️️️️Dr. Who and 30th birthdays

My oldest, the child who made me a mother, turned 30 the other day. She's an amazing woman. She loves Dr. Who. So for her party I created these. 

Christmas Trees and saying goodbye

After Bryan's mom passed away in August, it was left to us to clear out her house. In the process of clearing out a very high cupboard in the kitchen I came across an old metal Christmas Tree cookie cutter. I told myself I would make those at Christmas. (which seemed so far away at the time) Now it has come and gone but I did get the cookies made and remembered the sweet lady who's cookie cutter it had been. 

Gingerbread House time of year

I had the urge to make a gingerbread house. So I decided to make one for Bobbi and the ladies at the salon.

I have the Wilton Gingerbread house cookie cutter set. But then I took small square and rectangle ones and cut out the door and windows. Then I baked the pieces, decorated them to look like stone and decided that I wanted windows. So I make some lollypop candy with no color (it turns a bit yellow in cooking) and very carefully poured that into the open spaces. I had parchment paper underneath to keep it from sticking to the tray. I let the pieces dry.

I put the pieces together, let them dry a bit then put the roof on and put icing all over the board I put the house on. Added some paving stones to the front and before I put it on, I "painted" the door with red icing and made it look like wood. I used Golden Grahams cereal for the roof. 

The house was set back like that because I thought I would make a little skating rink by it but didn't like it so then I had space to fill up so I made some gingerbread logs, 

a gingerbread mailbox,

a gingerbread basket of tiny gingerbread men and holly,

a gingerbread and royal icing sled, the Plush Flyer, 

a little gingerbread dog house with a stick and a big gingerbread tree.

Then because there is a gap between the wall and the roof on the side I fed some tiny red led lights into the inside of the house and viola! 

The light shines through the candy windows. 

Lord of the Rings Wedding Cake

Jayme and Trey got married October 19. They wanted a Lord of the Rings cake. They wanted the ring in it somehow so this is what I came up with.

I used Lego Arwen and Aragorn as the couple.

I made the chain out of gum paste. It was a fun little cake to make. 

Air brush cookies

A  couple years ago Bryan gave me a very nice airbrush for Christmas. I admit I was scared of that thing. It just sat in my office and intimidated me. Until the other day when I was using a spray can of food color to spray color onto a practice cake to see how it would look (You will see that later, closer to the wedding) I ran out of the spray can color and we live 20 miles from the store so I had to quit. Then I remembered the air brush and that I had some airbrush food colors. Now, be at ease, I have never used the air brush for anything so it is ok to use for food. So I took a deep breath and plugged it in, filled the paint cup with gold food color and started to spray. OH MY WORD!! It  was so easy and fun. I don't think it will replace my decorating the usual way but it adds another dimension.

Today I was messing with it and while I am not confident enough with it to decorate cookies for any special thing I did have a fun time making these and trying things with it.

Mainly I need to practice control and patience! 

I decorated some cupcakes that I had extra and made them look like mummies.

Made some pumpkin cinnamon rolls with pumpkin pie spice cream cheese icing. Very good.

Then the other day I made some bat cookies for a party and some caramel apple cookies for another dinner.

These were a fun, relaxing project.

This isn't a cookie but...

I did just make Bacon Jam. I got the recipe from Cravings of a Lunatic. It is so good!!

I think it would be amazing on a burger.

Grasshopper Cookies

They look so innocent sitting there...don't be fooled, they are evil! Wickedly good.

I shouldn't make cookies. But I can't help myself.

Pumpkin Cookies

These are so good, if I do say so myself. This was a recipe I found and modified to make them more moist and cake like. Enjoy!

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cream together: 1&1/2 sticks of butter (room temp); 1/2 cup Crisco butter flavor shortening; 1 Cup brown sugar; 1/2 cup organic sugar

Add in: 2 tsp. real vanilla; 2 eggs and 1 (15 oz) can of pumpkin puree

Mix well.

By hand stir in : 2&1/2 cups flour; 1 tsp. baking powder; 1/2 tsp. baking soda; 1/2 tsp. salt; 1 tsp. cinnamon; 1/2 tsp. each of ginger and nutmeg; 1/4 tsp. cloves

This batter is almost like a muffin batter. I used my cookie scoop and make sure to put parchment paper on the cookie sheet. 12 per tray bake for 12 minutes at 375. Remove when done to a cooling rack. 

For the icing: cream together 1 (8 oz. block cream cheese); 1/4 cup room temp. butter.; 2 tsp. vanilla; a pinch of salt and 2 cups powdered sugar

I put it in a piping bag and piped it onto the cookies. This recipe made about 62 with the cookie scoop I used. The icing didn't go that far the way I did it. It left about 12 without icing. I put fall leaves sprinkles on them. 

And then you add Pearl Dust...

And it changes everything!

Ball brand baby food jars

I love love love these little baby food Ball jars!! They are so handy for icing. Each on is 4 ounces and has a wide mouth and a plastic lid. So great for mixing and storing icing. I just know if I fill one with icing that I get about two of my small squeeze bottles filled from one jar. They come 4 in a package and cost about $5 at Walmart. Believe me I stocked up! 

Guess What! Another Wedding and a Party

That's right. My daughter, Jayme got engaged and their wedding is October 19 so I started making cookies for her special day.

They decided on Navy, Gold, Red and Mint. So I made 45 of these simple mint colored hearts, and 40 of these round gold sugared monograms.

Today I finished 47 of these gold wedding cake cookies.

Feels good to have all those in the freezer. I really like how the wedding cakes turned out. This was my original design and I just didn't like it. Glad I only tried 4... sometimes things seem good on paper or in my head but in actuality they aren't that great. I'm glad I tried again.

The weekend after the wedding we have our biggest family get together of the year. This year it will be 39 people. Such a fun time of eating and carving pumpkins and a hay ride.

Of course I make cookies for everyone. I sketched out this design from a cookie cutter that I have that is a pickup with a tree in it. So I trimmed the tree off and cut the bottom off the little pumpkin and made it a truck with a huge pumpkin in it. Took a bit of work but worth the end product.

So today I decided to do 10 of the 40 that I need to do.

In retrospect I am not sure I needed the dark icing in the wheel wells but it didn't take too much time or effort and if my tires didn't touch then it was covered. I am thrilled with the end result.

From design to completion a really fun cookie to make. Only 30 more to go. The next ones I won't have to mix colors and prepare icing though so they should go faster. These 10 took 2 hours. The cookie cutter is from Karen's Cookies. I learned by error that you can't use food markers, freeze the cookie and have it turn out ok. The color bleeds... So I will write on these after they are room temperature on the day I use them. I want to write on that white panel the event and date.  

These made for this event also and also purchased from Karen's Cookies. I just loved the silverware cutters!! Had to have them. I did these yesterday.

And finished off with Wilton pearl lustre spray to make them really shine.

They just make me smile! I think the next time I do them I will do the handle design wet on wet instead of the way I did these. It would be much faster and easier. That spray makes such a difference in the look of them. Fun products.

A Tiny Wedding Cake...

To sit on top of the cupcake stand.

Look at the second to the bottom record ( I made the cupcake stand out if old records) it was so hot outside the record melted! Fortunately I just took the stand apart and removed one level. 

They are so cute! 

Wedding cookies

Bobbi and Travis got married today! I made 106 cookies for their reception. 

Of course I had to include Josie and Jax!

Wedding Treats

Banana split shots. 

No ice cream needed. 

For Bobbi's wedding I'm making the food. 

I've been making stuff and sampling ideas. 

These will be on the menu. 

Step 1: put ganache in the bottom of a shot glass. 

Step: 2: put in a banana slice.

Step 3: put a dot of caramel sauce on the banana

Step 4: put in a little bite of brownie

Step 5: put a dot of ganache on the brownie

Step 6: put in a chunk of pineapple 

Step 7: put in a strawberry

Step 8: drizzle both with ganache

Step 9: put in a tiny fork 

You can get about 40 chunks out of 1 pineapple. 10 slices of banana out of one banana. About 25 strawberries per pound (average size).

I used a 1 inch round cutter to cut 70 rounds out of a 9x13 pan of brownies. (1 box mix).

I used Breyer's caramel sauce (no HFCS)

Made ganache (1 cup cream heated, pour over 1 bag milk chocolate chips stir until glossy. Put in a piping bag).

So for 200 you need: 

5 pineapples cut up

20 bananas cut into 10 slices each

About 8 lbs. of strawberries (cut in half if too big)

3 boxes of brownie mix bake each in a 9x13 lined with parchment paper. Use a 1 inch round cutter to cut out 70 from each batch. Dip the cutter into powdered sugar each time. 

1 or 2 pouches of Breyer's caramel sauce

2 batches of ganache maybe?

Assembly line the assembly and they go quickly.

Boxer Puppy cookies

When I saw the boxer cookies posted on Sugerbelle's website, I just knew I had to recreate Bobbi's dogs in cookie form.

And since I was pretty sure they wouldn't get her a Mother's Day present I went ahead and made the cookies as a present from them. 

I was so pleased at how they came out! Thanks, Sugarbelle for the idea and how to. The tiny ones are from a tiny little onsie cutter that I have and decided to make "puppy confetti".

Actually very simple if you use a #1 tip. 

I think Bobbi was pleased with the present her dogs came up with. 

Sasquatch (Bigfoot) Sugar Cookies

I feel like we keep having occasions that demand a cookie or a cake. I know I'm not sad about that.

This week Bryan is excited about a new Survivorman 2 part series that focuses on Bigfoot. It starts tonight. We decided to get together with some friends to watch it. So of course I decided to create a Sasquatch cookie.

I started with deciding on a cookie cutter and chose a large pumpkin one and turned it on it's side. 

Cut off the stem and that resulted in this:

Next I wanted to have the teeth look real and then I remembered that I had this ice cube mold. I am not sure what made me buy it but I'm glad I did!

I just used a bit of gum paste pressed into the front of the mold about 1 and 1/2 inches across. Pulled it out and let it dry, then painted it with ivory gel paste coloring.

Just in case you don't know what gum paste is.

The result was this. Top and bottom teeth. The little things above them are supposed to be top lips but I ended up not using them. 

First I covered the whole cookie in a reddish brown color royal icing. Didn't need to be neat. You will see why.

They looked so creepy I almost gave up. But I am glad I didn't. I let them dry for a bit then added more flood icing in the eyebrow and nose areas.

Then I didn't think that was enough so I took a deep breath and used the piping icing to create deep brows, a nose and upper lip. Good so far...

But still SUPER creepy. OH a note about the eyes.

They are half rounds of gum paste and when they were dry I painted warm brown gel paste on them in a circle for the iris then used a food marker to make the pupil then added a couple white dots of icing for the highlight. I let the cookies dry a bit and worked on the green ones you see in that picture. Using a Wilton tip that I have had since 1977...it says #233 on it, I piped "grass" onto the plain green iced cookies. 

Let it dry for a bit so I could make a footprint with the side of my hand. IF you remember childhood and using your hand to make a baby footprint on an icy window, that is what I did. Just into the partially dried icing. Here is the result. 

A faint Sasquatch footprint in the grass.

Now on to the main character. Wash the #233 and use reddish brown (I used mostly warm brown with a little terracotta) piping icing to make fur all over him.

 

I kept looking at these after I thought I was done and then got the piping bag out again and added more hair to the upper lip and the bridge of the nose. I am glad I did.

I also lightened up some of the brown and added highlights to the nose. If I do these again I think I would make 3-4 colors of brown all in one piping bag and maybe do the brows in a lighter color. 

Each one seems to have his own personality. 

And of course I had to put one with Bryan's book he has been reading.

"Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science" by Jeff Meldrum

I had to include a photo of each one because, as I said, they each have their own personality. They definately make me smile.