The Valentine Cookie Parade 2015!

Well, it's time!  I finally finished all the cookies I'm gonna finish.  I always end up with unfinished cookies, because I run out of time...once again, that is the case!  Oh well.  I don't care, I just do what I can do.  I'm sure Mr. Flip Flop will eat the "nekkid" ones!

I have been cleaning piping tips, couplers, ties, and all the "stuff" I use...refiling stencils, replacing everything in my cookie armoire where it belongs.  The clutter overtakes my dining area for about 10 days while I bake and decorate in waves before a holiday.

Whew, glad to be done with it for a few days.

Next I start on the donation for the KOA Care Camp auction.  That gives me a week-end reprieve.  Then I'm back to mixing, rolling, cutting, baking, cooling, icing, drying, decorating, drying, and decorating some more!  I only do it because I love to do it.  It's my favorite hobby.  I still get asked "how can I order your cookies" and I have to keep saying "I don't sell my cookies".  I like the freedom to create what I want to create and not what people want me to create.  The few times I've done it, I was a stressed out mess.  Maybe some day - but I'd really rather teach someone to do it themselves than to take orders and pump out cookies looking the same, one after another.  Not my thing!

I had fun stretching my wings this Valentine's with some new cookie cutters.  I bought a few from Whisked Away Cutters (on Etsy) and used the tiny owl cutter to make an owl like Sweet Sugarbelle demonstrated on her web site.  They were one of my favorites this year.

Also had fun with the "wedding bouquet" cookie cutter using the tiny piped roses I learned from my SweetAmbs Craftsy Sweet Elegance class.  They turned out cute I thought.

My friend, Jessica, took the photo below of one of the bouquets - she's an awesome photographer and I really enjoyed her visiting a cookie decorating day at my condo.  All of the ones that I could not take or wouldn't have thought to take (me working on the owls, the piping bags on the table, etc.) were taken by Jessica and you can see them in the Food Photography gallery at Just Us Photography.

I also acquired this cuteeee tiny cupcake cutter which I know I will use repeatedly for upcoming birthdays and other celebratory events.  They are so sweet.

I used a lot of new and not-so-new stencils on a variety of cookies.  I enjoy stencil work quite a bit.  I am getting more tools to help steady things during the process (which you can read about here). The lips and the guitar necks were new to me and I liked their addition to this "musical set".  My granddaughter is in choir (upper left went to her), my middle son has given me a lot of Mary Chapin Carpenter music over the years, so he got the upper right (I'm sure he won't think that's too weird - he'll "get" the connection)  The Love Me Do nod to The Beatles went to my youngest Beatles fan...he texted me that it was "cheeky, Mom".  Fun to do, one and all. Love baking for my family above all others!

I have worked for over two years trying to free hand scroll work without a template or looking at a picture.  I finally just sat down and did this heart on the left below - and the light wasn't even on!  Maybe I just needed to forget the fear of messing up and just go for it.  Turned out pretty well - and I was happy about having one I didn't cringe from.  I love the look of scroll work on cookies - looks elegant.  Another skill learned from Amber Spiegel of SweetAmbs.  She makes it look effortless.

I'm giggling over my ASL "I Love You" cookies - they looked a little funky to me, but I've not figured out just the right way to make them look right.  I've done three sets of these in the past and none were worth photographing.  I'll keep working on it and WILL get it right eventually!

These last three photos were using the chocolate cookie dough from LilaLoa's recipe and a slightly altered recipe of my cream cheese meringue powder icing to top them.  Crusted much better and tasted pretty darn good.

Rolled and cut large hearts and cut out the center with a
smaller heart - which I simply iced below.

Photo by Jessica
I enjoyed quilting on this cookie on the right.
On the first one I didn't measure the lines.  Awful.
This one I used a ruler and an edible
marker and it was just right.

Another technique I worked on this year was making a
ruffled lace edge on some of the hearts using brush
embroidery.  More techniques learned from the
tutorials from Montreal Confections, McGooU, and
 many other cookie artists.  It sounds easy...but I had to
find just the right brush to make it work right.

Well, that's the end of the cookies I (or Jessica) photographed.  I baked 90, ate a couple, and decorated about 70 cookies.  I know my sons' and my granddaughters' cookies arrived at their destination unscathed.  I have a few local friends to deliver to and then I'm finished with the Valentine decorating extravaganza.  Mr. Flip Flop ended up on-call on the 14th, so we will be celebrating on Friday the 13th.  Hope it's a good luck day for us!

May every day be filled with love - whether it is love for your best friend, your beloved, your family, your pet, the beautiful outdoors, the beach, the mountains...whatever rings your chimes.  Let it fill your heart on the holiday of love.


Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

Is Blood Spatter Too Much? The CSI Cookie Project

I'm so excited to be participating in the 2015 version of Mystery Week at Paragraph's on South Padre Island.  This year they hosted book signings during the week and are culminating with a Meet the Mystery Authors discussion on Saturday from 1-4 p.m.

The grand finale of the day is a special event from 4-6:30.  We will be conducting an Investigation into Murder at the Crime Scene Investigators Convention... sort of a take-off on a mystery dinner.  Tickets have been on sale since the 14th and I imagine they are sold out...but you can call and check if you want to know.  Meeting our great mystery authors Pat McGrath Avery, Bob Doerr, Joyce Faulkner, and David Harry (Tannenbaum) is worth your time spent, whether you make it to the Murder Mystery or not.  They always make for an interesting discussion group!  I love it when they are all on the island together - something exciting always seems to happen!

I, of course, always need to bake cookies.  Griff and I talked and he suggested "CSI - type cookies".  Uh, OK, I can do that!

Admittedly, I had a load of fun stretching my wings a bit with this set of cookies.  I hand cut my own stencil so I could use their little "man with a magnifying glass" from the event flyer, I learned to make fingerprints on cookies, I used the white tissue paper transfer method I learned from various tutorials online, and I made blood splatter by flicking liquefied red petal dust off of a paintbrush onto base coated cookies (kind of creepy).

To begin with - the stencil making is not that easy by hand.  I bought stuff to do just that a couple of years ago and they just sat in my cookie supply closet staring at me.  It was so easy to order stencils on-line, once I found the vendors, that I really never had cause to consider such a thing as "DIY stencils" after that!  Self-healing cutting mat and a supply of sharp X-acto knives got me through the project.

All would have worked out better had I used my airbrush instead of being lazy and using canned spray.  I had a lot of under-spray as I couldn't "dial down" the pressure.  Lesson learned.

The fingerprints...I tried several different "ways" of doing it...the best results were yielded by coating my thumb/fore finger with corn syrup then dabbing it down to just a little stickiness.  Applied the finger in a rolling motion  (just like they used to do it at the DMV) to thoroughly dried royal icing and let it sit for a few minutes.  Using a dry paint brush and dry dark silver luster dust, I basically copied what you see on the CSI shows.  I lightly brushed the powder across the "prints". and viola!  Well, a bit shiny, but silver was all I had.  Not going on an expedition in search of black petal dust!

The DNA helix was easy, using white tissue paper over a printed picture.  I traced the outline with a food color pen and then placed it on the, again thoroughly dried royal icing, and re-traced with the food color pen.  It bled through, leaving lines for me to follow, and I just piped blue icing on top of the lines with a 1.5 PME tip.  Then, with a size 1 PME tip, I piped the little lines free-hand while looking a the picture.  I reallly liked how they turned out.

I had not used my food markers a great deal, but I must say I am very fond of the FooDoodler brand.  Good color and nice tips.  I used Wilton and AmeriColor brands as well...but, the FooDoodler reigned supreme.  Granted, I hear great things about the Rainbow Dust pens.  I ordered a black one to try out - but it is enroute from the U.K. so it will be a while before I get to try it out.

All in all, I had fun with this project.  Hopefully, the blood spatter, fingerprints, and EKG going flatline won't gross anyone out too badly.  (Mr. Flip Flop is a nurse and I made him explain how an EKG might look...although he said I didn't have enough room... I got the baseline, with Ps and Ts with the qRs in the middle, then V-tach, then flat line demonstrated.  More than I ever want to know - and still not likely all that accurate).

Hopefully, despite all the visual ick on top, the cookies will taste good.  I used my Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookie with minimal leavening so they'd be flat for the stencil and I used LilaLoa's Chocolate Cookie recipe.  I sampled one of each - they tasted quite delicious!

I really want to eat this one... kind of an all-in-one CSI cookie!

Black and White - mystery noir!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

CookieCon 2014 Sugar Art Show Entries

I don't have time to write all about CookieCon (but I will do that later).  I am just home yesterday afternoon and have much catching up to do and about 400 photos to look at.

However, I did want to go ahead and post photos of the two cookies I entered in the Sugar Art Show.  I worked hard on them and I'm kind of proud of how far I've come in the last couple of years.  Sadly, after sitting in the extremely dry air for 3 days in Salt Lake City, my first cookie cracked and crumbled when I picked it up to bring it home.  They both ended up in the trash because I knew they couldn't be eaten and so pffft...off they went into the garbage.

Glad I photographed them.  Not a winner - but that is absolutely okay.  You should see the cookies that won!  I'll try to get together some of the photos I took of cookies before long.  However, I must get back to real life and that means I have to step away from the blog while I do that!

Here are the two entries!

Entry for "Home Sweet Home" Category
Stylistic representation of the beautiful beach and ocean,
sand castles, and our beloved Sea Turtle, Inc. hatchling releases.

Entry in the "Anything Goes" Category
I had never tried an ombre anything, so I tried the
technique with a flower.  I added two separate
leaf cookies as accents, and embellished them
with piped veins, edible marker veins and dry-brushed
lustre dust.  I painted the accent dots on the flower
with lustre dust dissolved in vodka. The hundreds of
individually piped beads on the flowers was very labor
intensive.  I may never do that again, but I can now say
"I did it"!
 

All cookies were made with my favorite Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookie dough, rolled 3/8" thick, and decorated with vanilla royal icing.  If they hadn't sat around un-covered for 10 days, they would likely have tasted quite yummy!

Thanks for joining me today...more on CookieCon coming up as soon as my life settles down.

Bon Appetit, Y'all!

Birthday Cookies for Audrey

A 3-D cookie on top. 
The #8 cookie was baked and iced separately
then "glued on the round plaque with royal icing.

I was so tied up with Thanksgiving and the things afterwards, that I just realized I didn't blog about my granddaughter, Audrey, and her 8th birthday.  I did it for her sister's birthday, but not hers...and if you are a Grammy, you know that is not going to be okay!  So, better a few days late than not at all.

She had a grand birthday party at Jumpolene in South Austin - tons of family and a few friends.  She definitely had fun.  As usual, I made cookies.  I asked for her current favorite color...which was purple...no surprise there.  It's also been made clear that the grandkids prefer Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies instead of anything with spice in it.  So, she had a box of purple iced sugar cookies from Grandma.  Here are a few photos of the end result.  Now, her Dad can show her that she got a post showing off her birthday cookies...just like sister did!

Royal icing transfer roses surrounding a
stenciled "A" for Audrey, and a stencil
for the base layer of this large cookie
shaped and decorated like a very fancy
birthday cake.

Unfortunately, I left my good camera at the hotel.  I had only a cell phone which does not capture movement well AT ALL.  Since the primary activity was jumping on trampolines...I have about 40 photos of blurry little and big people playing and jumping.  Oh well.  At least I have one fairly decent one of her blowing out her candles.

Happy Birthday Audrey!  You are sooooo loved!!!!

A big 6 1/2 inch plaque cookie with double layered stencil
and royal icing roses made for a pretty display.
I'm so happy to have a new Happy Birthday
stencil from DesignerStencils.com.  The background
of the cookie was made with a full-page stencil.
I mostly have 5x5 stencils which don't work
for big cookies like this.  I may have to invest
in more stencils!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

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!!!

Halloween Cookies

This year's cookies were a bit of trial and error in trying to do something "different".  I've seen so many cute candy corn cookies floating around the cookie world that I knew I wanted to do something with that cutter (I've had for a while and never used).  I ended up trying to stencil on them with some cute little round stencils from Designer Stencils.  The error part was trying to stencil on a cookie that was not perfectly flat.  The three color layers resulted in a "bump" and that caused some bleed under the stencil.  One of the things I've learned over the past couple of months is that a set of artist palette knives/spatulas are my favorite tool for spreading the royal icing over stencils when working on small cookies/small stencils.  They are just perfect!  I got mine at Michael's in the artist supply section.  They were reasonable in price and really a great addition to my cookie tool kit!

Even with the under-bleed, the cookies turned out very cute IMHO!  I added a dot of green for a witch eye, marbled in some yellow and orange on the cauldron flames and added some yellow dots as "bubbles".  Gave the cookies some character.

The set I made with ghosts, bats, and spider webs turned out quite well.  The stencil on one ghost was also from the set described above accented with an orange moon.  I made spider bodies as RI transfers and then piped on the legs when I applied them.  If you don't know how to make a royal icing transfer, here is a link to Haniela's YouTube video where she shows one way to make these spiders (mine were a bit different - but she shows you very easily how to make some for yourself!)Easy to do and gave the cookies a little bit of 3-D pop.  Bats this year were kept simple.  Last year's bats were a bit too much black RI for my taste.  These are smaller and just have spooky orange eyes.  I think the grandkids are going to love them!

The final set of cookies were edible wafer papers on rectangle-shaped Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies.  The cutter was not perfectly "plumb" so some of the rectangles were a little wonky...but they still worked out fairly well.  I bought these cute Vintage Halloween Wafer Papers from an Etsy seller, The Cookie Pixie.  She does great work and has blog posts to help you learn how to apply wafer papers.  I did a blog post on my first experience with this back in July.  I admit I'm not wild about the wafer paper texture...they do melt on contact with water and dissolve in the mouth somewhat quickly.  Still, just not wild about it personally.  It is, however, one of the few ways of applying that level of detail on a cookie without being an artist of the highest caliber!  So, it suits me just fine.  Again, the grandkids are not bothered by the wafer papers and I bet they like these cookies a lot!

I hope you step outside the box this year and try some variations on your usual theme with your 2013 Halloween cookies.  I sure enjoyed doing some different designs and bet you will too!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

King Bob's Birthday 2013

I was so happy to be invited to the 2nd Annual King Bob's Birthday party on the beach!  Bob's wife, Sally, puts on a great party...which included beach-front umbrellas and lounge chairs in front of Wanna-Wanna, ice chests filled with icy libations, yummy snack trays. Sand Castle Queen of the Island, Sandy Feet, her very entertaining "sand slaves", and a bunch of interesting people to talk to!  I really enjoy meeting new friends.  I also love talking to people who have moved to the area and find out where they come from.  There's always a story...I just love hearing the tales!

I enjoyed using some of my stencils on the minis!  These
came from Designer Stencils

My offering was a set of cookies made for King Bob (Bob's 71st birthday and his 1st anniversary of retirement makes him King of the Day!).  The cookie set included a large layered cake-shaped cookie, some crowns for the king, and a few minis to fill in the set.  He was kind enough to share the cookies and it seems the Acorn Squash Sugar Cookies were a success.  Even my trial with a new royal icing recipe seemed to work out okay (I didn't have time to taste a dry cookie before leaving for the beach so I wasn't sure how taste and texture would be after drying...risky on my part but...whew...it apparently worked).  Nothing makes me more happy than people enjoying my treats!

These were drying to the very last minute!

Photo by Sally Scaman
I was having a big hair humidity day...the
curls were blowing wildly as Sally snapped
a photo of me and Bob and the box of cookies

While a lot of the United States is enjoying Fall weather, folks on South Padre Island are enjoying one of our favorite times of year.  The beautiful days of September and October are PERFECT beach weather.  So, it being a perfect day on the beach, I'll just end the post with a slew of photos featuring Sandy Feet, Dennis,and Ken working hard (did you know, it's important to place your beer higher than the sandcastle...else you fill your can with sand???) Enjoy!

This stuff is hard work!

Things are shaping up as the creative genius kicks in!

Hot work when you are working on the side where there is no wind!

Sandy Feet carving the King's Sculpture

Dennis (L) and Ken (R) carving supporting castles on each side
of the King Bob sculpture 
(yep, they are a lot more than just sand slaves - 
they are talented sculptors themselves).  
This is the status when I had to leave.


Following Photos from Sally Scaman

The King and his Pampered Princess
The Sand Sculptors (behind)

Bob and Sally...beach royalty.  Great party and Fabulous Sand Sculpture!

Bon Appetit, Y'all...and May Your Day be Filled with Sunshine!!!