Winter Wonderland Gingerbread House

With all the snow from Nemo, I thought it might be a good time to post the snowy gingerbread bread house my mother and I made over the holidays.

For the first time, we made the gingerbread house from scratch and cut out the pieces! And of coruse, if I'm going to go through the trouble of making the gingerbread and cutting the pieces, it's going to be more than just a little square house. Below is a front view of our Victorian-style gingerbread cottage.  

We used Sweetopia's simple, delicious, and sturdy gingerbread recipe and scaled up this amazing pattern by 100%

Here's a closeup of the front. The Roof is made of those delicious Pirouette Chocolate cookies (so hard to keep from eating them!) And the door is marshmallow. The mailbox is a white chocolate coated wafer cookie on a green candy stick and the little gold balls are edible sugar dragees.

And here's the back view. Little baby peanut butter cups as decoration along the roof, a marshmallow chimny, and green m&m's (the mint flavor) along the back. Plus dragees for a little more sparkle  

Ice cream cone trees (take a pointy cone, turn it over, and pipe green textured frosting on) and a pond in the back. We found these cute gummy candies as decoration and used Amy's graham cracker bunnies to give the scene some life.  Can you find the set of bunnies who are well, particularly loving?

The pond is jolly rancher - we crushed them up, put them in a pile/circle on tinfoil, and watched the like a hawk as they were melting in the oven. Once they cooled, it was just a matter of peeling off the pond and plopping it into the board.

The ice-skating marks were made by running a wet paintbrush over the pond after it had been (accidentally over-dusted) in powdered sugar.

No winter gingerbread scene would be complete without a snowman. See the little pretzel fence in the back ground? That fence kept falling over, but we finally got it to almost stay up...

Jelly beans along the side.  We bought the candy a few days after Christmas when it was all on sale!

And the whole back view. The snow on top is powdered sugar and, on top of the roof, roral icing smeared on thick.

The front bay is lined with Mike & Ike's as well as green chewy disks. Not sure what brand they were, but they were definitely delicious. The walkway is made of mini peanut butter cups and cut-up cinnamon and chocolate marshmallows. I didn't even know they made marshmallows in those flavors and sold them at the supermarket; must have been a seasonal thing.

The windows, by the way, were made using that same crushed jolly ranchers method. I cut the holes for the windows before baking and cleaned them up more right after the gingerbread came out of the oven. Once the giant cookies has cooled, I sprinkles the jolly rancher pieces in the holes and popped them back in the over for a bit until they had melted. It's hard to see because there's no light in the house,but the effect was really cool and looked like beautiful stained glass. 

 
And the front view once more.  With every year comes a new gingerbread house. I'd better start thinking about how to top this one!

Under The Sea Cookies 2.0

More under the sea cookies! The post on the first batch has some step-by-step pictures, but my lighting wasn't good enough for that this time around.

These were made for a birthday party and send all the way to Louisiana. Purple/team sea horses and starfish!

My favorite part about these cookies was the texture from all the little dots on the starfish - it really makes them pop!

See the light purple on the seahorse belly and the little detail on the back fin? I tried to make these really special!

I tried to get some good detail without making them look to busy - the white to brighten up the eye was exactly what I was going for.

I wasn't exactly sure what shades the customer needed, so I made sure to include a few and I think they turned out quite well.

Definitely an improvement on the first batch I made because of the increased detail and realism. Plus, I like how the colors fit together.

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!