Beach Cookies

The Beach Cookie created following
tutorial from Marlyn of Montreal Confections

I know it is February and many folks North of the equator are having a nippy week...but where I live, it's pretty nice weather!  I live on the Gulf Coast ...right on the water... and this week-end, I'm driving up the coast a few hours to spend time...at the coast.  Yep, weirdly enough, it's true.  My flip flops are happy to be in the sand, wherever the sand may be.

So, cookies were requested by the traveling companions ...apple butter cookies specifically.  Ask and ye shall receive!  I made 30 cookies and got them all decorated in one day via carefully scheduled fan drying of layers and starting early in the day.  I used a different method for making royal icing this time...from the wonderful Jaci at Ali's Sweet Tooth.  We both live in a land of great humidity.  Her method worked beautifully.  Not a bit of separation all day long...and a good thick base to work from with my handy dandy spray bottle. Yay!

My favorite cookies were a "beach" with waves I meticulously created using the YouTube tutorial from Marlyn at Montreal Confections.  I am slightly addicted to her tutorials...she is such a good teacher.  I saw it earlier last year and knew I would eventually get around to trying it out.  Today was the day!  Mine doesn't look as sharp as hers... but I'm pleased with the result for a first effort.  I didn't make fondant sea shells, I used some white and milk chocolate instead in a Wilton silicon mold I bought from Amazon.  I'm not fond of fondant...but I surely do love chocolate.  They came out sort of cute, so I'm glad I took that turn.

I didn't have the cool sanding sugar Marlyn used.
I used turbinado sugar instead.

I also used, for the first time, my air brush.  I carefully covered my table and used a 3-part science poster board to protect over spray as recommended by the talented Melissa at The Baked Equation .  I was so joyful to spray the shades of blue and then pearl the waves.  I am laughing myself silly now, though.  Guess what I didn't protect?  The inside of my nose!  I blew blue icky stuff this evening (OK - blue boogers - I'll just say it).  Good grief!  I'm thinking a mask may be in order next time.  Now that I see how cool the airbrush is, I know I'm going to try to find ways to add more depth to future cookies.

Since I didn't take photos during the process (and you can see Marlyn's online tutorial here) I'll just post these photos of the finished products.  Dolphins, sand dollars, star fish, and some scallop shells add to the beach theme.  The teen informed me "uh, those shells look a little different", in reference to the colors of the scallops.  Heck, I needed to use up some of the blue and peach icing from other cookies...so we have "different" scallop shells.  Leave it to the teen to point out the obvious!

Happy dolphins, funky scallops...it's all good when it gets in the belly!

The sand dollars are much better than my last attempt!  Still
a few issues to work out.  Still, better!
 

Slowly but surely, I'm trying to get back to enthusiasm for baking.  I have some more stencils I want to use as well as quite a few new cookie cutters.  I need to start sketching out some ideas.  I'll keep you posted!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

I airbrushed pearl on the center starfish and used sugar pearls to accent.
The rest of the starfish were just piped dots and no pearl.
I think I like the pearl best...and I like the dots better than the sugar pearls.
Next time :-)

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Tropical Sugar Cookies - Warmth in Winter!

I started these cookies on the last day of February...it was 85 degrees outside and gorgeously sunny.  The joys of living at the tip of Texas in the Winter.  I felt compelled to make some sugar cookies in tropical shapes so I got busy baking.  I knew this would be a multi-day task...baking one day, base coats the next day, and details on the final day.  I finished up late Friday night amidst a most hectic Thursday and Friday with errands, school meetings lasting until 7:00 at night, an unexpected trip into "town" - 30 miles away - which took most of the day.  All-in-all, it was not what I planned, but still they turned out okay.  I used up all of my royal icing before I got some additional colors for further details I had planned...and some of it wasn't the right consistency...and a couple were sacrificed to the teen-ager (he gets the ones I mess up).  Then, I wake up Saturday morning and a windy "cold front" has blown in...it's 67 now instead of a lovely mid-70s.  However, I feel certain my Northern friends will not give me any sympathy as they are being coated in snow.  News of horrific tornadoes throughout the South and Midwest states also bring a pall to the days.  Still...for us, we are entering the period of time that brings a ton of visitors to the area...SPRING BREAK!  Some of the far Northerners began arriving Friday.  It was noticeable on the road and at the grocery store.  As Winter Texans began their trek home, college students begin their treks South, seeking warmth, sun, and the fun to be had on South Padre Island.  They will come in waves...small wave this week, a monster wave next week, dwindling waves the following two weeks and then it's over.

To celebrate the onset of Spring, despite the blustery winds, I have tropical cookies!  Using my favorite sugar cookie recipe and royal icing recipe, I'll share the progress in pictures below!  Enjoy :-)

Cookies are baked and decorating station ready to rock and roll.  I have said it before and I'll say it again.  Mis en place is important, even when decorating cookies!
Maybe ESPECIALLY when decorating cookies!

The dolphins were outlined, floated, and then happy smiles and eyes drawn with edible marker

The flowers were going to be much more detailed...but I got tired and ran out of icing...
so tired, I didn't have energy to make more.  Still, happy flowers.

Palm trees will be my next task to "make better".  The detail piping on the trumk was done with icing not thick enough to stand alone...and I had some running.  The palm leaf top layer was going to be much different than it ended up with.
My hands were cramping...these were the very last thing I did.  I'd just done all I could!

The turtles take the most steps.  I start with the green base for
the shell, then do the heads and flippers after the shell
is well-firmed up.  About 6 to 8 hours later, I do the shell detail.
The next day after all is very dried and can be handled
easily, I do the eyes and flipper detail with an edible marker.
I do love my sea turtles!

So, there we have it.  I was sad that the sea horse and star fish and lighthouse cookie cutters had not arrived in time for this batch...but I'll be attempting those when I next get the hankerin' to bake and decorate sugar cookies.  This seems to be the season...It starts with Christmas, segues into Valentine's Day (which I skipped this year in the cookie department) and then we have Spring Break and Easter.  After that, I probably won't do any for a while.  Maybe until 4th of July...and then, of course, I have a lot of humidity to deal with so...we'll see!

Thanks for reading along!  Hmmmm. wonder who I will share these cookies with today???  Maybe my friends at Island Wheelies and The Salty Seagull!  If you are Spring Breaking on the island, please stop by their venue in the Palmetto Shopping Center just north of the bridge by a few blocks!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!

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Dolphins Came For a Visit!

This has nothing to do with recipes or restaurants or food....however, it has everything to do with the special joys of living at the coast.  Two male adolescent dolphins visited our condominiums for about 24 hours.  There was a particularly low tide and they seemed to be temporarily land-locked.  They were entertainment for the residents all day long...I didn't see them this morning, so I assume their visit is over.  I took some pictures...and shot a bit of video...it's really hard to catch a dolphin with a digital camera as slow as mine...I always seemed to get a fin and not much more.  The video was slightly better and you could get the sense that they were biding time for a high tide so they could return to their family tribe.  If you've read my blog before - you know I'm a dolphin lover and the few peeks I get of them are always magical.  Imagine the joy of having them right in front of me for hours on end.  It was beyond description! 

I actually got a little sun burned because I wasn't prepared to be out there - I got the call, grabbed my camera, and headed down to the sea wall.  It was a gorgeous November day, the clouds reflected in the calm bay, you can see the grassy plain that is normally under water except at low, low tide.  Flip flops, tee shirt, and dolphins.  Gosh I love living here!

If you feel like seeing what I got to see, click on the link above.  I gotta say - it was one of my best coastal moments ever!

A special thanks to Dolphin Whisper, Scarlet Colley, and her husband, for coming over and letting us know they were adolescent boys (we'd thought the dolphins were a mom and juvenile - wrong!) and that they would be okay so long as they weren't stranded for more than a couple of days.  They had plenty of fish and a captive audience appreciating them - they surely didn't look distressed at all.  I would have loved for them to hang around - but it's not "dolphin safe" in a dock area.  Props are their enemy.  If you'd like to know more about Scarlet's passion, check out the South Padre Island Dolphin Research link.  If you are interested in more about Scarlet and George's excursions, check out this link.  They seem like really, really nice folks (and they have a cute "dolphin dog" too!).

Thanks Scarlet...and thanks dolphins for providing such a magical day!