I was able to host my (almost) annual cookie decorating party again this year, and what a year it was! Always love seeing everyone’s creativity in creations. Here are a few snapshots from the day including the aftermath of cookies, sprinkles and frosting, as well as my first charcuterie board! <3
The end of year holidays were just too busy, but come spring I finally had time to host a cookie decorating party again! Spring/Summer/Fun – pretty much anything goes, especially with some of my new cookie cutters 🙂
Baking prep! Cookies drying… (not nearly all the cookies pictured here 😉 )
Party color theme and decorations
Sprinkle Bar!
Mixing up the fancy colored buttercream frostings
All ready for the cookie decorators to arrive 🙂
Just LOOK at all these beauties! I love seeing how people decorate and what creativity comes forward in the cookies 😀
Thank you all for your creativity and friendship!! 🙂
(towards the end of the afternoon… not all guests pictured here)
I saw these mini matchstick cookies from SprinkleBakes and had to try them myself!
It took me several rounds to get these little cookies the size and shape I wanted, but I finally got some I was happy with. You have to make the dough, freeze, cut, freeze, and bake immediately to help them hold their sharp shape…
It would have been faster to buy a package of ready-to-go white matchstick boxes, but by the time I decided I was going to go for it, I was a little short on time to order and hand out by Valentine’s Day like I planned (but not soon enough :P). So I ended up just buying a package of matchstick boxes at Fred Meyer, pocketing the matches and cleaning/altering/decorating the boxes for my own use with white paper and washi tape. I had more cookies to share, but the box alteration time set my limit for sharing to a special few 😉
How cute are these ?!! 🙂
This year I tried my own hand at making the German Springerlie cookies I remember my Mom making each Christmas time. They involve a wooden rolling pin with little molded patterns, fresh anise seeds, allowing the cookies to dry out overnight before baking, and then leaving them in an air tight tin for a few weeks to soften and soak up the anise flavor!
Ready to roll…
Ready to cut…
Ready to dry overnight…
Baked and ready to be stored! We’ll see how they turn out in a few weeks 😉
Thanks, Mom!
I can’t wait to use these fun cookie cutters soon – keep an eye out for them! 😉
These egg cookies look nothing like the Ukranian eggs my Grandma was so good at decorating (similar to these), but I definitely thought of her and her immensely talented detail work while baking this batch. There is nothing waxy about these royal icing decorated sugar cookies – only a sugary, buttery, slightly soft crunch. 🙂
Candid: Staging in process…
Easter pineapple, anyone? 😉
Kiss 2014 goodbye. Watch 2015 blossom.  😉
All the best to you in 2015!
This year was my second Cookie Exchange Extravaganza, and I made sugar cookie Christmas sweaters and mittens 🙂
For the sweaters I used Sweet Sugar Belle’s royal icing recipe again and separated the icing into red, green and white. As the planning continued, my strategy got simpler and simpler… Maybe another time I can make all of them customized and silly with santas, snowmen, reindeer, presents, lights, sleighs, chimneys etc.
Since the royal icing takes a number of hours to set, I baked and created the background icing layers one day, and piped the detail in white another…
Voila!! So many….
I packaged what I had up into baggies of 6 each…
And off to the exchange I went! Look at the piles of amaaazing cookies that everyone brought!
For my NEXT three dozen (remember–strategy got simpler and simpler… eight dozen sweater cookies, ok six dozen sweater cookies, ok only two base colors and white decoration, ok actually three dozen sweater cookies and three other dozen of something else…that will be faster to bake and decorate)….. I made mitten cookies dipped in semi-sweet chocolate and garnished with little cookie stars and snowflake sprinkles! There were a few I tried edible glitter, but the glitter got away from me… :/
Just dipped!
I had fun creating these custom bachelorette themed cookies for party favors this week! I used my Grandmother’s sugar cookie recipe and SweetSugarBelle’s royal icing recipe again 🙂
I had a little extra time, so I started experimenting with some additional arrangements….
I’ve noticed some of my favorite blogs use cups and mugs of steaming hot beverages in their overhead shots. I like the warm, cozy feeling the beverage gives to the shot, and I had the perfect dish towel to go with it… I’ll work on adding more to my layouts to pump them up!
And some fun with minis <3
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I had fun trying out a new cookie decorating technique…
I made some mistakes and have a list of improvements to make, but I also have a list of ideas for future decorations swirling around in my head and am eager to practice more!
I happened upon SugarBelle’s blog and used her royal icing recipe for these cookies (Note: After finishing my cookie experiment, I saw a much more recent post from SugarBelle with an updated royal icing recipe and tips here!).
Here are the ingredients ready to begin my royal icing adventure…
The recipe called for mixing up VERY stiff icing to start from for tinting and watering down to desired consistencies for decorating. I think I was pretty successful in this (and my wrist felt it too after mixing in all of the coloring!)
The only two green tint colors I had were these two…
Let the tinting begin! After multiple rounds of adding a couple drops at a time and stirring…
Even if not quite the two green colors I had imagined, I eventually got a decent contrast and figured that was the best I could do with what I had… time to expand my green tint collection!
(I apologize for lack of photos during this process…) I then watered down my ‘pipe consistency’ icing with a spray water bottle, placed it in a piping bag with a #3 tip, and prepared my ‘flood consistency’ icing by watering it down even more, and placed it in a squeeze bottle. Starting simple, below you can see one cookie that has been outlined, and the other that has been outlined and then “flooded’.
And then there were these…. 😀 I went crazy with multiple compositions!
(I’m wishing I had more than four $1 gold coins…. I think it would have made for more of an impactful message ;))
Since I didn’t have anything rainbow to add to the mix, I created one out of Washi tape 🙂
And let (a little too) loose with the edible gold glitter!
