rudolph the reindeer cookies

For my daughter's class Christmas party last month, I decided to make these cute reindeer cookies, based on a design I had seen at Bubble and Sweet. I loved the color of the turquoise and white reindeer with the red nose accent, but I decided to do the reverse and have a snowy white reindeer with turquoise spots and red nose instead. Luckily, I had recently been given a beautiful reindeer cookie cutter from Cookie Cutter Kingdom, so I was all set! (Thanks Cookie Cutter Kingdom!)

I started with my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), which I rolled out to 1/8 inch thick, cut out shapes, and then baked at 350F for 10-12 minutes until the edges of the cookies had turned golden.

Then I whipped up a batch of my favorite royal icing (recipe also in my book!), used white stiff icing to outline my reindeer cookies, and then used white runny icing to fill them in. (The stiff icing outline acts as a border, so that the runny icing doesn't drip off the edges of your cookie!) For the turquoise spots on the reindeer's back, I mixed a bit of royal blue gel-based food coloring into stiff icing, and piped little dots onto the reindeers while the white icing was still wet. Then I let the cookie dry for several hours (or overnight).

Once the icing was dry, I piped little Rudolph noses with stiff red icing and a small round tip.

I just love the color combination of white, turquoise, and red!

Also, since we were hosting Christmas this year, I had an idea to have a little reindeer cookie on each place setting. So I left several cookies completely white with a red nose, and then painted the antlers gold inspired by these gilded reindeer cookies from Sweetapolita! To make the gold "paint", I used edible gold dust mixed with clear vanilla extract, similar to how I painted the gold star cookie that topped my Christmas tree cookie tower in my previous post. 

And here's how they looked on each place setting.

The little gilded reindeers went perfectly with my bay leaf garland, white candles, and gold flatware!

Hope you and your family had a very Merry Christmas!

cookie tree for christmas

I've always loved the look of macaron trees, they are just so pretty! But since my daughter is allergic to nuts, I tend to only make macarons for other people. And although I have made nut-free macarons before, I don't want her to get used to the idea of eating macarons in case she starts to think that regular macarons are okay for her to eat! So for Christmas this year, instead of making a macaron tree, I made one out of sugar cookies!

For the cookies, I used my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and used a small round cookie cutter that was approximately the same size as macarons. Then I baked them at 350F for about 10 minutes, until the cookie edges were golden.

I also made sure to cut out several star-shaped cookies, that would go on the top of the tree.



For the royal icing (recipe also in my book!), I tinted it leaf green, and used stiff icing to outline each cookie.

Then I flooded each one with runny icing, and let it dry overnight.

I also iced the star cookies with white icing and same approach - stiff icing to outline the cookie, and runny icing to fill each cookie.

Once the icing was dry, I mixed edible gold dust with clear vanilla extract, and then used a food-safe brush to paint the stars gold.

When I was ready to assemble my cookie tree, I covered a styrofoam cone with waxed paper, and then used royal icing "glue" to carefully attach my cookies.

After several rows though, my cookies started to fall off (eeek!) from the weight of the other cookies, so I used a thick silk ribbon to keep the rows in place until the royal icing "glue" had time to dry.

The final touch was the gold star on the top of the tree. I used two of the gold star cookies, and sandwiched them around a bamboo skewer, using royal icing to "glue" them together.

A perfect centerpiece for the table!

Hope you had a Merry Christmas!!!

team umizoomi cookies

Last year I made these monkey and elephant cookies for my friend Cindy K, who was throwing a birthday party for her daughter Reese. This year she asked me to make cookies again, and this time the theme was Team Umizoomi, a cartoon which Reese loves! We decided that I would make them rectangular cookies with the characters on top - mainly to spare having my hubby make three separate custom cutters, but also because I thought they would look really cute that way!

Normally I would have piped the characters directly on top of the cookies, but this time I knew that since each character had a lot of detail, I would need a guide to help me keep the proportions right. So I decided to first pipe the characters onto waxed paper, with a picture of each character below the waxed paper to serve as a guide. So I started by whipping up a batch of royal icing (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), I divided and tinted the icing based on all the colors that I would need (it ended up being a LOT of colors!)

Then I piped the characters on to the waxed paper, waiting for each layer of icing to dry before proceeding with each character's details. Here's Milli...

And here's Geo and Bot. (For Milli and Geo's eyebrows and smile, I used a brown edible food marker.)

I let the characters dry overnight, and the next day I start on the cookies. I baked up my favorite sugar cookies (recipe also in my book) and used a custom copper square cutter (made by hubby) to cut out my rectangular shapes.

Once the cookies were cooled, I outlined them with stiff white royal icing.

Then I filled them in with runny white royal icing, peeled each character off of the waxed paper, and dropped them onto the wet icing.

Then I let them dry overnight once more before packaging them individually in cellophane favor bags.

I thought they turned out pretty cute! One thing I'd do different next time is let the base icing dry a little bit before adding the characters, because as I was packaging the cookies I noticed that a few of the cookies had colors bleed into the white icing.

Happy Birthday, little Reese! Hope you enjoyed your cookies!!!

star wars logo cookies

To go along with the Star Wars cake that I made for my son Matthew's 8th birthday, I also made these Star Wars logo cookies to pass out as party favors.

Normally I would pipe directly on top of iced cookies, but for these I knew that I would need a guide to help me keep the proportions right. So I decided to first pipe the logo onto waxed paper (using the royal icing recipe from my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), with a picture of the logo below the waxed paper to serve as a guide. Then I let them dry overnight.

Once the logos were dry, I made the sugar cookies (recipe also in my book!), and used a pizza cutter and a ruler to cut out rectangular-shaped cookies. After the cookies were baked and cooled, I used stiff white royal icing to pipe a rectangular border on each cookie, and then filled it in with runny white royal icing (the border helps to keep the runny icing from dripping off the sides of the cookie). Then, while the icing was still wet, I peeled the royal icing logos off of the waxed paper and carefully dropped them on top of each iced cookie.

Then I let them dry for several hours (or overnight).

Then I packaged each one in a cellophane favor bag, and tied it with raffia.

The perfect favors for a Star Wars birthday party!

Happy Birthday Matthew!!!

star wars cake with handmade chocolate death star

For my son Matthew's 8th birthday this year, he wanted to invite a few of his friends from school to spend an afternoon at Chuck-e-Cheese, and for this he requested a Star Wars cake! Coincidentally, I had just recently purchased this Death Star ice cube mold, so the timing worked out perfectly and I knew exactly how I wanted to decorate his cake - with a chocolate Death Star cake topper!

A few days before I made the cake, I got started on making the topper. I melted down white candy melts, along with a few black candy melts to make the chocolate a nice grey color.

After melting the chocolate in a large glass bowl set over a pot of simmering water, I added a few white and black chips here and there to get the right color of grey.

Then I filled both sides of the mold, connected the mold back together, and placed it in the fridge for a few hours to chill. When it was time to unmold, voila! A chocolate death star! (Note that I had to make this twice, as the first time there were too many holes and air bubbles, and the two halves weren't connected properly!)

Since my boy doesn't like chocolate cake (I have no idea how that happened because i absolutely LOVE chocolate cake), I decided on a lemon cake with lemon whipped cream and fresh blueberries. The cake is basically the vanilla cake in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book, except I added freshly grated lemon zest (from an entire lemon). I baked the cakes in two 8-inch round pans, and once the cakes were cooled I sliced each in half horizontally, giving me four cake layers.

I filled each layer with lemon whipped cream (freshly whipped cream with powdered sugar, grated lemon zest, and a few tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice), then added a layer of fresh blueberries, and then another layer of lemon whipped cream before placing the next layer of cake on top.

Then for the frosting, I whipped up 1.5 batches of my cream cheese buttercream (recipe also in my book!), and tinted the majority of it navy blue (I used Americolor gel-based food coloring - several drops of royal blue, along with a few drops of super black). Then I did a quick crumb coat along the sides and top of the cake, let it chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes, and then did a final smooth coat on top of that.

With the remaining white frosting, I colored it yellow, and then placed it in a piping bag with a small round tip) to pipe the Star Wars logo along the side of the cake.

Then I placed it in the fridge for the night. But in the morning, when I looked at the cake again, it didn't seem "finished". So I decided to outline the logo with black frosting. 

Note: I always seem to forget how hard it is to pipe frosting on the side of a cake! After I had colored my frosting black, it was pretty runny. But I was impatient and didn't want to wait for it to chill in the fridge, so I used it anyway to pipe my black outline. Big mistake! The black outline came out really sloppy and messy, in my opinion, and kept wanting to fall off the sides of my cake. This is what I get for being impatient. Lesson learned. (Although I'm 90% sure that I will do the exact same thing again because I am often impatient!)

After outlining in black, I almost wished I hadn't done it. I should have outlined in black before fillling in with yellow. Oh well. Again, lesson learned. (Or not).

Anyhow, the cake looked much better after I added the chocolate Death Star. I used a bit of the blue frosting to hold it in place, so that it wouldn't move around during our drive to the party.

And in any case, Matthew loved the cake, and that's all that matters. :)

Here's a shot of the inside of the cake, with the flecks of blueberries peeking out.

Happy 8th birthday, my Matthew!!! You are growing up way to fast!!!