Thanksgiving Cookies 2013

I've been studiously working on cookies all week.  We are staying home this year because Mr. Flip Flop has to work Friday... so family Thanksgiving will be celebrated over the week-end (probably with Mexican Food because we'll all be stuffed with turkey already).

I wanted to get some cookies in the mail today for some of those family members we won't be able to see.  I hope they make it there intact and on time for them to enjoy...I've happily played with this first set...and will be working on more to take with us for our little celebration when it finally happens.  It's not the day you celebrate thankfulness and family that matters, it's the people you're with!

I used Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookie dough and you can find the link to a printable recipe here.  Scroll to the bottom of the recipe and it says "print page" below the comments box.  I roll all of my cookies 3/8" thick and this dough does a great job of not spreading when well-chilled. For best results, chill overnight in the fridge.  Give it a try!  I like to use Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Bean Paste...it's the best I've ever tried.  If you can't find it locally, you can order it on Amazon in the U.S.  If you can't find paste or order it...you can scrape whole vanilla bean pods of their seeds and add it to the dough instead.  I would suggest 2 or 3 beans...you really want to see the little specks in this cookie and have a fragrant vanilla aroma when it bakes.  The Lor-Ann's emulsion is also available on Amazon if you can't find it locally.  I have gotten it at Hobby Lobby and at Michael's down here in The Valley.  It makes a delicious difference to the taste.  Shake both the paste and emulsion before using for best results.

So - here's a sharing of photos...with some commentary.  I'm still struggling with the stencils, but I assume, as my husband says, "it's a cookie...they will eat it".    I guess that is the absolute truth, but I really like them to be the best that they can be!

Large Turkey and Mini Pumpkins

I wrote a Turkey Tutorial last year and I mentioned that I felt like it needed a wing.  I finished my big turkeys this year and thought the same thing, but I had not remembered my comment that I would address that issue in 2013.  So, I thought, "how about a royal icing transfer?"  I'd finished everything last night and had some brown and ivory royal icing left over so I grabbed a piece of flat parchment paper and piped a brown "shape" and two lines of ivory...ran a needle tool down them for feathering and left it to dry last night.  I glued them on with some more brown icing, used a dry paint brush to neaten up where some squished out after I applied the transfers, and voila!  It was just the trick! 

I see so many cookie artists' work that I worry I am using somebody's idea without giving credit.  I try to go back and see if I can find pictures where I got the idea.  These little pumpkins are one of those ideas I know I got "somewhere" and I can't remember where.  I know I got the idea for the ivory pumpkin from LilaLoa's blog.  What I don't remember, is who I saw use lustre dust in the crevices to accent the pumpkin curves.  It wasn't a white pumpkin, but an orange one.  If I find it, I'll be sure to add in credit.  I waited until the pumpkin sections were dried and then I dipped a dry paint brush in some bronze edible lustre dust, tapped off the excess and just ran it down the seams.  I really like the effect! (Update 11/28/2013 - I was looking at some YouTube tutorials today and saw Haniela had done orange pumpkins painted with lustre dust...I think that may have been where I got the idea.  Here's the link to her tutorial if you are interested.  She does great work!)

Two different leaf techniques.  I usually suck at leaves.
I love these front two!

Okay - I had to stop in the midst of my blog post writing and try like crazy to find my inspiration for the front two cookies.  I know it was a "chalkboard" style of cookie - dark background and light leaf veins.  Checked Cookie Connection clips, my Facebook feed, Google images...nada zip!  Again, I'll apologize in advance.  I think it was someone sharing someone else's cookies on Facebook.  Any whoo.... I am not really very good at Fall Leaves as a subject matter.  I think it is from living in Texas my entire life and we don't really get the colored leaves so I haven't any real-life experience to draw from.  I coated everything with a different orange that I mixed up with orange, brown, and some other color I can't remember...it looked "Fallish" to me and less like Halloween.  I based coated the leaves and let them dry.  I remembered seeing a YouTube video from Ali Bee's Bake Shop which demonstrated speckling leaves with lustre dust.  So, I watched it again and did that on the back cookie.  Then I watched a YouTube video from SweetAmbsCookies that inspired me to paint the piped veins with lustre dust...so I did that! I was down to the last two leaves last night (I put aside stuff I'm not good at) and decided I was going to use an edible food marker (brown) and just draw veins.  I was tired and I didn't really want to pipe anything any more.  I let them dry but didn't like the way they looked so I got a brush and dipped dry bronze lustre dust and started dry painting the entire cookie.  The lustre dust changed the brown to a kind of silvery bronze color and I perked right up.  I loved it!  Then, I used some of the wet to paint a border around the two leaves.  They ended up being one of my favorites in the bunch!  AND SO EASY!  I don't use my markers enough.

Turkey stencil from Designer Stencils.

I made 6 larger rounds in hopes of having an easier time stenciling.  Some luck...some not.  I waited too long into the decorating process and my hands were tired and shaky...and my icing wasn't "just right" and I got some "under flow" with the stencil...not crisp and clean.  Oh well - I'll keep trying.  The pumpkins, acorns, and turkeys were much easier this year due to practice!  The acorn was a larger cutter I found in a set at Michael's.  I find I really like my mid-sized acorn better - it isn't so "round" and the caps look better when they are a bit smaller.  Again...it's a cookie...they will eat it!

More efforts at stenciling....

The lower left cookie ... well, I moved it before I finished stenciling the words at the bottom...and once you do that - there's no going back.  So, I used a food marker to write the words.  Necessity is the mother of invention (not that invented anything, it just sounded like the thing to say).  I am posting this picture mostly to show the cookie on the lower right side.  The stencil skills were sucky on the leaves...but the words were crisp.  Good grief!  However, I liked the border I made.  I used a tiny little leaf tip from PME... #ST50... to go with a scallop and dot border.  I liked the way it looked, so I'm sharing.

Another DesignerStencils.com product.

This cookie was another experiment with borders.  I like multiple borders and I had a tip I'd never used because I couldn't figure it out.  It is a "spiked leaf" from PME and is #54.  I had it in with my star tips and when I sorted tips the other day I found it and looked it up.  I thought it was squished or something and then realized it was a leaf tip.  Huh, who knew?  Obviously not me!  I tried it out on this cookie as a border and while it was bigger than I expected, it was kind of cool.

Tired of looking at cookie pictures yet?  Yeah, me too...I have other things I should be doing...like packing these up to go out in the mail TODAY!

Here's the last one...

A stencil job I'm happy with!

This stencil turned out just the way I imagined it in my mind.  A little bit of maroon, some yellow, brown, and green leaf.  It came out fairly well I thought and I liked the shell and dot borders too.  Whew! (#13 Wilton star tip for the border).  All of my dots are using a PME 1.5 tip and a looser consistency of RI than I used to use.  I find if I space correctly, pipe straight up and down, and follow the Julia Usher school of "you should never have to push down a point if you have the right consistency of icing" (that's not a direct quote, but the general idea)...I get nicely rounded dots.

So, I have more cookies to make and I'll share those likely next week.  I won't have time for more blogging as we are ramping up for the big Gobble Gobble day.  Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you don't hear from me before then!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

Fall Decorated Sugar Cookies

A friend of a friend was in need of cookies to be used as favors at her November luncheon.  She had tried my cookies at a beach birthday party and asked me if I would do a few for her party.  I don't really sell cookies so I was hesitant...but as we visited, I liked her and decided I would do it.

Of course, nothing ever comes together exactly as expected.  She had said it would be mid-November and I told her I needed at least two weeks advance notice.  She, unexpectedly, had to reschedule her luncheon to November 6th...a time frame that really wasn't optimal for me.  However, always trying to help where I can, I planned out my various work really fast and thought "I can probably do this"...and then I ended up having to take two trips to Austin (two 700-mile round trips - one planned, one not planned) within the span of the week I needed to start work on the cookies!  Yikes!!!

She had requested 30 minis and wanted Fall-themes...acorns, pumpkins, that sort of thing.  I knew I could whip those out fairly easily, quoted a reasonable price, and went on down the road thinking thirty mini cookies would be easy-peasy.  NOT! 

I could not find my mini acorn cookie cutter (which I was sure I had), but I did have a medium-sized acorn.  I did not have a smallish-medium-sized pumpkin...only largish-medium, large, and mini (and the mini looked too small next to the acorns)...but I had an appropriate-sized apple...which I could make look like a pumpkin with no one being the wiser. I also had one-step-up in size from a mini Turkey.  I finally settled on those three.  I think they turned out quite cute.  I gave her 31 cookies - the extra in case one broke or she needed a stress snack. (Who doesn't need a stress snack when putting on a luncheon for 25 or so folks???)

The party favors for the very popular South Padre Island KOA water aerobics class! 
I hear instructor, Mary L., is really awesome.  They have a heated pool too. 
I might have to go some time!

While I was making those, I went ahead and made one  of the slightly larger pumpkins and 3 round scallops because I wanted to try out some stencils before I started my personal Thanksgiving cookies.  Glad I did.  I'm always learning something!  The cookies were barely large enough, but there was an unseen slope at the edge of the base-coated rounds and the stencils did not lay flat on the rounds, causing some smearing at the lower edges.  I also didn't have adequate space for the border I wanted and had to improvise.  Again, one of those things most people might not notice...but we cookiers would see it!

So, I now know I will use a slightly larger cookie for the round Thanksgiving stencils I bought from Designer Stencils.  I also will try decorating the flat bottom of the cookie instead of the top.  I learned that trick from another cookier.  She said she always decorates that way so the surface is level.  I probably won't do it always...but when I need a flat stencil surface, that may be the answer! 

The leaves on the cookie above the this one were
much more forgiving of the rounded edge than the
Gobble Gobble lettering was.  It was very challenging
and I had to work steadily with my needle tool
to get the letters to look like the word Gobble!

I also tried a multi-colored Fall leaf (one of 4 in another stencil set, also Designer Stencil product).  I was really pleased with it!  I'll be making more of those, using all of the 4 leaf shapes and working on my multi-color stencil technique.  I don't have it down "pat" just yet.  I tried to make the turkey feathers above be reddish at the top and yellowish in the middle...but they got muddled with brown.  I was more careful with the leaf below and I really like the look I got with the leaf.

I used the Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookie recipe for all of the cookies in this batch, as requested by Mary, the friend of a friend...and added a bit of the Princess Cake/Cookie Emulsion I discussed in my last blog post.  Makes a really tasty cookie! I'd considered making a Meringue Powder Butter Cream icing (the mouth feel is so much nicer than royal icing) but remembering how long it took to dry last time I did that...I knew I'd have to stick to RI this time.  I was lucky to get everything done in the short amount of time I had...didn't want to stack the cards against myself!

The order was delivered Tuesday for the Wednesday party and Mary seemed happy.  Woo Hoo!  One of the reasons I don't sell cookies in general is the stress I feel over worrying if the customer would like my cookies or not.  I'm my worst critic!  However, she said they were beautiful, I felt a warm glow, and I know she got a good deal getting bigger-than-mini cookies for a mini price.  I really think her guests will be pleased. Still, I cleared enough financially to get myself a nice manicure...so I consider it work well-done!

The cookie on the left is a pumpkin cutter and the cookie on the right
is an apple cutter.  I think it worked out well and was more in-tune with
the size of the other cookies in the set.

I will share more cookies as I progress through my Autumnal baking endeavors.  By the way - I found a cute little set of graduated leaves and acorns at Michael's yesterday....so I'm good to go on all-sized acorns!  LOL!

I'm already starting to think about Christmas baking...are you?  I was slightly irritated when shopping yesterday...I could barely find any Thanksgiving stuff because Target, Michael's, Wal-Mart, and Kohl's had shoved over anything to do with Thanksgiving and were busily stocking Christmas stuff.  Christmas music was blaring in the stores.  It made me sad (but I still bought some Christmas baking morsels and a few other Christmas baking items because they'll likely be sold out if I don't get them now).

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!