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!