Gingerbread Friends

Gingerbread friends! Little gingerbread men and women and girls and boys. And some Christmas trees at the end of the post.

This little gingerbread lady is all bundled up for the winter.

By the way, no, those aren't headphones on the gingerbread man, they're earmuffs.

See the happy ice skating couple?

And, of course, the classic simple gingerbread people.

Messier piping than I'd like, but they're still cute and I was so proud of it.  I made them a year ago!

Here you can see the criss-cross piping details on this skirt.

And some Chanukkah friendly gingerbread people. Winter blue and white colors.

And with the scraps I figured I'd have fun making some odds and ends. Christmas trees and stars.

I finally got a chance to use my colorful dragees. Sweet and simple.

Picnic Sugar Cookies

I made these super cute picnic themed cookies for a staff appreciation lunch my mom organized at my sister's school. 

Unfortunately, I wrapped them up before getting good pictures, so you'll just have to believe me when I tell you that they were super cute. 

 

Happy sun cookies with sunglasses brightened up the basket.

Because I used a marbling technique, every butterfly was different. 

 I love the watermelon cookies! The seeds just made me "awww!"

 The dragonflies were decorated with silver, green, and blue dragees to make them magical.

The ladybugs were stuffed into every corner of the basket and each one had a different number of spots. 

I tried to get a closeup of the royal icing marbling technique here. Basically, you pipe out lines of different colored icing next to each other and run a toothpick through them before they set. It's a very fun and forgiving technique.

I insisted on making the watermelon slices have bites taken out of them, and I'm glad I did!

The baskets were arranged with tissue paper and a few other picnic items (sunglasses and sunscreen) were tossed in.

Here they are on the tables with sunflowers!

 They were a big hit and I love how perfectly they fit the theme.

Mini S'mores Cupcakes

Mini s'mores cupcakes. They taste just like the real thing, but with more marshmallow and chocolate.

These baby cupcakes have a sweet graham cracker bottom crust.

The cake is chocolate with graham cracker pieces and more graham cracker crumble on top.

The topping is marshmallow frosting, which I then gleefully attacked with a blowtorch.

So adorable and so easy to eat. Everyone had a few because they're so hard to resist! My favorite thing about these cupcakes is that they don't have to be perfect. The marshmallow frosting droops a little and sometimes they're torched unevenly, but I think that just adds to their charm.

Don't you agree?

Chocolate Dipped Strawberry Cheesecake Macarons

I made some more french macarons!

These little guys are strawberry flavored. I sliced strawberries thinly, stuck them into the oven on low for a few hours until they were dried out, then ground them up and put them in the batter. Pretty light flavor, but still tasty.

Some have cheesecake filling and some have strawberry-chocolate ganache.

I accidentally over baked most of these, so I brushed them with pink luster dust to disguise the dark color! Oops!

Still quite tasty, though, especially dipped in chocolate.

Halloween Cookies

I wanted to make Halloween sugar cookies. I did not want to buy more cookies cutters. Actually, I did want to buy more cookies cutters (because I always want more cookies cutters!) but I decided to be smart and use what I had.

Below are some Frankenstein's monster cookies, just made with simple rectangles. I love the hair and the cute little wiggly smile.

And some Candy Corn triangles. I used a big circle cookie cutter then just sliced it into 6 wedges. The candy corn cookies were the most fun to decorate!

You can see how there's quite a bit of size variety, but I didn't really care about perfection for this batch, just cuteness.



I love the cute wiggly smiles on the Frankensteins and the 3D effect of the eyes popping up.

Halloween in Maddieland is never scary.

And here are the ghosts. These turned your mouth black when eating them, but they're so much fun that on one really cared.

Happy Halloween!

BOO!

Oreo Red Velvet Cupcakes

Red velvet cupcakes with oreos at the bottom. Dipped in chocolate ganache. Cream cheese frosting on top.

Silver dragees and edible glitter to top them off. Why? Why not!

What more can you ever want?

Engagement Cookies!

My friend (and suitemate!) got engaged over the summer! Naturally, I made cookies.
 

These decorated sugar cookies had to be mailed from Los Angeles to Boston, but they were definitely worth it.

The bride-to-be has the most gorgeous red hair, so of course the cookies with the stick figure proposal had to include that personalization.

 These cookies were all pretty big - about 3 inches across, and I cut them nice and thick, too.

 I love the disco dust (rainbowy-clear glitter) on the details. It made everything seem that much more special.

And, of course, the ring. The little diamonds (actually dragees coated in luster dust and disco dust) along the sides were part of the actual engagement ring, so I tried to stay true to that as much as I could.

 Lots of pretty hearts and details.

By the way, I started using meringue powder for my royal icing instead of egg whites, and it's wonderful! The icing dries super strong and I have much less of a problem with bleeding when I use deep colors.

 

Anyways, much love and congratulations to you both!