Cookie Redeux

As you can see, my experiment is not going very well. And this isn't even the worst example. I ate that one! The individual tube of gel frosting that I had purchased and used on the first cookie left me with a big blob of green icing in the center of the cookie. Digging through my cabinets I came up with a four pack of gel tubes. On this cookie I tried using the green out of this package. Even when pressing hard onto the cookie I was not getting the full logo design. I read some more on the Internet about this process, and subsequently learned that you should not use rubber stamps on food products. Apparently something leaches out of the rubber. Great!

For my last shot at this endeavor I mixed the gel with regular food coloring to thin it down a bit. Then I took a cue tip and spread the icing on the stamp. You can see that I got a little better results with this method. Jim said that people would get the general idea. Well, the general idea is not good enough. Why bother if you can't get a nice, clean image?

This is the back of the stamp, showing what the design should look like. Hey, maybe I should turn it over and use this side instead! Nah - I think my stamp is destined to be used on stationery in the future.

Designer Cookies

In December I went to a cookie decorating demonstration at Puddn'head Books. As you might guess, the author was on a tour promoting her new cookie decorating book. It was fun to watch her make such fabulously decorated cookies, but as I looked at all the supplies she had I had a flash back to my scrap-booking days. Having attended several scrap-booking parties, I came home with all kinds of tools, papers, stamps - you name it. I did make some really great scrapbooks with the materials, but when I discovered shutterfly.com and realized I could have beautiful photo books in a fraction of the time and expense, I put my scrap-booking items away in a drawer. Somehow I could see cookie decorating going the same route.

But one idea did intrigue me. She took a sugar cookie that she had pre-frosted with royal icing and stamped it using a rubber stamp. You purchase a non-inked stamp pad and ink it up with gel icing. Then you dip in your stamp and you have a cute design on the cookie. You can then proceed to add decorations to the cookie if you want. For example, she had a little ice skater stamp and she just added a colored ball to the stocking cap and put a simple border around the perimeter of the cookie. Anyway, it got me thinking about how fun it would be to make cookies like that for SWT Design. So I sent off their logo to a rubber stamp making company, and I got it last month. I also picked up a non-inked stamp pad.

Today I decided to give this a whirl. At this point I am not concerned about the taste of the cookie or the look of the royal icing on the top of the cookie. I am more worried about how the logo is going to turn out because it has a lot of detail on it. So I just used a boxed cookie mix for my first go at this, and I prepared a small amount of royal icing. The icing was really no problem to make, surprisingly. It is recommended that you outline the cookie with a line of thicker royal icing to prevent the thinner version from running off the side of the cookie. But as I said, I am not concerned about that just yet. So my cookies are baked and I have put on the royal icing. The icing should ideally sit overnight to enable it to get hard. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see how the stamping goes.

Kim's Cupcakes?

Tonight my niece and I took a cupcake decorating class at the Webster Groves Recreation Center. There were 10 of us in the room, which was about 4 too many for the space. It was crowded and hard to pass the decorating materials around. Added to that was the Zumba class going on in the next room, and that made it hard to hear.

The instructor did her best with the conditions she faced. She had prepared chocolate, vanilla, and spice cupcakes ahead of time. Then she made vanilla, chocolate and caramel frostings as well as several frostings with a more substantive base for making colored additions to our cupcakes. And lastly we worked with fondant, dying it and shaping it into roses.

As I looked at all the tools of the trade she had brought along for us to try, I realized that this would be a fairly expensive hobby to get into. It kind of reminded me of scrapbooking and all the stuff I have in drawers upstairs. And I could also see that cupcake decorating takes a lot of practice if you want to do it well. So I think that this is not something I will jump right into. DC Cupcakes has nothing to worry about. It was fun to be out with my niece for a couple of hours though. We rarely get to do that without either my sister or my great-nieces being along.

Deck the Halls - Not!

I'm becoming something of a Scrooge. I really don't want to get a Christmas tree this year, and I am not at all interested in decorating the house. I have the big wreath on the front of the house and the Christmas flag in the pole, but that is it. This is the year that we travel to Iowa for Christmas. Every other year we alternate staying home versus going to Jim's hometown. The years we go to Iowa coincide with Andy and Megan going to Indiana, which works out well since I have no idea how we would ever get them to Charles City. But the down side is that they never get to see the grandparents, and that is just sad.

At any rate, it just seems like such a waste to go to all the effort of the decorations when we won't even be here to enjoy them. I think we may compromise and just buy a small tree this year. Or we are toying with just purchasing a small artificial tree. Jim has always been adamant that we have a real tree, but maybe he is now getting a little like Scrooge himself. I guess I'll just see how motivated we get this weekend. In the meantime, I need to get the Christmas letters in the mail. Ho, ho, ho...

The Nursery

The small bedroom is vacant of all furniture now, awaiting re-decorating. I was thinking back to the last time we did much of anything with that room. It was 1991 and I was pregnant with Katie. We painted the walls a very soft green and set up a crib, antique dresser that doubled as a changing table, and added the rocking chair that Jim gave me for Mother's Day that year. Four sheets of antique paper dolls were matted and framed and hung on the wall. A lot of rocking, story telling and singing of lullabies took place in that room. Eventually the crib came down and Katie graduated to the "big girl" bed, which remained in that room until we carried it upstairs.

We purchased a new full size bed last week, and it is ready to be picked up. We decided against trying to hassle with the antique wrought iron bed again. The painter is coming on Thursday, and I need to select a wall color. Today I picked out a quilt for the bed, and that will help me determine what color of yellow paint I want to go with for the walls. Fearful of the bed bug invasion, I immediately threw the quilt and matching pillow shams into the dryer. Supposedly putting any newly purchased garment in the dryer for 20 minutes will kill any bedbugs and their eggs. Ewwwww!

As for the roll top desk in the entry foyer? It went on craigslist last week, and we sold it for asking price last night. That was easy. Anyone need a wrought iron bed frame?

Here's to Giving Thanks

The Thanksgiving holiday is officially over at our house. Right now I'm giving thanks that our house is empty of guests! We just returned from the airport, dropping off Megan and Andy for their flight back to Washington, D.C., and they were the last ones to leave. I love having company, especially for the holidays, but it is a lot of work. Planning three meals a day for four days of company is a challenge, adapting to the eight guests particular tastes and allergies. Then there is all the meal preparation and clean-up. I feel like I spent most of my time in the kitchen. Thank God it is such a beautiful place to work! We had a wonderful time overall, filled with tours of the construction at our landscape architecture company and of the composting facility (which Megan had never seen), the holiday train exhibit at the Missouri Botanical Garden (which I highly recommend), shopping, talking and playing games. It was hard to fit all of that in around cooking, eating and cleaning up. Good thing we are good at multi-tasking, so we could combine several activities together - like talking and eating, for example. Overall, we have a lot to be thankful for in our lives. Now I'm off to take down all the Thanksgiving decorations and put up the Christmas items in preparation for the SWT Christmas party on Saturday. We are doing a progressive dinner (light on the "dinner" portion), traveling to three different houses. We are the third house, so I guess I am figuring out desserts and an activity to end the evening. If I can pull it off, instead of planning games to accomodate 30 people, I am going to have everyone prepare packages to be sent off to soldiers instead. We are all blessed to be able to spend the holidays with our families, so I think it is fitting to find a way to thank the men and women who make that possible.