“If you think you’re in France, you better look around.”
Today, before embarking on my Halloween cooking, we made our traditional Sunday trip to Top Pot for donuts. Boy, do I love that place, delicious donuts and fabulous coffee. Plus the boyfriend takes me there and let’s me dress up and wear boots and pretend I’m French. Apparently I looked French today as some crazy homeless guy told me if I thought I was in France, I better take a look around.
mmmmmmmmmmm
Onward, I have a problem. A real problem. One I thought The Boyfriend would help to squash once I moved here, turns out he just completely enables it. HE’S AN ENABLER. Good thing I’m not an alcoholic. The problem, oh yes, the problem, I buy things, things like dishes and cookie cutters. SO MANY DISHES AND COOKIE CUTTERS. I can’t help it, I love having new sets of dishes and cookie cutters. WHAT IF THE OPPORTUNITY COMES UP THAT I NEED TO MAKE HEDGEHOG COOKIES, THEN WE’LL REALLY FEEL STUPID WE DIDN’T BUY THAT SET OF COOKIE CUTTERS, WON’T WE!?? Luckily, The Boyfriend tends to agree, mostly because he likes cookies. On our monthly trip to Ikea this weekend I picked up a set of Christmas cookie cutters and somehow a new service for 6 set of white dishes snuck their way into our kitchen, then later that day we made a trip to THE SUPER-WALMART, YA’LL, to buy Halloween supplies and I cried like a little kid and threw a tantrum until he promised to buy me the giant set of Wilton Halloween cutters. I might have just promised cookies, but you know, whatever. It might be an issue when we had to purchase a giant storage device for my cookie cutters which will not fit into any cabinet in our kitchen, I already tried, but THINK OF ALL THE DELICIOUS COOKIES I CAN MAKE. Oh and Dad, DAD! Can you find the cookie cutters I left stashed at your house? I have some room now…
I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, The Boyfriend NEEDS SPACE TOO. But I’ll share a little secret with you. We have a storage unit. A HUGE storage unit. AND IT IS FULL OF THE BOYFRIENDS CRAP HE SAVES. The crap he saves for those hard, sad, long, cold days when he might need to read about his homework assignment from January 28, 1999. It’s an even trade.
Anyway, cookies, you know I love Alton Brown so I used his recipe, like usual, and also his recipe for royal icing which is painfully easy and so delicious it’s not even worth it to whip up a buttercream. Plus, royal icing is better for decorating cookies, it hardens well and honestly, it’s got a better color, it starts out perfectly snow whiteso you can tint it without having to remember that you need to make up for the yellow tint. So easy, whip together 3 egg whites and about a tsp of vanilla (I use my tried and true doubling of vanilla in all recipes tip on this one) until it is frothy, then add in 4 cups of powdered sugar, mix on a low speed until combined (I add in one heaping spoonful at a time to avoid dumping a giant amount in at once.) then when it is all mixed in beat on a high speed for about 5-10 minutes, until the mixture is whipped into glossy peaks. When you tint it, use gel colors, using the drops will water it down too much, just trust me on this one.
On to what you really care about…
I have been thinking for weeks about how I would like to add fondant spiders to the webs, and basically, they turned out famously.
The Boyfriend walked in and said “Wow! you put a lot of work into those spiders!!” Let me tell you, it may look liek they were really hard work. But in reality, they took all of about 2 seconds to assemble. I used the slightly old fondant in my fridge (I PROMISE I threw it away after these spiders) tinted a little bit black, rolled two balls one smaller than the other, attached them with a little vermouth on a paintbrush, then used frosting and piped on the legs. I know, right! It was super super easy and looks pretty awesome, I’ll admit it. NOT HUMBLE AT ALL.
In closing, I’m incredibly distracted by the fact we are watching Battle in Seattle and I am screaming out things like “OMG THERE’S THE CARWASH! OMG THERE’S (insert random Seattle place)!!!!” Trust me, go out and grab this movie, it’s amazing and apalling all at the same time. It’s about the WTO riots in Seattle in the 90′s. Plus you can see our beautiful metro buses in several different scenes.
October 12th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
You have hedgehog cutters? I love hedgehogs. I went to like 5 Targets in 100 mile radius looking for a onesie with hedgehogs on it (that is a boys but is still adorable so Charlie has to wear it.)
October 24th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Your cookies look so awesome! I’m doing a presentation on bass fish for school and we have to have a prop so I was thinking about making fish shaped cookies and decorating them to look like bass. Do you have any frosting tips?
October 26th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Janice, don’t ask why, but I’ve made fish cookies before. My suggestion is to mix up a grey-ish buttercream (Bass are grey, right?) and find a frosting tip that looks kind of like a C, I’ve used Wilton Tip 98 before, it looks pretty good. Do short little bursts of frosting as scales, then you can just add eyes and gills and whatever. I actually own a fish cookie cutter, so it’s definitely possible to get those. Try going to cake decor stores or kitchen supply stores and look through their cookie cutters, I’ve alwayshad great luck with weird cutters from those places. Also, remember, cookie cutters are made of a really maleable metal and if you find something that’s ALMOST right, you can stretch it and bend it to make it right (I once made a hand mirror cookie cutter into a bowling pin cookie cutter.) If you want to make the fins a little more sparkly you can get some stuff called petal dust (Wilton makes a pretty great set, you can get it at Joanns or Hobby Lobby or Michaels)
Does this make any sense? I really thought about doing a whole post about a fish cookie, but I just ran out of time! I don’t know when this project goes down, but maybe I’ll get it done before too long.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Thanks for the tips
You probably don’t remember but we’ve actually met a couple times before. My parents live across the street from Amy (the lady who owned the daycare) and I’m really good friends with Melanie. Melanie was the one that told me about your website. It’s really great. I wish I had more time for baking. I also moved to the pacific northwest. I’m living on the Oregon Coast, WAY different from Kansas, huh?
November 1st, 2009 at 3:34 am
OMG! Those cookies look amazingly awesome! I am way jealous, as I do not have such amazing cooking making capabilities!