Skull Cookies for an old friend

Any of you Military families? If you are, you can relate to leaving behind great friends.  Not easy for an adult, much less a kid.

This week I had the pleasure of making cookies for one of my daughters BFF's.  When we were stationed in Germany for three years, my daughter and Ceci were the bestest of friends.  They were inseparable. Wherever you saw one, you saw the other.

Being in the military you have the pleasure of meeting so many new friends, which is great......but, you also eventually have to move and leave them behind. My daughter and her BFF no longer live a street over from each other.....but live 928 miles apart. They stay in touch though facebook and emails, but it just isn't the same.

She would have loved to be at her friend's birthday, but it wasn't possible. Making her cookies for her birthday was as close as we could get.

Her mother asked for me to make skull cookies with a little pink bow......It was last minute so no tutorial here today :(, but I wanted to just share the cookies I made.

I'm working on lots of great Christmas designs right now and will be posting them soon...I know, I know it's early for Christmas.  I just couldn't help myself.

Happy Birthday Ceci.....we miss you.

An Apple a Day....

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.......well what about a basket of them?

When I think of Fall I think of pies and of my favorites is an apple pie. Which then causes me to think of that movie Baby Boom.....you know the one where she inherits a baby and moves to Vermont on an apple farm and makes applesauce all day long. I know it's not pie, but it's what I think of.....can't help it.

When I saw these adorable

apple basket cupcakes

on Pinterest, I knew I must make a cookie version.  So off to the drawing board I went.

 I didn't have a basket cutter so what to use, what to use.  I tried to think outside the box and decided to use the cupcake cutter.  It can be made into many different cookies.  I cut out the cupcake shapes then cut off the top.  I'm sure you could leave the top on and just have a higher pile of apples, but I chose not to.

cupcake or basket cookie cutter

light brown royal icing

red royal icing

#3 tip

With #2 tip and light brown royal icing outline basket

Add handles. Let dry about 30 minutes.

With 20 second light brown royal icing fill in every other section of basket.

 Let dry several hours.

After first layer is dry, fill the remaining sections of basket with the 20 second light brown icing.

Let dry several hours.

 Next take 20 second red icing and randomly pipe dots for apples, leaving spaces between. 

If some run together like mine did, it's okay. Those will be covered later. 

Allow to dry for several hours. 

Repeat randomly adding red dots with the 20 second icing. Working in layers, drying several hours between each layer and filling in any empty spaces.

Continue to do this until your desired number of apples are piped.

Then for a little more detail take the light brown royal icing (not your flood icing) and pipe a line at top and bottom of basket.

Allow cookie to dry overnight.