Snowman Biscuits... and Merry Christmas!!

This year passed in a blink!... and it seems to me that each year is passing even faster than the previous one...isn't that crazy?. In the last days I have said to myself: "I'm not going to do anything today, I'll just relax" but it doesn't really work!, there's always something and there I am again, jumping here and there...
We moved to a beautiful town last December. It was the sort of change I was really looking forward to. Miraculously we sold our previous house in 4 weeks and in the meantime we found the perfect one for us, well located, already empty, in great condition and next to our son's school. It was all meant to be!. I feel so happy here!.
Change didn't stop there, I began to study clinical hypnosis in September and I LOVE IT!. A great new window has been opened for me and I feel very grateful for that.

But let's go to the biscuits now...

I wasn't sure if I would have the time to do Christmas biscuits this year, too much going on! But I managed to find a bit of time and here they are!.

I had very little time to decorate them, but lots of fun!.
The recipe as follows:

For the biscuits:

Ingredients:
-5 cups all-purpose flour
-2 teaspoons ground ginger
-1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
-1 teaspoon ground cloves
-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-zest of one orange (optional)
-1 cup (250gr) unsalted butter, softened
-1 cup sugar
-1 large egg
-1 cup molasses (chancaca in Chile)

Method:
1. Whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda, salt, and orange zest (if you're using it) in a medium bowl.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar with your mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg and molasses and mix until well blended.

3. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until the two are thoroughly blended.

4. Turn dough onto a work surface and divide into three equal portions. Form each one into a rough disk. Now you're ready to roll, chill, and cut out cookie shapes.

5. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C)

6. After you've rolled and cut the dough and the cookies are on parchment-lined cookie sheets , bake them on the middle rack of your oven for 12-16 minutes or until the cookies start to turn a deeper brown around the edges.

7. Cool the cookies completely before decorating.

*This recipe was taken from the book "Cookie Craft"*

I'm very sorry to say I don't have a tutorial for the decoration!!! I promise to give you one the next time.

Wishing you all a very
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
Let's count our blessings and be thankful for all of them.

"Deep at the center of my being there is an infinite well of gratitude. I now allow this gratitude to fill my heart, my body, my mind, my consciousness, my very being. This gratitude radiates out from me in all directions, touching everything in my world, and returns to me as more to be grateful for. The more gratitude I feel, the more I am aware that the supply is endless."
(Louise L. Hay)

Christmas biscuits

I know should have posted this a bit before Christmas!!
Anyway....here are the biscuits I made :o)

Halloween biscuits....Boo!

Halloween is one of those celebrations that mean very little to me, it doesn't really inspire me nor excites me.
I saw in my "Cookie craft" book an idea of a halloween house using boiled candies for the windows that really looked cool, so I got some candies and I tried to do something different myself. At the beginning I was just going to make some circles with candy in the center and some royal icing, but as I was cutting circles I saw a little face taking shape... and I loved it.

Then with an oval cutter I cut more cookies using the orange dough, cut some letters using the green dough and put them together as you see in the following picture, I added candy inside the letters to make them look a bit bloody:


When I had them all ready, I put them in clear bags with orange and black ribbon, they looked great!.

Watermelon biscuits

One of my friends, who feeds my passion for English pottery, came to visit me with some nice tea cups and saucers the other day, I thought she was selling them to me, but she asked me if she could exchange them for some cookies as she had a gathering coming on....sure!.
I made these watermelon cookies, put them in clear bags and attached a nice label to promote my "sweet art".

They were very tasty and as my friend said afterwards....a complete success! :o)

Cookies with a WOW factor

I was waiting for another excuse to bake more cookies. There was a birthday coming for someone very special in the family. I showed her all the cookie cutters I had and asked her to choose her favourites. I'm very glad that among them, she picked the ice cream one as I was dying to decorate it!, here's the result.

I had around 3 dozens of cookies to decorate and it took me 5 hours, I loved every single minute of it! yaaaaay!!!!.
I prepared a nice box for her and gave her a dozen of cookies. Then I put others in cute clear bags to give to the other members of the family and friends who went to the party.


These are the other ones I made:

Boats and chicks...

And these cute pigs....OINK!

I used the chocolate roll out cookies recipe that appears in the "Cookie Craft" book and also the royal icing recipe which is really good.

These cookies definately had the WOW factor :o)

Lavender cookies

After I bought the book "Cookie Craft" I have been thinking and even dreaming about cookies... the book is so inspirational!!!....the photographs, tips, recipes, tricks.....hmmm perfect!, honestly, if you're interested in cookie decoration THIS is the right book.

I was so eager to start using the ideas and techniques from the book that I dashed to get all what I needed, although I forgot the squeeze bottles, more pastry bags and extra nozzles.....which I can't find easily where I live. When I visited a friend the other day I remembered that I saw a pack of 4 sauce bottles in a shop, very cheap, not the perfect ones, but they would definitely help, so I got them. The pastry bags and extra nozzles had to stay in my "wish list" for now. Not to worry :o)

As I got a pack of greeting cards with photographs of lavender, I thought it would be nice to use the same colors for my cookies :

It was great to experiment with royal icing as I have never used it before. It can be tricky, I made some mistakes...that I ate afterwards :o)
I feel that I learnt a lot today and believe me.... I can't wait to decorate more!.

I'll put these in a clear bag with a nice ribbon plus a thank you card (the lavender ones...of course) to a very sweet friend of mine, Jacqueline, who sent me by surprise 5 pots of food coloring paste with a note that said "Happy baking and marzipal modeling"....isn't she nice!?.