Happy Halloween

I love Halloween!  First of all, I have probably already mentioned that Fall happens to be my favorite season! The weather starts to cool down, and it is the beginning of the holiday season that I love so much!  Halloween starts it off.  Well... it used to start it off!  Now that I am married and will be living in Canada, Thanksgiving is in the beginning of October here.  I really feel like I have the best of both worlds.  Thanksgiving is the ONLY holiday that we can spend with both of our families.  We are here in Canada with my husband's family for Canadian Thanksgiving.  Then, we get to go visit my family for American Thanksgiving.  This year we are going to Boston to visit my sister and brother in law who have recently bought a house.  Every other Thanksgiving in my life has been at my parent's house.  So, it will be a little different this year, but I am so excited to see my sister's new home!  

Last Halloween was the first year that I was able to buy candy and pass it out to trick or treaters.  Every year before that in my adult life, I have lived in an apartment building and you don't really get trick or treaters there.    

So back to last year.  First of all, the Steelers were playing.  I LOVE the Steelers.  They are my team, and they are not always on here in Canada.  It normally turns out that the Buffalo Bills are on 2 channels.  Really?  Couldn't one of you have chosen a different game... like the Steelers?!?  So, I was happy that the Steelers were playing.  6pm rolls around and I start to see some kids outside in their costumes.  No one was coming to our house!  It turned out that almost all of my neighbors were sitting at the end of their driveways with their bowls on candy.  No one was coming to my house because it obviously was too much work to walk up to my door when everyone else was sitting outside.  Also... it had SNOWED on Halloween!  It stopped by trick or treating time, but still.  

So... even though the Steelers were playing, off I went to get my chair from the garage to sit at the end of the driveway in my winter coat, with a blanket on to pass out candy.  You might be wondering where my lovely boyfriend (at the time) was.  Oh, he was inside wanting nothing to do with sitting outside in the cold and passing out candy to kids.  He came out briefly to bring me some hot tea.  The quickly went back inside to watch football.  

This year I will not be able to give out candy on Halloween.  I am a little disappointed, and then I remember that I won't be here on Halloween because I will be laying on the beach in the Caribbean with my husband for our honeymoon!

So I made some Halloween cookies this past week.  Hope you enjoy!

Large Happy Halloween cookie!

Lots of icing ready for decorating!

Dining room table filled up with cookies!

Candy corn, spiderwebs and pumpkins.  I was running out of room, so they were drying on the bench in the living room. 

All different colored spiderwebs. 

Candy corn!  Simple, yet one of my favorites!  I also LOVE the real thing!  I need to be good and not buy too much of it because it disappears very quickly!  

More spiderwebs.  Love the bright and vibrant colors!

Lots of pumpkins.

I love how these Jack O' Lantern cookies turned out!  They were a big hit too!

These fall leaves were inspired by the amazing Sugar Belle.  I have made these a lot.  They have been a big hit!  I now love using the color mists.  Makes me want to get an airbrush machine!

These ghosts were the most simple cookies I made, but I think they were one of the most popular with the kids.  

I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween!  I will be enjoying some candy on the beach for my Halloween.  :-)  

It's been awhile...

Hi everyone! I know it has been awhile, but I am back and I have lots of exciting things coming up in the next few months.  Lots of cookies on the way!  

This was the first big cookie order that I shipped.  4 dozen.  I was a bit nervous because I had shipped a small order one other time, and a couple of the cookies broke.  These cookies were shipped from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and every single one made it there safely!  Phew!  

Enjoy!  Keep an eye out because I have lots of new and fun cookies coming this way!

Decorated cookies

I was looking for a new dessert to try and I came across a blog about a lady who makes these amazing sugar cookies decorated with royal icing.  I honestly can't even remember how I stumbled upon her blog, but boy am I glad I did!

First thing I did was get my Professional Baking book from Culinary School to find a good sugar cookie recipe.  Good... I had all the ingredients to make the cookies.  Then I went to the Wilton's website to find a recipe for Royal Icing.

Now, if any of you are thinking... Royal icing?!  Yuck!  I know where you are coming from.  We never used royal icing to decorate cookies in school, and the only time we used it was basically to hold something together (it dries really hard and is like glue for food) or to decorate something.  It was not exactly something that I thought tasted very good.  But honestly, it is all about the flavoring!  I put a mixture of vanilla and almond extract in mine and it is delicious!  My boyfriend, Jeff, says he hates almond flavoring, and even he loves it!  I never told him what exactly I use to flavor it, so he probably doesn't even know he likes almond extract!  Moral of this story...  as long as you flavor the royal icing, it tastes amazing!  I have given a lot of people these cookies and EVERYONE loves them!

The royal icing recipe called for Meringue powder.  I had never used this before, so I went to the local Michael's craft store and got some.  Once I got home, I started to bake...  Once the cookies were made and cooled, I started on the icing.  Thank goodness for my amazing Viking stand mixer!  The icing needs to be mixed for at least 10 minutes, maybe even up to 15!  I would not want to hold the mixer that long!  So I followed to icing recipe.  It was easy enough!  It was only 4 items: Powdered sugar, meringue powder, water and flavoring.  I then colored the icing.  I read online that if you color the icing and then leave it in the fridge for awhile, the color is better.  So that's what I did.

The only cutters I had at this time were some flowers, a butterfly and a heart.  So guess what I made first.  Flowers and butterflies!  The hearts will come in a little later...

In order to have definition between the petals and the body and wings of the butterfly, you have to do one part at a time, let it dry, then do the next.  Once you get the correct consistency for the icing, you can put it in either a piping bag with a tip, and/or a plastic bottle.  You can buy normal plastic bottles at Walmart, but then you cannot control the thickness of the icing when you squeeze it out.  I like to use these bottles.  These special bottles have a coupler attached.  That way, I can put on whatever tip I choose.  If I am filling a large section with icing, I may use a larger tip.  But if I want to do small, detailed work, I use a smaller tip so I can have more control.

On the flowers, I piped an outline for every other petal, then filled it in with icing.  Let them dry for at least 20-30 minutes and then did the other petals.

You can see in the picture below that the yellow flower was done this way.  You can see the separation of the petals.  On the other hand, the purple and pink flower is done differently.  I iced the whole cookie with the purple icing.  Then immediately while still wet, I added pink icing and took a knife and ran it through the pink to give it a different effect.

I took these first cookies I made over to my boyfriend's family and they loved them!  They are my taste testers when I am in Canada.  I have been taking them lots of different desserts lately!  Hopefully they don't get sick of them.  His Dad likes to make sure I bring lots of cookies over to their house.  :-)

Up next.... My boyfriend Jeff's 28th Birthday and Bachelor weekend golf cookies!