Saturday, December 21, 2013

LIGHT BULBS, PACKAGES AND SNOWFLAKES

I love Nina's Christmas cookies this year! Her colors are wonderful - red and green of course, add white and blue and then add yellow and pink? It works! 


Old fashioned big colored lights are back.  


Bright colored packages tied up with string. These are a few of my favorite things. And this is my favorite cookie! Nina added half of a flower cookie to a square and here it is - very cute! 


Circular snowflakes round out the trio - cool in icy blue and white.  


YUM - these look good enough to eat! Will you bring us some Nina?

- posted by Momsu

Sunday, December 15, 2013

MERRY CHRISTMAS COOKIES by Nina

Out of the archives come some Christmas cookies never posted. 

Snowmen Cookies at The Ginger Cookie
Ginger Snowmen

Candy Cane Cookies at The Ginger Cookie
Sugar Candy Canes

Christmas Tree Cookies at The Ginger Cookie
Chocolate Trees

Santa Cookie at The Ginger Cookie
 Sugar Santa Claus

Merry Christmas from The Ginger Cookie!

Sunday, December 8, 2013

DOGS at WOODS


Jill volunteers for Woods Humane Society in San Luis Obispo on the Central Coast of California. December 7 was their Open House. Jill makes dog cookies for the event every year. Real live dogs dress up and come with their people to have their pictures taken with Santa. 



Black Horse Espresso and Bakery provides more delectable treats baked by pastry chef Matthew Mimmack and a good time is had by all. 

- posted by Momsu


Tuesday, November 12, 2013

DON'T SIT UNDER THE APPLE TREE WITH ANYONE ELSE BUT ME




I created this apple tree before I had a blog. Inspired by Sugarbelle (who does a wonderful job of combining cookie cutters and making cookie cutters into entirely different things) I pieced two cutters together and created a fat little tree. If you look closely you will see a big scalloped cookie cutter and a small square one. I love the shape it created.

The cookies came out well but I tried a different ginger cookie recipe and was very disappointed with the flavor. It wasn't as good as our recipe and I threw the cookies out - didn't waste my time decorating them. Nothing ventured . . .




To figure out this tree I scanned the cookie cutters and removed the background in PhotoShop. Then I pieced the two outlines together and filled them with gingerbread color.



I planned to decorate them like this - I used MSDraw to draw on the scanned cookie to make a green tree with red apples. I do this with anything I want to experiment with - to see what it will look like. It's fun! 


Smaller trees are easier to make! 

Wilton Metal Cookie Cutter 3' Red/Apple

Last year I posted AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHER so I wanted a different apple cookie cutter and found this smaller one from Wilton - available on Amazon for $4.32 (yikes!) or from JOANN online for 99 cents. I ordered it from JOANN along with a few other things to defer the cost - and I had a coupon!

I've finally learned to put lots of flour in tight spots in cookie cutters (like the stem and leaf) so they will come out of the cutter without breaking off. 



Enjoy apple season! 

- posted by Momsu

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

TRICK OR TREAT

It isn't Halloween without some sort of pumpkin cookie! This year when I was running out of orange icing from a lot of pumpkins and HOPED I wouldn't run out of the icing before I iced one last one, I tried something new. I drew a face on a cookie with edible pen and colored in the features with the pen.Then I piped around the features and filled in the pumpkin with flood icing. Very simple and easy - and I didn't run out of icing!  



Someday I'll do a post about this guy - he was going to be decorated as a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) cookie but this is as far as I got this year. I used the same technique as on the pumpkin above but this time I used a template to trace the face on a lot of cookies with a food marker. Then I filled in the features using a small paint brush and food color thinned with vodka and iced around them. I thought it worked very well! He and his friends are resting in peace in the freezer until they are decorated in the future.


Not very scary but plenty nostalgic. The cutter for this little ghost cookie came from Hallmark (I think) at least 40 years ago when I was making costumes for my little children and life was hectic and wonderfully fun! I made dozens of these to go to school parties every year, glazed (we didn't know about Royal Icing yet) and with currents for eyes. 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 

- posted by Momsu 


Sunday, September 29, 2013

AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE



Fall is apple time - available in markets all year long they are never better than fresh off the tree. My family's favorite pie is apple - YUM! Apples come in all different colors and are a good shape for a cookie too!

A shiny red apple is best of all!



I looked up familiar apple sayings - they're fun:

* You are the apple of my eye.
* An apple for the teacher.
* Don't upset the apple cart.
* An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
* As American as apple pie.
* An apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
* Applesauce!
* How do you like them apples?
* The Big Apple
* Rotten to the core.
* Apple polisher.
* Don't let one rotten apple spoil the whole barrel.
* You're a good apple.
* Apple pie, motherhood, and the American flag.


-posted by Momsu

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

GO FISH



In May I got a little over ambitious and made way too many cookies! I made butterflies, flowers, snails and fish - and except for a few butterflies most of them ended up in the freezer

I had forgotten about everything except the fish and so when I got them out to decorate there were only a dozen fish and lots and LOTS of snails, flowers and butterflies which I was NOT in the mood to play with! More about them in a later post . . .  



The fish were fun. I made eyes on wax paper first - dozens of fish eyes. I tried using an edible marker for the black dot but it didn't give as perfect a shape as icing did - not too thick or it will form a point. On some I took the point off by lightly pressing down on the top with a small spatula while the dot was still fresh. By making your own eyes and not putting the dot in the middle you can give whatever you are using them on expression.





This little fish had a bad eye which I pried off after it had dried. Royal icing makes very good glue - it was really STUCK on there! To salvage the cookie I put a big blob of icing over the hole that was left and pressed the new eye down. I wish I had thought to do this earlier! I like the way it looks.

Visit Nina's Cookie Shop to see her wonderful Christmas fish near the bottom of her Christmas Cookie post.  

- posted by Momsu




Thursday, July 4, 2013

SUMMERTIME AND THE LIVIN' IS EASY

When Nina came to see us in late June we made cookies - again. Ginger cookies! Last June we used a Tea Party theme. Is "twice" a tradition? This year our theme was Summertime - so many possibilities! We limited our selection to four cookie cutters and four icing colors plus white and dark brown for piping.




Nina made beach balls and happy suns. My sun (at the top of this post) wore sunglasses.



It was hot and humid - unusual for so early in the summer! 



I made sailboats. Have you ever seen polka dot sails?



. . . and we collaborated on an ice cream cone.




Here's what the littlest member of the family and future cookie decorator made - at just 3 she knows what she's doing!


It's much more fun to do it together - thank you for coming to see us and decorating cookies with me, Nina. Visit Nina's Cookie Shop to see more of her great cookies.

- posted by Momsu

Friday, June 7, 2013

WHITE BUTTERFLIES

When Jill went home after we decorated butterflies on Mother's Day I still had cookies to decorate and no time to do it. I tossed out all of the colored icing we had used to make butterflies but still had some uncolored (white) icing in the refrigerator. I think I was grumbling about mixing up colors when Jill suggested I make white butterflies and I decided that was a very good idea. Mixing the colors and getting the consistency right to ice cookies is not my favorite part. Jill wanted me to make butterflies that look like the white-on-white ginger snowflakes I make every Christmas. Those are easy and very pretty I think.

I tried decorating the big fancy butterfly we hadn't attempted and although I think it has the potential for being truly beautiful I can't control the piping on a cookie that big. I'd better stick to smaller ones. I like the way the shape of the wings on this smaller one turned out.



I think white butterfly cookies would be a pretty favor for a June wedding!

- posted by Momsu

Monday, May 27, 2013

HAPPY FACE FLOWER COOKIES


 Nina made such cute cookies for me for Mother's Day!

 They reminded me of the Ricky Ticky Stickies of the 60s.

We used big pink and orange ones to decorate Nina and Jill's room when they were little.

The cookies are rolled oatmeal so they are a little ragged around the egdes. (It's not a bad PhotoShop job!) They are very good! I love oatmeal cookies! 


There was a whole tray of them - all packaged up so they wouldn't break and shipped to me in San Diego. Thank you, Nina!

PS - Visit Nina's Cookie Shop on line.

- posted by Momsu

Sunday, May 19, 2013

MORE BUTTERFLIES

Jill came for Mother's Day weekend and we decorated butterfly cookies. It's MUCH more fun to do it together. She brought a beautiful big copper butterfly cutter and I made ginger and sugar cookies with it and my big Nut Tree butterfly cutter - determined to do a better job with a large cookie this time but didn't get that far.


I also made smaller butterflies with my simple Wilton cutter

and a new swallowtail cutter that quickly became our favorite. Jill put dots on the tails - I like that.


The bigger cookies are still sitting there getting stale a week later. 

What I learned: Make the butterfly body first - it's hard to fit a body between two wings which sometimes end up too far apart. And - it's hard to decorate cookies when it's very hot and dry. 

- posted by Momsu

Nina says: These are so pretty! I wish I had been there to decorate with you. I love the new swallowtail cookie cutter!