A Very Very Merry Christmas!

 

Hooray I have a camera again! Actually, I always had a camera I just couldn't upload pictures, so, hooray I can upload pictures again! And just in the nick of time to show you all the Christmas cookies my niece and I made.

We had a great time decorating. Remember I used Martha Stewart's recipe for Cinnamon Sugar Cookies and for the icing I like to make a sugar icing which I prefer much much more than the regular royal icing. This icing does dry hard but not quite as hard and it has a nice matte finish.

For the icing you will need to mix:

1 cup confectioner's sugar

4 teaspoons milk

2 teaspoons light corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

And that's it! Very easy and I just looooooooove the fact that it has no egg whites!

On to the cookies! I had gotten some squeeze bottles earlier in the day so that it would be easier to pipe the outlines and flood the cookies. Here's my niece working hard on a Christmas bell. She's so focused! She wanted them to be perfect and smooth. This is actually the only good picture of her I have, or let's say it's the best picture out of all the not so great pictures I have do to lighting issues.

After flooding came the dots, lines, sprinkles, Christmas colored nonpareils, sanding sugar, star sprinkles, tree sprinkles, big polka dot kind of sprinkles and whatever we could think of!

 

Here's a shot of some of our finished work! Aren't they really cute?

She came up with those squiggly lines and stars , I'm so proud!

We're probably leaving some out for Santa and having the rest tonight after dinner!

I would like to wish you all a very very Merry Christmas and I hope that you have a wonderful night with your loved ones which are the best presents we could ever get.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!! 

Christmas and no camera!

Indulge Desserts

I still have no camera!! Can you believe it?  I know I can't! Which is why today my pictures come from some of my very talented friends at Flickr. I have linked their names to their Flickr photostream. That first picture is from Indulge Dessets, she's just amazing, here cookies are out of this world!

That said, this post is about Christmas cookies.  What's Christmas without Christmas cookies right? I mean come on! They are so pretty and so festive that you feel bad about eating them. But are they really good or they just there to look pretty?

I love decorated cookies. I'm in awe at the things I see sometimes, and even though it is hard work to make really pretty cookies I enjoy doing it.

This year I wanted Christmas cookies that weren't the regular sugar cookies or gingerbread people. I wanted Christmas with a little kick, so I thought that sugar cinnamon cookies could be really good and a nice twist to the same old same old.

So I turned to the ever wonderful multitasking goddess that is Martha Stewart to try out her Cinnamon Sugar Cookies. 

These cookies were really good and of course easy to make, but I couldn't really taste the cinnamon. That's the only downside to the recipe, otherwise, the dough is a delight to work with and they plump up and bake beautifully!

Hopefully I will be able to show you my decorated Christmas cookies and a little more of what I've been baking before Christmas. Keep your fingers crossed, I know I am...

In the meantime enjoy these beautiful Christmas creations!

A Little Sugar

Happy Cakes

Katis Kupcakes

Mio Cupcakes

Smiley's Sweets

Aren't they absolutely fantastic?????