Cookies Fail

Well, I attended the radio play that the high school performed, and they did a great job.  As I was walking into the theater, I saw that a little girl had one of my radio cookies.  Her grandmother said in hushed tones, "Sit down right here dear, and you can eat your house cookie."

Ummm, okay, I guess they DO look like little houses. Chalk that one up to a cookie fail.  Haha!!

 

 

Old Time Radio Cookies

My daughter's High School  Playmakers Group is putting on a Vintage Radio play this week.  As usual, I signed up to make cookies for them to sell at intermission.  These are what I came up with.

 Little vintage radios!

 

None of them are the same, I cut them by hand, and none of them look "perfect" but that's okay.  I also made circular cookies with white frosting, intending to put a Hitchcock head on each one, but they didn't look right AT ALL so we left them with only their white frosting.

I also set up all of the Radio and news equipment I had on hand to create a fun cover photo for my facebook page.
Thanks to my Dad for loaning me his KEYZ radio microphone.  There is a mix of eras in this photo, but I don't care haha!  It was fun to put together.

 

 That's all for today!  Until another time, have a happy, vintage day!

 
 
 
 



Christmas Tree Cookies

The month of December was so busy, I forgot to post about the Christmas Tree Cookies I made for my daughter's teachers, and for some of our family.

 

These were pretty simple to do, as there wasn't much detail to them.

That's all for today, just a quick post.  Until another time, have a happy, yummy day!

Turkey Cookies

Last week, Husband asked if I'd like to participate in a cookie swap.  The girls at his work invited me, and seeing as how I'd never done one before, I decided to give it a try.

This cute little image from Vandylee Vintage Shop on Etsy.  She has many CUTE vintage cookbooks for sale.

While browsing Pinterest awhile back, I had stumbled across these cute, frosted, turkey cookies.  They used a 7 petal flower cookie cutter (or maybe it was an actually turkey cutter), and as luck would have it, I had a 6 petal, flower shaped cookie cutter, which would work perfectly!

Below are the ones I found on Pinterest.

They have fancy polka dots on their feathers, but I decided to keep mine plain.

So here are the step-by-step pictures of the turkey cookies.
I used a royal icing recipe that contains meringue powder.

 

 

 

 

 

The pans above contained the best, Grade A turkeys.  I saved another dozen or so, off to the side.  These were the lesser quality, Grade B and C Turkeys that had tiny mistakes in them (bubbles in the frosting, not enough frosting for adequate cover, etc). 

 

When husband came home Monday evening, he brought 5 dozen of the cookies the other girls had made!  What fun!  There are pumpkin ones, chocolate fudge ones, Nutella cookies and even pretzels with almond bark and Hershey kisses pressed onto them, and peanut butter blossoms, which are a family favorite. They are all SO YUMMY!

 

 

No, I'm not going to eat the ALL.  In fact, we've already given a few away.  Plus, they will be a nice addition to the Thanksgiving meal we will be having on Thursday.

 

That's all for today.  Until another time, have a happy baking day!

 

 

Cookies for Choir

This week it was Daughter's turn to bring snacks to choir.  Since St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner, I made Shamrock cookies and musical note cookies.

 

 

I baked on Saturday evening and frosted on Sunday evening.  We ended up with 41 Shamrocks and 37 Musical notes!  Yea!

As always, I used the Wilton Royal Icing recipe.  You can find it HERE.  And this time I only mixed the frosting mixture for 7 minutes with my electric hand mixer.  I should have done 10.  But the frosting still turned out pretty good.   I achieved the darker green dots by adding them while the flood frosting was still very wet.  Just a dot of frosting will do, as it spreads a little bit when dropped onto the flood frosting.  The dark green frosting was also quite thin...about the same consistency as the flood frosting.  If I had three hands, I could have taken pictures! Ha!

 

 

I was a tired cookie maker by the end of the day.

 

That's all for now.  Until another time, have a happy day! 

Long Time, No Blog and Christmas Projects

I feel sooooo bad that I haven't been blogging lately, it's just that I've been soooooo busy with life.  Christmas is coming and all through this Advent season I've been trying to set aside more time for reading devotions and prayer (which isn't always easy).  Also, I get to have Christmas Dinner at my house this year!!  I'm very excited about that, because I love to entertain (even though our house is the size of a Cracker Jack box).  Therefore, I haven't had time to load photos, and write blogs....I wonder if anyone else starts to feel a bit "overwhelmed" about the whole blogging thing, especially at this time of year?

 

But I do have a minute or 40 to spare so I thought I'd catch everyone up on just ONE or TWO of the projects I've been working on these last couple of weeks.  

I've been making cookies.

Lots of cookies....about 130 total.

They are whipped up from scratch using my Grandmother's recipe. 

 

 

I feel I've finally figured out how to use Wilton's Royal Icing recipe, which you can find HERE.  And I have found that the consistency of the icing is key to having no jagged edges and pointed dots.

 

First, I outline the cookies.

 

 

Then I flood the cookies.  The outline acts as a wall, helping to keep the flooding frosting where it is suppose to be.  You can see the flooded cookies on the left. 

 

  Finally I pipe white frosting details (after the base frosting cools).

 

 

It's really quite a process and if I had to guess, I'd say I probably handle each cookie for around 5 or 6 minutes.  But it's SO MUCH FUN!!!  I love making and decorating cookies!

And, not that anyone cares, but I listened to a lot of 60s music while making these.  I really have no idea why.  A little Simon and Garfunkle, some of The Youngbloods, The Byrds, and Jefferson Airplane.  A little of the Fifth Dimention, David Cassidy (don't laugh), and some Peter Paul and Mary.  Good stuff!

 

I did manage to buy a little vintage "looking" tree at Hobby Lobby for my vintage ornaments!

 

There's no baby Jesus yet, we have to wait until Christmas.

For now the tree sits in my little "library".

 

 

That's just the start of my projects.  I'm not going to share anything else until after Christmas because so many of my projects lately are Christmas Gifts and I don't want to spoil any surprises!  Haha!

 

So, I'll post again after Christmas so stay tuned! 

And have a super fun Christmas!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Cookie Baking!

Last week was such a fun and busy week!  I baked and frosted two batches of cookies.  One batch for a family member's birthday party and one for my nieces and nephew.

 

 

 

 

Easter was a good day, aside from the fact that I was very sick with the sniffles.  Church was nice, with organ music, Easter Lilies and familiar hymns. 

 

 

Whew!  This week I plan on catching up on some reading and housework!

Until another time, have a happy, sugar-coated day!

Easter Egg Cookies Completed!

Whew!  What a busy weekend!  It's amazing how having an enjoyable project can lift one's spirits! 
Saturday morning I got up bright and early, finished my chores, and set to mixing the cookie dough.  While the dough chilled for an hour in the fridge, daughter and I watched an episode of the Walton's.  Then, it was time to cut out and bake the delicious egg shapes.  After they were baked, the cookies were layered into a cake pan, and then put into the fridge to cool completely, before they could be frosted.  If the cookies are not cooled completely, the frosting will not set properly.

By Saturday evening, I had most of the cookies frosted.  I started with the base colors and outlined each shape with "thicker" frosting.  After the outlines were fairly dry, I "flooded" each cookie with a thinner frosting of the same color.  This base coat took about 45 minutes to an hour to harden.  After the base was hardened, I started to add the decorative details.   I used thicker frosting for the details (but not too thick).

Base coat

Saturday night.  By the time I reached this far, my hands were soar from squeezing the little bottles.  I think I need to buy some different bottles.



 

Sunday afternoon, I mixed up a quarter batch of icing and finished decorating the eggs.

Here they are finished. 

I wish I had been a bit more careful with the decorative details, but these eggs were good practice.  They will make their way to daughter's Monday evening choir group!

Cookie Baking Weekend

Big baking plans are brewing at my house.  This weekend the kitchen will turn into a bakery as I try to make 4 dozen egg shaped sugar cookies for my daughter's choir group.

 

I've got my sugar, butter and eggs.  Plus, you can't forget the vanilla!

Here is a fun little advertisement for McCormick Vanilla I saw floating around on Facebook a few weeks ago.

 

 

And we'll need some food coloring for the powdered sugar frosting of course.  (Actually, for my cookies I've switched to the Wilton frosting tints that we bought when we decided to dye white yarn.)  But we still use food coloring for lots of different things!

Next stop...the local craft store for Meringue Powder.  I've never used royal icing before and am looking forward to giving it a try. 

 

The recipe I found says I'll need...

3 tablespoons Meringue Powder

4 cups confectioners' sugar

6 tablespoons warm water.

This recipe makes 3 cups of icing.

I am going to flavor my icing with vanilla and tint it with the Wilton brand of frosting tints.

 

I'm really hoping they turn out.  I'll keep you posted!

 

Until another time, have a happy, baking day!