St. Patrick's day cookies

I got a cute little Shamrock cookie cutter just before St. patty's day and had to try it out quickly soI wouldn' have to wait a year to use it. As it was, they weren't actually done till after St. Patty's day. Oh well. I have to say, while I've liked what I've done before, these might be my favorite so far (though, they compete with the cookies I made about a week later-those are coming soon). I liked making a group of similar cookies with a small color scheme-I think it gives  nice cohesive look the them :)

Cookies for J!

My MIL hired me to make some cookies to send to my husbands younger brother. I thought it was a great idea and a chance to find out how well cookies would ship.

I figured my previous selection of flowers and butterflies wasn't really appropiate for a young man, so i set about thinking of what I could do that he would enjoy. I decided I could send a variety of my tie-dye, swirly, marbled cookies in some manly colors (aka-not pink and purple).

After I came up with those, I wanted to come up with something else too. I started thinking about what my brother in law enjoyed and how I could incorporate something into a cookie. I thought about doing some soccer balls...and didn't feel like dealing with the whole multiple hexagons. He loves backpacking and camping, so I started thinking in that direction. I finally settled on a cookie depicting the Rocky Mountains since I know he loves spending time up in the mountains (on all those backpacking trips). I only found a couple of inspirations on the web, so I was more "on my own" than some of the other designs I've done.
Here's what I came up with...I like them, butd efinitely still want to brainstorm for how I can make them even better.

I took a picture of the cookies packaged that I sent to him before they got boxed up. The round ones actually have 2 cookies in each bag.

I wrote this a few days ago, but was waiting on to find out from my Brother-in-law what condition they arrived in. I was happy to find out they shipped great! None of them ended up broken, smooshed or hurt in anyway! Yay!

I also packaged a few of the other pretty ones you've been seeing in the past posts and shipped a few out to my super sweet step sister-in-law who's going through a lot lately. I was happy to hear she enjoyed getting them and that those also arrived in great condition! 

Island Paradise cookie

At the end of a long cookie day, I had one cookie left. I just finished "painting" some trees on another cookie and had an idea.

Here's the result-

Thank you!

my hubby and I had a thank you package that had been ready to mail for some time (sitting in our living room of course-does that happen to anyone else?). However, I'm glad we procrastinated waited on mailing it, because it meant that I was able to make some cute little thank you cookies to send along with it! They were fun to make. They are just small 1 1/2 in. sized circles (at least I think, I haven't actually measured that cookie cutter). I have that small cookie cutter and a number of small squares also-sometime I want to just make a ton of tiny bite sized cookies :)

hats and flowers

I know, those two things don't quite go together. However, I only did a few of each and so it made sense to just put them together. A friend of mine mentioned throwing a Kentucky Derby Party sometime. I have no idea if she will actually do it, but when I saw the cute hat cookie cutter in a bake shop, I had to get it and try out some fun hats. Some other day, I'll have to really give it a go. I didn't quite have the energy or the right colors to do much with these.

In the midst of my cookie making, I did some more flowers as well.

I thought they looked prettier with the butterflies added in :)

butterfly cookies!

I ordered some new fun butterfly cookie cutters after deciding the one I had was a bit boring. Don't these just look fun?

In the same order, I also got the kitchenaid beaterblade that has the spatula-like edges so that it scrapes the sides of the bowl and the bottom as it beats. I love it! I spent so much less time scraping the bowl. It formed a lip of dough/icing above where the blade hits the bowl that I would have to scrape off, but that I could basically do while it was going. I think I'm going to end up being quite grateful that I made the decision to get it.

Alright, here are the butterfly cookies I made with my fun new cookie cutters.

The blue one in the upper left corner was inspired by AliBee's blue butterfly cookie that you can see here. My Green icing wasn't at the right consistency and I can totally tell. Seriously, getting the right consistency is really important and not easy.

More Sugar Cookies!

I have more sugar cookies to share! I made more last week and tried a number of different ideas, so I have quite a few pics to show :) I'm going to split them up into separate posts though to make it easier...so if you like what you see, make sure to come back every couple days for more pics.

My first (and quite possibly my favorites from this batch)- cherry blossoms! These reminded me of the time I went to Washington D.C. right during cherry blossom season. It was sooo beautiful!

 I tried a couple different methods of doing the cherry blossoms. What you see above is definitely my favorite. This next picture, you can see on the 2 bottom ones where I tried the wet on wet technique. I didn't like it nearly as much. (it also didn't help that my icing wasn't the right consistency-which makes all the difference in the world when working with royal icing.

Royal Icing Sugar Cookies!

Earlier last week, I stumbled upon a blog called Sweetopia and was in heaven. I spent waaay too much time browsing it only to end up later on another amazing blog called bake at 350 for waaaay too long also. What are these blogs about? cookie decorating! I was so inspired I had to make some of these cookies.
Here's my first try at these- The designs are somewhat sporadic since I wanted to try out a bunch of different ones.

petit fail...oh wait...petit fours

ok, truthfully, these weren't actually fail, but I REALLY thought they were going to be for a while while making them. For a few reasons, they turned out less like true petit fours What made mine different?

no marzipan layer-couldn't find the stuff to make it or buy it pre-made
buttercream filling instead of a jelly-my personal choice, cause it sounded yummier
a box cake mix instead of the true sponge mix i should have used-all the blog describing this recipe has tons of comments about how difficult these were, so I figured I'd make at least one step easier on myself.

What ARE they? Basically, tiny 2 layer cakes with a buttercream filling covered in a chocolate ganache coating. The flowers on top were made from royal icing.

I adore tiny desserts-not that I've made many, I just always gravitate towards the pictures. After all, who doesn't like a bite size dessert that they can just pop in their mouth when they want something sweet?

Well, these made me almost give up-mostly cause it was a process that went better over a few days-however, those few days gave me time to lose steam and motivation. I brought some to a friend after I made them and as a fellow person who enjoys baking, she asked if I would do them again (best question to ask ever!) I told her they weren't worth it and I probably wouldn't make them again. However, I think I've changed my mind. Why? 1) They tasted REALLY good. 2) My husband really seemed to enjoy them. and 3) I think I've come up with a few methods/tools to make it a bit easier.

In case you didn't know, baking is generally a bit of messy endeavour.  Considering I'm pretty good at getting messy all on my own, me + baking = disastrously messy

These are definitely at the top of the messiest things I've ever made-they even beat out cake pops. In case you don't believe me, here's the proof...