FALL TREES

When I saw Nina's fall leaves I was inspired to make trees. I got the icing too thick and had trouble flooding - more than one cookie was scraped off and iced again. The yellow icing was thinner and the orange dots sunk right in - I like the look of more three-dimensional dots on the other two trees better.

I have a lot of cookie cutters but I don't have a tree - except of course for a Christmas tree and I have several of those.

Inspired by Sugarbelle (this link is to just one of her posts on combining cutters) I put a few cookie cutters together - a flower and for the trunk a snowman's hat up-side-down.

This tree is an up-side-down Christmas ornament. I never did make a cookie ornament that I liked - but for a tree it's perfect.

And this tree is a heart with the point rounded and the snowman's hat again - both up-side-down.

 I had icing left over from some "bare" trees (next post) and tried a brown tree. It was disturbing since it LOOKED like chocolate but didn't TASTE like chocolate - even more disturbing when I ate it! Brown or chocolate icing on a sugar cookie would work but chocolate icing on a ginger cookie doesn't sound good to me!

- posted by Momsu

AN ORANGE TREE

Just before Thanksgiving the navel oranges come into the markets here in Southern California - quite sour at first but sweetening as the year goes by. I grew up in Redlands which was the center of the navel orange growing industry in the 1940s and beyond. I like to say I grew up in an orange grove but that wasn't quite the case. There were orange groves all around where we lived in the old part of the city however - with houses in amongst them. Now many of the groves have been pulled out and replaced with houses. As a child I spent many hours exploring the groves with my friends - in the days when your parents didn't have to worry where you were for hours at a time.

I was making cookies in the shape of fall trees by adding a "trunk" to a flower cookie and in the process made an orange tree.

- posted by Momsu

AUTUMN LEAVES by Nina

A couple of years ago I told Momsu that I'd like some leaf cookie cutters. In our family we take gift hints very seriously! Sure enough, I was soon in possession of these three great leaf shapes.

Maple

Oak

I wasn't sure if I liked this shape until I made it into a cookie and I do! It just goes to show you that if you're on the fence about a cookie cutter, try it out and you may love it.

Sycamore

I love the irregular edge on this one.

I recently bought this one for myself at a local cake/cookie decorating shop.

These little ones are from a set I've had for a long time. I use them at Thanksgiving to make "crusties" out of leftover pie dough sprinkled with sugar to serve with the pie. They make great little ginger cookies!

They make a nice pattern, too. (Inspiration for surface pattern design is everywhere!)

I'm really happy with the colors, and I had fun with the piping, too.

-Nina