Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

I love cookie cutters.  There's just something exciting about them.  Maybe it's because they remind me of momma a little bit, I'm not sure.

 There are so many different ones out there.  Most cutters are fairly inexpensive, but some of them can be quite costly.  If you're not careful though you'll be broke in a matter of months.......or if you're as OCD as me and

need

them all, in a matter of days or weeks.

One of the blogs I read every day is

The Sweet Adventures of SugarBelle

. The blog writers name is Calley and she really has a fantastic eye for things.  She will take a simple cookie cutter intended for one thing and make something totally different.  One example is her

gumball machine cookies

.  Truly amazing.

I've made many of Calley's cookies. I've even made quite a few on my own, but as they intended to be.  If its a bat cutter I make a bat,  an owl I make an owl, etc. 

This time I decided to try something new, to do something different.  I needed to use my cookie cutter for a cookie that it wasn't intended for.

After all.....It's what all the

cool

kids are doing. 

It couldn't be too hard right? Like making out pictures with the clouds right?  Well...it was harder than I thought.  After a bit of searching through my cutters.......

four hours later

......a light bulb went off.  My light bulb takes a bit longer than most to go off.....I'm slow.  I took my copper ice cream cone cutter and made a witch. 

 I know it's not extremely creative, but hey I'm new to this.  I gotta start somewhere right?  Maybe one day I'll be as creative as all the cool kids but for now you get a witch from an ice cream.

To make the witch cookies you will need:

Ice cream cone cookies

royal icing in green, black, white and reddish brown. (I was going for a reddish color but this was what I got)

tip #2

icing bags 

First cut, bake, and cool your cookies on a wired rack. 

After cookies are cooled pipe outline of hat in black royal icing with a #2 tip.

 Next outline the witch's face in green royal icing

Thin out some of the black royal icing. I normally use about a 10 second icing for this. Meaning, when you let the icing fall back into itself it takes 10 seconds until it's smooth again. Fill in hat with the 10 second icing. 

While the black icing is still wet I piped three rows of 10 second icing in white on top of the hat.

Then drug a toothpick through it several times to form a cob web. (while still wet)

Next fill in witch's face with green flood icing. Allow to dry for an hour or two.

Next I piped the first layer of squiggly lines for the witch's hair with royal icing. Let the hair dry for about an hour.

After that dried I piped a second layer of hair, filling in the empty spaces and giving it a more 3D look.

Then I piped on the face. I messed up on the eyes as shown below. Somehow I didn't fill in the entire eye white.....so after it was dried I used a toothpick to remove the center part of the eye and filled in with white then black dots for the pupils.

I added a purple band around hat after it was dry, but totally forgot to take a picture....Hey I can't remember everything. 

After the cookie has dried overnight display on a black background with some Halloween spider web decorations......Just like the

cool

girls do and take a pretty picture. 

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Please leave loving, good job, pat on the back comments because its the nice thing to do......You know your momma would want you to. 

Fall is in the Air

I just love this time of year. The weather is so nice. It's not as hot and there's finally a breeze.  It's the time of the year when you know it's getting close to the holidays.

Halloween is drawing near.  Is it too early to start decorating?  I think I will have my husband get the decorations out tomorrow......

Tonight, I'm home alone .....yes he's working all night....again. Which leaves me home alone with the five kids.  Normally that means someone's sick. It never fails, if he's gone then one of us is sick.

Tonight was not an ordinary night! Yippie for a night of healthy kids.  The babies even went to bed on time.  What more could a girl ask for?

With everyone in cooperation mode we sat down to watch Black Swan.....not a movie for kids....at all! After my daughter getting a bit more of an education then I wanted her to have at twelve years old, I tried to turn the dvd player off.  Now keep in mind that anytime you want to turn something off so your child doesn't see it....the remote NEVER works.....not ever!

After finally getting the movie stopped we went in search for a new one.

My daughter picked out one that was going to be funny, which to me equals stupid and boring to mom.  This time I was wrong.....yep I admit it I was wrong.  Now please don't go advertising this to my husband. He's still at that stage where he really thinks I'm always right.  No really, he does.  I'll never tell him otherwise.  It's just better that way.

Well the move was called You Again. It was very funny and I think I laughed the entire movie.  My girls on the other hand fell asleep before it was even over.

The movie was over and it was time to COOKIE!!!!!! It was quiet and I was all alone in my kitchen with no distractions.....AHHHHH.

I couldn't wait to make some halloween cookies. Nothing major but just wanted some fall colors to work with.

I started by baking scallop edged square cookies using roll out dough.

I baked them and let them cool.

While the cookies were cooling, I mixed up a batch of my favorite royal icing and colored it.  Now everyone has a personal preference on the consistency of their RI.  Some use the same consistency for outlining and flooding and some don't.  I prefer to use two different consistencies.

I'll do a tutorial on royal icing soon.

While you are waiting for your cookies to cool, color your icing your desired color.  Here I chose to use orange and black.

I outlined edge with a stiffer RI and let dry about 20 minutes. Next take your flood icing and fill in the cookie.

For dots: I used wet on wet technique. You apply the dots when the orange icing is still wet. I squeezed harder for the larger dots and lighter for the smaller ones.  Using the wet on wet technique your icing will lay flat.  Then I just let the cookies dry overnight.

For the spider web cookies: I also used wet on wet technique. After flooding the cookie with orange icing, I piped lines in the upper corner. Then just simply take a toothpick and drag through lines, giving a spider web effect. Repeat until you work your way to the edge of the cookie.

It was late and I didn't take pictures of the process. I'll be sure to get more pictures next time.