Halloween Cookies, Round 1: Little Monsters

I know it's a bit early for Halloween, but I found a bunch of really cute Halloween cookie cutters at my local cake shop and I thought I'd give them a try.  Last Halloween, I was just barely starting to decorate cookies and I made pretty basic cookies, so it still kind of feels like the first time I'm really tackling Halloween cookies.

This week I tried out the little monster cookie cutters I bought.  Oh, and I also tried out LilaLoa's chocolate cookie recipe, which is really delicious.

And for the spiders, I had to go with whimsical, colorful spiders because...well, I really hate spiders so much that even spider cookies really gross me out.  In my son's preschool, the music therapist makes fun of me because I refused to touch the (overly realistic) rubber spider, muchless put it on my head for that awful song "There's a Spider on the Floor".  In case you don't have a preschooler, here's a youtube video I found of it.  Seriously, what sicko came up with that song? 



Pretty Pink Macarons with Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Well, I don't have any more cookie orders coming up, so now I get to make whatever I want.  This weekend, I thought I would return to my precious macarons.  I decided to try making pretty pink ones this time.  I've never added food dye to them, afraid that it would somehow mess with them, but I've heard the gel pastes are ok, and I have so many of those on hand for the cookies that I thought I'd give it a try. 

I knew I was going to do Swiss meringue buttercream again, but I couldn't decide what variation I should do.  In the end I was deciding between chocolate and lemon flavored (using lemon emulsion), and I asked my husband which he preferred.  He said he'd like chocolate more, so even though I was thinking lemon sounded yummy, he really hates it when I do that thing where I ask him his opinion on something and end up doing what I want anyway, so I went with chocolate for the sake of our marriage.

And they're good, but the chocolate isn't strong enough.  I guess that's why chocolate macarons usually use ganache instead of frosting.  But it was still Swiss meringue buttercream, so it's still delicious. 

And of course, with a bunch of egg yolks laying around, I had to make some more Salted Caramel Ice Cream. 

Welcome Cookies (Again)

This weekend I had another order for a welcome basket for another new tenant in an office building.   So I did half keys and half the company's logo.

I used the kopykake for both designs.  I used a stencil the last time I did keys, but as organized as I thought I was, I could not for the life of me find the stencil I had made for the last order.  So I found a different design and improvised, using my kopykake as a guide for consistency.  I also added dry gold luster dust for a sparkly look on the keys, but it's hard to tell in the picture.

The company that ordered this basket has a logo that uses the same colors, so I made up one cookie with their logo as a thank you.

Hawaiian Luau-Themed Cookies

Here are the cookies I made for Lorelai's Hawaiian luau-themed birthday party.  All of these cookie designs were a first for me, but I was very happy with the way they turned out. 

Graduation and Birthday Cookies

This is the first part of an order for Lorelai, a little girl from my son's preschool (the same one that ordered the other graduation cookies).  Her grandma ordered threes and graduation caps to serve at her graduation/birthday party (once they turn three, they graduate out of the program). 

For at least a few months, Lorelai's signature phrase was "I did it!"  She even said it all the time, even when she didn't actually do anything, but don't tell her that.  So I had to do make a couple of "I did it" cookies.  Of course, I left these to decorate last to make sure I got all the order cookies done, and I was incredibly exhausted after 8 hours straight of cookie decorating, so I chose to just freehand them instead of getting out the kopykake.  So they're not perfect, but I thought they were pretty good for freehand.



Later in the week I'll share some pictures of the favor cookies I did for her hawaiian luau-themed party.