Tag Archives: baking

Cookie Love

2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

House of Love.

I got to see all my loves who were not in Honduras on Valentine’s Day.  What a bunch of smile-bringers!

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I may smack Martha Stewart in the chops.

I was innocently standing in line at WalMart, flipping through Martha’s latest magazine, when I saw the cutest cookies ever.  They were sugar cookie hearts glazed in all the colors of traditional conversation candy hearts.  I read the caption beside the photo that said you could just put red food color on a wet paper towel and use stampers to print the messages.

They were so simple – supposedly.  So lovely.  I decided I would do it – all the colors, all the conversation-heart sayings.  All for the ones I love.  I baked the cookies-on-sticks recipe, which truly works for bouquets and is amazingly delicious.  I have shared it here, before.

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The glaze is just water and powdered sugar and the tiniest bit of food color.  The first batch was so runny that the glaze just poured out all over the place – very little left on the cookie.  So, I thickened some of the glaze up and piped an outline on each of the cookies.  Soupy at first, it starts hardening in exactly 4.21 seconds.  Which-I did not realize until I had squished some blue glaze onto each of the cookies I was going to make blue, thinking I could spread it evenly in a minute.  I could not.  The blue were blotchy.  The red was too red.  It took until I got to the pink to finally get the consistency right and have the “flooding” technique down.  You go around and around the cookie, flooding it with the glaze.

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I decided not to do all the colors of the conversation heart candies.  I couldn’t bear it, after all.

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I did try the stamping technique and it worked OK and may have been better if I had spent more than $1 for the alphabet stamp set at Michael’s.  I didn’t measure, however, nor try to space evenly-so mine did NOT look like Martha’s.

In the future, I shall employ my normal cookie decorating techniques. 

For the love.

What makes us do these things?  Bake and decorate and try new things?  Because we love.  We love cookies.  And we love each other.  Sometimes we even love Martha.

Did you get sweets from your sweet?…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Love.

pictured: Hunter and Gavin upside-down; Guini in her pink pj’s; Averi decked out in red and pink; Gemma-a girl and her popcorn;  outlined and filled cookies; stamped cookies; a little bouquet for my family.

Half Baked

2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

It was Christmas baking day!  It was a mad flurry of flour and sugar, creamery butter and sprinkles. 

  

We had sent 63+ e-mails back and forth over the past two weeks (this may or may not be an exaggeration) in anticipation of Baking Day.  This is why I now know that approximately half of our concoctions are actually not baked at all.  It is amazing how many of the things we like are dipped in melted chocolate or blended and rolled into balls or cooked on a stove top before adding a certain snap, crackle and pop ingredient to a non-bake cookie.

Better-than-Girl-Scout “Thin-mints”/chocolate-dipped pretzels/peanut-butter balls/caramel cookies (can you possibly go wrong with a cookie that encases a Rolo and is topped with bits of Heath Bar??)/caramel popcorn balls/cookies-on-sticks/butter cookies/raspberry ribbons/decorated sugar cookies/peanut brittle (we always and ever have to throw the first unsuccessful batch out-what is up with that??)/Strawberries (which actually aren’t at all – not even in flavor)/royal icing/butter-cream icing/peanut blossoms-with-kisses-instead/almond bark/chocolate chips of every persuasion/peppermint/vanilla/almond/mini-cheesecakes/brownie assortments – all these and more threaten to throw us all into sugar shock.

  

Sadly, it was a balmy 108-degrees outside Saturday (another possible exaggeration), so we were shedding layers and had the doors and windows opened wide, drinking ice water like the dog days of summer.

  

In the end, even though my grandfather was a baker extraordinaire and owned a bakery for many years, and even though my other grandpa’s last name was “Baker,”  I don’t think I am one and I believe only 1 1/2 of my girls actually are bakers.  Maybe next year, we’ll let the 1 1/2 of them have a pre-baking day to really bake and we’ll have a non-baking Baking Day to eat their stuff and roll our tidbits in chocolate and that will be better.

  

Ended the day with the guys and kiddos joining us for the biggest pot of chicken and dumplings I have ever made in my life, because you know, we needed more flour and eggs. ;>[

Cup of coffee and some cookies, anyone?…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Get more Rubbermaid-pronto!

PICTURED (all thumbnails, click to enlarge): Top row ~ raspberry ribbons and other cookies; second row ~ some of the cookies in front of the homemade ornanament “memory” tree, the kids and Grandpa decorating cookies; third row ~ Gemma, Averi and Hunter with the biggest Santa in my collection; fourth row ~ Gav with Santa, niece, Elise with Averi and Stormie konks out after a long day of baking and fun.