Elephant and Giraffe Birthday Cookies

These elephants and giraffes were made for Andrew's cousin's birthday (ages ago!).

He loves the zoo!

Ladybug Birthday Cookies

These lady bug cookies were for a little girl's first birthday party. Her mom gave me a picture to work from and asked that I add a 1 to the cookie.

Black and red are the hardest colors to use. Red is difficult because it takes more dye to get it the right shade than other colors do. Black icing needs a lot of dye too, and it can bleed onto other colors. For this reason, I did each stage of the cookie in shifts and allowed the icing to dry for 24 hours before I added the details on top.

I added the head and feet after the red body had dried for a day.

I let the head set up for a few minutes, then added the other details.

The white details on the face were added after the black dried overnight. (I thought the ladybugs looked a bit creepy at this point.)

I added the pupils and the 1 after another few hours of drying.

The most difficult thing about these cookies was trying to make them uniform. If I had a ladybug cookie cutter, it would have been easy to make sure every ladybug was the same size and shape, but free-handing the shape on a round cookie was a challenge.

I think the faces turned out pretty cute, and I'm so relieved that the colors did not bleed. All that patience and planning was worth it.

After the cookies were completely dry, I packaged them in individual bags and tied the tops with a coordinating ribbon.

I hope the birthday girl liked her cookies!

Black, White, and Red

I have an order of birthday cookies due Saturday, so I've been really busy baking and decorating this week. I won't post pictures of those cookies until Sunday because the birthday girl should get to enjoy them first!

The birthday cookies were black, white, and red, so I used the extra dough and icing to make some butterflies.

All the swirls are made by adding wet icing details to wet flood icing and dragging a tooth pick through the design. It is so satisfying to make cookies like this! The swirls are easy to do, but they look complicated and impressive.

I don't think I've ever seen butterflies with these colors in nature, but I hate wasting icing and I love decorating cookies, so I just had fun playing around.

Tomorrow I finish up the birthday cookies, so I'll take pictures and post them soon!

Birthday Stuff

Andrew's birthday was a couple weeks ago, so we had some friends over to eat cake and play a very confusing board game.

I baked a couple of goodies for Andrew. He'd been requesting chocolate, cherry, oatmeal cookies, so I finally located some dried cherries and made them for him.

I am not a fan of raisins, so dried cherries are my raisin alternative in cookies. We like them a lot around here.

For Andrew's birthday cake, I made a layer cake version of the homemade hostess cupcakes I baked at Valentine's day. I used a different cake recipe that we liked better, but I put the cream filling between the layers and covered the whole thing with chocolate ganache.

It tasted pretty good, but I can say it looked pretty. I'd never covered anything with ganache before, and I think I need a bit of practice.

We played a game called Settlers of Catan with a bunch of friends. We'd heard good things about and and since Andrew got it for his birthday we thought it'd be fun to play. It was, but it was rather confusing to learn at first. Andrew an I were the only ones who had never played before, so we had lots of help learning.

I think the birthday boy had a fun day and enjoyed his birthday treats.

Ethan's Birthday Cookies

I made cookies to send to my brother-in-law for his birthday this year. He's very interested in Russia, so I made the Russian flag in cookie form.

I made cakes with blue stripes and dots because I had extra blue icing after making the flag. I always get worried about making cookies for guys because most of the cookies I usually make are brightly colored and girly or more suited to younger boys (dinosaurs, cars, etc.). Unless the guy is into sports or cars, I have a hard time deciding what to make.

I've been learning, though, that when it comes to food, most men don't really care if it's a pink and girly as long as it tastes good. I do think these cake cookies turned out festive and appropriate for a guy.

I packaged them in individual bags and put them in a box with bubble wrap to mail. Ethan's birthday was last Saturday, but the cookies didn't get mailed until Tuesday... oops...

Ethan got the cookies yesterday, but I forgot to ask him if any of them broke. He didn't mention it, so I'm going to assume they got their in one piece. He did say he liked the Russian flags.

I'm really enjoying making cakes. I can't wait for Andrew's birthday! I already have some ideas.

Pink, Polka Dots, and Flowers

Thursday was one of my friend's birthdays, so I decided to try out my new cake cookie cutter and a chocolate cookie recipe I've been experimenting with.

I made pink cake cookies and pink flowers to go with them. The colors didn't show up perfectly in the photos because I finished them up after the sun set. I used Wilton's gel icing colors: just a touch of rose color for the light pink and a lot of rose plus a touch of purple for the dark pink.

I outlined the cake cookies in white icing and added candles at the top. The bottom and top layers are just light and dark pink with dots. The middle layer is white with dark pink flowers. The flowers are made by putting five dark pink dots close together, then adding a light pink dot in the center.

I added the yellow candle flames last, then let them sit out and harden a bit before we took them over to the birthday girl.

I made the flowers to make the cakes. Because of the simple shape, I didn't bother to outline the petals. The flooding icing I use is on the thicker side, so though it dries flat, it keeps its shap pretty well.

I made some other birthday cookies this week that we're mailing out tomorrow, but I'll wait until they have been received to put pictures up here.