Xmas cookies

Today we are busy in the kitchen, Ali is making ale and I am making the Christmas cookies, Sophie is running around causing mischief.

I love making the Christmas Cookies each year and always mix up a batch of spiced cookie dough, very festive. I looked out some of my Christmas cutters and cut out the shapes and baked them.  While they were cooling on the racks naughty miss cookie fingers got caught red handed running off with the evidence.

I left the cookies over night just to make sure they were dried out enough and beat up a mix of icing and divided out into cups and added my colours, i use Wiltons icing gels as they have good depth of colour and last ages as you only need a tiny bit.

Madam was pleased as punch as she got the prize of the balloon whisk to lick, and now when any mixing is done she insists on having the whisk to lick and is always pleased as punch, it also keeps her fingers off my cookies while icing.

Here are the finished cookies 

Sophie couldn't wait to get her mits on a cookie but she wasn't sure if she could eat them as they looked so pretty, but after one bite she was convinced they were all for her.

Butterfly iced cookies

I made some iced cookies for some people with lots of soul and love as a little thank you for all their kindness.  I really want to be good at iced cookies and need lots of practice as i'm still not 100% happy with my finished efforts as i want to be able to turn out professional looking cookies and the final set icing differs to my just piped finish, as over night the icing shifts and melts into each other, but i think i now may realise where i'm going wrong.  i think i'm to eager to do all the pretty bits and need to let the foundation of the icing set, unless i need a bit of blended icing that is.  But practice makes perfect and in the future i hope to get perfect cookies i'm happy with.  As a novice these are not to bad and i hope they got to their destination in one piece and i'm worried that the slow old royal mail may hold them up making them stale on arrival, which would be awful. i do worry a lot.

I made a vanilla bean cookie dough and used my favourite and very pretty butterfly cookie cutter. I made a few in case of mistakes and the kitchen looked like a production line. Being completely obsessed with the cooking times in case they turned to brown and just a minute or 2 would be to much.  Mixing up the icing choose 3 colours red, blue and yellow and got on with the outline and base and then here's were i went wrong adding the pretty bits.  I think i really should have left the base for about 30 mins to 1 hour then added the top layer.  I also don't think my dragging technique is mastered yet i think i will have to make a lot more cookies to practice.

McQueen Cookies

We went to Sophie's best friends birthday party on Sunday William had hit the ripe old age of 2. William loves cars and actually likes the movie Cars too, so Sophie and i got cracking in the kitchen to make William some lighting McQueen cookies.

After making some chocolate cookie dough and rolling it out we cut out a picture of Lightning McQueen and placed this on the dough and cut round it with a knife.  I could of hand made a cookie cutter but the shape was simple enough to cut round as a template.

While the cookies were cooling we counted up the colours and made a big batch of icing and started to mix each colour up ready to put into piping bags, Sophie got busy stirring and did a great job.

First we did the red outline and let it set then filled in the windows and teeth with white and let that set.

Once the red outline was set we flooded the red for the car and black for the tires and mouth and let that set. Finally adding all the top layer of detail such as eyes, lights and flashes etc.  They look ok but i defiantly need more practice with my flood icing and i forgot to put an addition e on Rusteze, but i dont think William noticed as he was licking all the icing off them. Happy Birthday William !

Gingerbread men

Today's play date we decided to decorate some gingerbread men, ladies and teddies.  After pre-cooking the cookies so they were nice and cool to work with for the kids, the batches of brightly coloured icing were mixed up and put into little tubes for the kids to squish out onto the awaiting ginger cut outs.

Here is Sophie quality controlling the cookies and icing, she cant wait to be involved and creating a sweet mess.  Much squiding and squishing got all the cookies covered in pretty colours and surprisingly none of the cookies were eaten in the process of creation, and i don't think they actually knew what they were decorating.  Sophia who is 18mths here in the blue dress could take on Jane Asher with her skilful control of culinary decoration.    

William took to design with flair and was defiantly in control on what this season colour palate should be. Sophie had a blast but soon worked out that the squishy stuff was in fact a sweet and tasty treat. Nothing gets past her, what a smart cookie excuse the pun, soon that licky tongue was out clearing up any dripped icing that didn't make it onto a ginger teddy.

 Finally the creative artworks were completed and were put in the oven to set.  While the kids waited all went out into the garden to run about and have some fun, Sophie leading the way to all her toys to share.


                                 
William was Evil Knievel racing on his super fast motorbike

Sophia was Calamity Jane the fastest tooting horse riding woman of the west 

Sophie was King Kong astride her tower  

With much running about to be had by the kids, the mummies took a cup of tea and a relax on the lawn 

Soon the kids stopped playing and gathered by the chairs to have a quick chat as Sophie spread the word that what she had tasted earlier was sweet and that she suspected that had been painting cookies.  The kids decided that they were on strike till cookies had been handed out, after all they did create them.

GIVE US THE COOKIES!!

With the mummies scared at this organised bunch and that there could be an uprising of toddlers they finally gave in and handed out the much coveted treats and everyone was happy again.