FALL FLOWERS by Nina

It may be fall, but flowers are always one of my favorite designs. So I used an autumn color palette for these cookies.

Colored sugar in the centers.

Sprinkles in the centers.

I love experimenting with design and color variations.

You can see more about this project over at Nina's Show & Tell.

-Nina

JOT IT DOWN

Jill loved for school to start - not so much because she loved school but because she got to pick out new pencils and paper and notebooks and all the odds and ends kids used to need for school. This was before the advent of computers so I don't know what they need now!

When Jill was in 4th grade she set up a little store at her desk - "Jot it Down". She made a sign out of bond paper and sold bookmarks in the shape of a pencil made out of construction paper. I still have one and amazingly I knew where to find it! How fun to make it into a cookie I thought . . .

Cutting strips of dough was the easy part. I used a 1-inch wide c-thru ruler I keep in the kitchen just for baking and a board scraper. I love my board scraper! A knife will drag when cutting through dough but a downward motion with a board scraper is a much cleaner cut. It's perfect for cutting brownies and fudge. I wanted to use a cookie cutter to make the point on the pencil so I had my entire collection of cutters out. It had to be an inward angle to fit on the end of the strip of dough. I didn't want to just cut it with the board scraper because I wanted them all to be exactly the same! Yes - I'm obsessed!

My original gingerbread man cutter came to the rescue when I used his legs for the angle I needed for the end of the pencil.

Jill iced the pencil cookies and here they are - classic yellow pencils for school. I think those pink erasers look good enough to chew on!

Which came first the yellow school bus or the yellow #2 pencil?



But back to Jill's 4th grade class. The other kids decided to have stores at their desks too - and pretty soon it got out of control and their teacher had to shut them down so they could get back to school work.

Today Jill makes and paints colorful beads to sell at juried shows here in California. She also paints a variety of wooden objects and has a new store on Etsy featuring two of her wooden boxes. Soon she will sell beads there as well. I think maybe the designs on her beads would make good decorated cookies! -Momsu

AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHER

School has been in session for weeks in many parts of the country but here in California (Southern California anyhow) a lot of schools don't begin until after Labor Day.

Where did the traditional apple for the teacher originate? School starts about the time apple season does and so it makes sense but . . .

When I made my apple cookies I had a little trouble getting the stem and leaf out of the cookie cutter - as usual! I have used various things to poke them out in the past without much success. Today after cutting out at least a dozen apple-shaped cookies and struggling with the stem and leaf I tried flouring the whole inside of the cookie cutter not just the cutting edge. It worked perfectly - I tried it again and the next cookie stuck! I could cover the poke marks with icing but I like the look of some bare spots on cookies.

The cookies fit (tight squeeze) in a 4" cellophane bag. I like to put wrapped decorated cookies in a basket and put them out on the kitchen counter instead of on a plate or in a cookie jar.

When I discovered the cookie blogs I discovered Americolor! And thanks to their great product I was able to finally make a RED apple! I've made this apple many times but it has always been frosted as a pale green apple - Granny Smith. I LOVE Americolor! It tastes good (that is - it doesn't taste bad like some colors do) and it doesn't make a mess. I don't know how Royal Icing can have so much sugar in it and not be sticky? And aren't we all happy about that! 



I made ABCs too. My old set of red plastic Wilton cutters make such cute fat little shapes I decided not to decorate them. Our ginger cookie recipe is very good without icing. Looks like the tide is going out! -Momsu



  

OH NO!

. . . and then I panicked and took it off the blog. But not before the email went out so our loyal subscribers have the unfinished version and now they will be confused when another version appears. I am new at this and have a lot to learn! The finished version will be up soon. -Momsu

BACK TO SCHOOL by Nina

A perfect time to bring out the ABC Cookie Cutters!

I baked and glazed the alphabet and sent them to work with Art. His students and fellow teachers were very appreciative! Visit me at Nina's Show & Tell to see more on this project.

-Nina

WOULD YOU LIKE A CUP OF TEA?

Momsu and Nina got together one day in June to bake cookies - GINGER of course!

We made tea pots and tea cups from a new set of Wilton cutters that Nina had found. 

I had a a perspective problem with the top of the teacup and cut it down for the first cookie. And then decided to work with it - but I still didn't get it right. Nina went with the shape and it came out looking better - impressionistic! See the variations below.

And from the same set of cutters we made cupcakes for Auntie Moe's birthday. How old are you now Auntie Moe? I'll bet you won't tell! I like the way Nina left spaces between colors of icing - the look is called a "fatty" in illustration circles. 

It's always fun to see what inspired a project. In this case the colors were picked from the sprinkles we used for the cupcakes.

Look at the different combinations we came up with when we used these colors to frost the tea sets. 

We ran into a problem with the frosting on day two and then ran out of time so this is as far as we got. But more about the frosting problem in another post. -Momsu


Nina says: Great post, Momsu! I like the tumbling cups and pots. This was a fun project; I love decorating cookies with you. You can see my post over at Nina's Show & Tell.

HOORAY FOR THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE COOKIES by Nina

Red, white and blue heart cookies, for my friends Jennifer and Arthur who got married in early July.

You may recognize the icing colors from these SUMMER BIRTHDAY COOKIES I made. I was so happy with the color combination I had to use it again!

-Nina