Today is my birthday!
My family threw me a wonderful party on Saturday night and I arrived to a whole bunch of PINK fun treats. My mom made homemade strawberry ice cream and bought a bunch of other flavors of ice cream and bought pink ice cream cones and other colors and waffle cones too. She also made a homemade DELICIOUS angel food cake with fresh strawberries - oh yum! My daughter brought tons of candy - many of them PINK in pretty pink bowls. The dessert table was quite amazing. It was quite a sugar party, but all with very thoughtful ideas for my birthday in pink. My family is awesome!
Last night (the night before my actual birthday) I stayed up til 4am decorating cookies. I was tired, but it's one of my favorite things to do, so it felt like a special treat. So what style of cookie do you think I would choose for MY birthday? I thought long and hard about it. Pink bicycles? Love them, but no. Pink ladybugs? Super cute, but no. Hello Kitty? I'm dying to make them, but no. Pink pirates? I've been wanting to make those, but no. Well while you think about it, I'll show you the after-effects of my birthday project...
Okay there were so many ideas of what I could bake because I love so many things. I finally decided on...
Okay there were so many ideas of what I could bake because I love so many things. I finally decided on...
CASTLES and Princesses and Knights and Crowns and... ok you only get to see the castles for now. They are all done and photographed, but as my cookie friend, Kara, told me today, I'm a tease ;-)
Here's the tutorial part of our evening. I started with a castle cookie cutter from eCrandal. I love the design of this one and I've been so excited to make it! I decided on Gingerbread for my birthday cookies because I just love them and so does my son, Nick. As you can see, I decided on a design and outlined the cookie with black icing for the detail.
Next I filled in the flag and covered it with yellow sanding sugar.
After that I filled in the other parts of the castle, but then I had to take a break on my birthday cookies because my son needed beach cookies for a potluck at work. I quickly worked on beach cookies and then I came back to the castle cookies the next day and just look at what had happened...
The same day that Marian from Sweetopia sent out a blog post about humidity and spots on icing, it happened to me :( My heart was broken. I was so sad to see my beautiful castle with big splotches all over it. We don't usually have a lot of humidity in California, but I guess this day it was a big deal and the butter from my cookies came up through the icing and stained all my decorating work. Thankfully I had only decorated the castles and not all the other cookies.
So late last night, I picked myself up and I re-iced all the castles. I added all the details on the castle using wet on wet technqiue. I didn't think it would work to re-decorate over the splotched cookie, but it worked perfectly and I'm very happy with how they came out! I can't wait to show you the rest of my birthday cookies.
I guess I better get busy on the clean-up. My son has offered to help with washing all those cookie cutters though. Fair deal since I share the cookies right? ;-)
They are adorable! Glad you were able to correct the splotching - I never would have known! You definitely deserve a fairy-tale! Happy Birthday!! Can't wait to see the other ones! - Kara
ReplyDelete@KaraThanks Kara!
ReplyDeleteSorry I'm late to wish you a happy birthday, but I send the wishes with all of the best intentions:) Hope you had a wonderful celebration and you enjoyed your fun and delightful cookies. All the best for a super year for you!
ReplyDelete@The Vanilla Bean Baker Thank you SO much Paula! You're such a sweetie. I hope you have your internet connection worked out. I've been missing you!
ReplyDelete