rest of the dough, I made a few turkeys using a flower cookie cutter (inspired by Palm Beach Pastry on Etsy) and mini leaves to give to classroom teachers...you know, to say, "Thanks."

The leaves were a mini version of my autumn leaves from last year, giving me another excuse to play with food color spray mist.

This year, with the craziness the holidays always bring, I was "thankful" for any shortcut I could find, and this cookie platter was just the thing.

Little Blue Truck (November 2013)

Another couple birthdays coming up, so I decided to make a dozen or so cookies to accompany the gifts.  These were designed to go along with the story, Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle, one of my son's favorites.  I designed him using my wedding cake cookie cutter, since it already had a nice, boxy shape.

 Although these cookies only required 4 different colors, they needed to be applied at specific times for drying and texture.  I really like the front bumper that looks like a mustache and the tread on the tires.

By moving around the location of his pupils, it really changed his expression.  He really is a friendly truck, and with the mustache, I worried that sometimes, he looked a little intimidating.

All in all, they ended up being a cute addition to the birthday gifts and another good excuse for me to play around in the kitchen.

Snuggly Gender-Neutral Baby Shower (November 2013)

A co-worker was having a baby, and so, I jumped at the opportunity to create some cookies for the shower celebration.  She wasn't finding out if the baby was a boy/girl, and she was keeping a fairly neutral color palate of white/gray.  (Great idea to then add blue/pink, both of which look so good with gray.)  Something along the lines of this Pottery Barn Kids collection.

So, I decided to make gray and white quilted cookies with the 20-second icing trick, and I used the wet-on-wet technique to create little chevron cookies, as inspired by Peapods Cookies.  Minis had to be incorporated somehow, so that's how I added a little more color.

The babies were actually made from a balloon cookie cutter.  I made all their hats gray, but the little pouf on top was then either white/pink or white/blue.  I added lashes to the "girl" babies too for fun.  Although a pretty easy design, I started to worry when the babies in stocking caps started to look more like knights in armor.  Can you see it too, or was it just  my tired eyes?

Anyways, in the end, it was a cute little platter, and much to our surprise, she ended up having a sweet baby boy.  (I had even made a few extra pink cookies, since I was so sure she was having a girl...what do I know?)

Somewhere Over the Rainbow (October 2013)

So, this was the most ambitious project of mine so far, and with all the other Halloween mini cookies I was making, these were probably unnecessary...but oh so fun to create.

 

  

My daughter has been into the Wizard of Oz for a little while, and it was recently re-released on DVD or something, so there has been a lot of buzz about this favorite movie lately.  All that helped make choosing her Halloween costume pretty easy...some character from the Wizard of Oz.  She was changing her mind each day, though.  "Maybe I could be Glinda!, or Dorothy!, or even the Wicked Witch!"  It wasn't until my sister-in-laws bought her sparkly red shoes that she was sold on Dorothy...and then, she really got excited.

Since my son is only 18 months, he didn't really have a say in the matter.  And, since I figure I only have a few years where they can coordinate, we made him into the Scarecrow.  Their costumes were really cute, but their excitement was even cuter.  This was the first year my daughter was really getting the idea of trick-or-treating (nevermind it rained cats and dogs on the actual Halloween night), but it was a fun holiday for us. 

 

 

That said, I thought cookies must be created to help celebrate this fun occasion...or at least, it was a good excuse.

 

 

Well, I knew I would have to make a "Dorothy."  I used Sweet Sugar Belle's Alice in Wonderland cookies as a starting point.  I liked how the hands came together in the front and how the face was sort of left alone.  Her legs/knees ended up with some less-attractive craters, but her sparkly shoes made up for it I think.  I sprinkled some edible glitter right on the wet, red frosting, and my daughter even helped (they are what makes Dorothy, "Dorothy," after all).

And then, how could I have Dorothy without the Scarecrow?  I didn't have anything close to a Scarecrow cookie cutter, so I used a cupcake cutter.  Sweet Sugar Belle had made a scarecrow cookie in the past that I also used as a starting point.   The yellow brick roads were my own invention, and I used 20-second icing to create textures on the bricks.  Oh, and those little roses are my new obsession.

Not stopping there with only 3 cookie designs, I wanted to incorporate the black-and-white and color parts of the movie, so I created a sort of tornado and rainbow.  The tornado started as a leaf cookie cutter, and I used Sweet Sugar Belle's trick for making confetti.  And, the rainbow started as a moon cookie cutter, and was a pretty intuitive design.

The broomsticks were originally champagne glasses and were definitely an easy addition to the platter.  I like the subtle green "W" on the handle.

This project was definitely the most time-consuming of all my previous projects.  This is when I really started drawing out all my designs 

(colored pencil style) prior to baking/frosting. 

In the end, I found them very rewarding, especially when all laid out on a platter.

I love that my daughter loves this movie.  There is nothing cuter than hearing her belt out all the words to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  

And, it's just as cute with a mouthful of cookies.

Happy Halloween (October 2013)

I think my daughter goes to one of the last preschools where homemade treats are still allowed (given that they don't contain nuts).  To be extra careful, I replaced my almond extract with extra vanilla extract, but then I was off and running with the thought of making cookies for a reason...a fun, festive reason-Halloween.  I kept thinking of places I could bring these cookies to share, so I decided to make 2 batches of cookies, all of minis, yielding close to 300 in total.  

The baking didn't actually take that long, since they were all made out of 4 cookie cutters, and the decorating was also not all that time-intensive, since they all had the same color themes, and taken individually, were fairly simple designs.  My brain was working overtime with the designing and planning (mostly regarding the order in which to use the colors to save myself from making the same color twice or doing too many extra dishes), and although I'm sure some think I'm crazy, I want to emphasize how much I really enjoyed this project.

All these cookies were made from 4 cookie cutters.  Mini pumpkins (obviously), mini leaves (candycorn), mini circles (flying bats, spider webs), and mini tulips (ghosts, owls).  Somewhere on-line I had seen an idea to use a tulip cookie cutter for a ghost, but otherwise, the designs were all my own this year, some inspired by my kids' favorite window clings.

For most of the cookies, I outlines them with a piping consistency and then flooded them with a thinner consistency of icing, as I usually do.  But, for the pumpkins and for the candycorn, in order to, again, save some dishes and to give them that bumpy texture, I used something Sweet Sugar Belle calls, 20-second icing. 

This smaller plate went to my son's park district music class, mostly for the adults to share and for his teacher.

 

And, for my daughter's preschool class, I bagged about 6 cookies for each student, slapped a little label on them, and they were ready to go.  Afterwards, I saw some other moms had used bag toppers on their kids' treats...a good idea for the future to dress up these resealable snack bags.

And, I saved a few extra colors to make a more, well, feminine version of the Halloween cookies to bring to my daughter's ballet class for all the girls.  The kids liked the black cats and the ghosts wearing a tutu (my first attempt at brush embroidery, and although not perfect, definitely a technique I want to try again).

Happy Halloween!

Dressy Flowers (September 2013)

Okay, I might have a sickness.  Anyone reading through the past several posts might have noticed just how many batches of cookies I have made in the past 2 months.  I decided to start this blog in November, so at this point, I'm still posting pictures retrospectively, trying to catch up to present-day.  I can't believe how many different cookies I made in August-September.  

And, this post is going to seem just, well, silly.

 

I remember feeling an itch to bake a batch, and I found inspiration in the most unlikely of places (my daughter's closet).

Thank you, Gymboree.

 

I just loved the color palette, and they were pretty easy to put together.  Again, I used Sweet Sugar Belle's tip on how to modify the shape of an existing cutter (to add leaves to the flowers), and most of them stayed intact after baking.

Have I mentioned my obsession with minis?  I tried a few variations, subtle, but different.  I like the 6-petal version the best (and I've since modified it from this batch to add some additional texture and dimension).

A pretty platter, but for no particular reason, so I decided to bag them into little favor bags, and give them to my mom who was going with her long-time friends on a "girl's weekend."

Hey, always better to give than to...eat.

Preschool's Gonna Be a Hoot (September 2013)

I can't believe my baby is old enough to be going to preschool this year.  I knew she was ready, and I knew she was going to love it, but somehow that didn't make it easy.  We visited her school for orientation the week before school officially started.  Her teachers, who are both personal friends of our family, are amazing, and the class was decorated with little owls, each with a new student's name on it.  My daughter was a combination of excited and nervous, but mostly excited to learn what preschool was all about.  It had really been hyped up at our house.

I decided to also be more excited than nervous, and it was with that energy, that I decided to create this platter.  I gave a bag of cookies to each of the teachers in her classroom and a platter for the other teachers to also enjoy.

The owls were inspired by Sweet Sugar Belle, but instead of using an egg cookie cutter shape, I used my Eskimo cookie cutter and added little feet.  I've learned this is one of the most versatile shapes I own, and it's become one of my favorites. 

 

I also used advice from her website to create the quilted cookies.  I love their look, and it really wasn't all that much work...just required some patience.

In the end, the first day of preschool was much more difficult for me than for my daughter.  She found the rocking horse and the dress-up station and became so excited about playing that she had very little time to reflect on being away from mom.  I, on the other hand, found I had much more separation anxiety.  I knew she was in great hands, but I missed her, even for 2 1/2 hours.  She was turning into such a big girl! 

I've become much better at drop-off, I think, and I really love hearing her tell me all about her day at preschool on the car ride home afterwards.  I also now get to enjoy the one-on-one time preschool is affording me with my son.  

So, it's been an adjustment for everyone, but a definitely good one.