brush embroidery flower cookies

In addition to the champagne glass cookies that I made for the bachelorette party that Cherish was putting together, I also made these floral brush embroidery cookies in striking black and white. We were going for a classy elegant bachelorette party vibe, and thought these would go perfect with the champagne glasses!

For the cookies, I used my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and used a large round cookie cutter to cut out my shapes. Then I whipped up some royal icing (recipe also in my book!) and used black gel-based food coloring to get a nice deep black shade. I used a small round tip to pipe stiff icing to outline my cookie, and then filled it in with runny icing.

After letting it dry for several hours (I like to let it dry overnight just to be safe), I used white stiff icing to pipe my floral design. As with these brush embroidery teapot cookies and these brush embroidery lace wedding dress cookies, I piped a simple flower outline ...

... and then used a slightly damp (food safe) brush to drag the icing towards the center of the cookie.

Then I did the same for the inside petals of the flower.

To finish it off, I piped a few small dots in the center of the flower. I thought they turned out so pretty!

And I love the contrast of the white on black!

I thought that the design and the color scheme went perfectly with the champagne glass cookies! And The combination of these two cookies would be perfect for a New Years celebration!

Enjoy!

baileys ice cream

Last year before the Holidays, Bailey's sent me a beautiful bottle of their delicious Irish cream, and it was delicious just added to our coffee at Christmas. We also made use of it on New Years Eve, when I decided to make ice cream with it! 

I loosely used this recipe, except that I modified the amounts (I used 1 cup heavy cream, 1 cup whole milk, 3/4 cup Bailey's, and 3 egg yolks), but the technique was the same.

It turned out super delicious, and I amped it up even more by drizzling Bailey's directly over the ice cream just before serving!

I may have to make it again this year!

Here's to Happy New Year!!!

champagne glass cookies

You may remember that a few years ago I made a variety of goodies for Cherish's wedding (my first wedding dessert table!), which included Hello Kitty macarons, football and tooth cookies, mini s'mores cupcakes, and potted plant chocolate puddings. And recently, she asked me to make cookies for a bachelorette party that she was putting together! She was going for a classy and elegant bachelorette party vibe, so we decided one design would be champagne glass cookies.

Since I had no champagne glass cookies cutter, and could not find one that I liked online, I asked my handy hubby to make me another custom copper cutter! (Aren't I lucky??!) So I made a few batches of my favorite sugar cookies recipe (from my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book) and used my shiny new cutter to cut out my shapes.

After baking the cookies until golden brown (350F for 10-12 minues), I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in my book!) and used ivory gel-based food coloring to get the perfect shade of champagne. Then I used stiff ivory icing to outline the top part of the champagne glass, filled it in with ivory runny icing, and then did the same with white icing for the bottom part of the glass.

The final touch was piping stiff white icing for the "bubbles" in the champagne!

I thought they turned out super cute and festive, and would also be perfect for a birthday of a  New Years celebration as well!

I also made a second cookie design to go along with the champagne glass cookies - floral brush embroidery cookies! Stay tuned for the tutorial!

champagne sherbet

Happy New Year!

On New Years Day we had half bottle of champagne left over from the night before, and of course I couldn't let it go to waste!  So the first thing that came to mind was to make champagne sorbet!

After a quick internet search for a recipe, I found this one at Simply Recipes, which looked and sounded delicious!  But halfway into making my sorbet, I realized that I didn't have any fresh grapefruit on hand.  So I did another search, and switched over to this recipe at Sugarlaws.  After cooking my sorbet mixture on the stove, I tasted it, and it tasted like a really bad cocktail!  So I decided to add some heavy cream to mellow it out.

After adding about a cup of heavy cream, I tasted it again, and it had magically transformed into a delicious creamy champagne concoction!  So I put it in the fridge to chill for the rest of the day, and later that evening I churned it in my ice cream maker for about 30 minutes.  I was a little concerned because even after 30 minutes of churning, it was still quite soft, but I figured that the amount of alcohol in it was the cause.  So after it was done churning, I poured the mixture into a freezer-proof container, and let it set in the freezer overnight.

The resulting sherbet (I call it sherbet since the addition of heavy cream no longer qualifies it as a sorbet!) was refreshing and full of champagne flavor.

Here's to a wonderful 2013!

champagne macarons

For New Years, I wanted to make something with champagne in it, since champagne is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of celebrating the New Year.  I tossed around ideas for a cupcake with champagne frosting, or adding champagne to the cupcake itself, but in the end I decided to make champagne macarons (since making macarons has been a recent addiction of mine).

I made the macaron shells golden yellow, but plain (I've decided that I don't like to flavor my shells - after tasting the chocolate macarons that I made for Christmas, I realized that the extra flavor drowned out the taste of the almonds in the cookie, which I love).

For the filling, I added some champagne to my standard buttercream, but after whipping it together, I noticed that the it looked slightly foamy.  Did the champagne curdle it?  I almost threw it out and was about to start over, but decided to taste it first.  The buttercream was light, airy, and had the slightest mildest champagne flavor to it.  And the foamy-ness reminded me of champagne bubbles!  So I went with it.

Hope you have a happy New Year!!!