Merry Christmas! Part 2

At the same time I was making the gingerbreads below, I also agreed to make sweets for the kita Weihnachtsfeier. Of course, cupcakes again, just becuase those are easy for little hands. However, becuase they kids are a little older and it is Christmas, I made full cupcakes and not minis. They are vanilla and red velvet (chocolate essentially) with cinnamon buttercream. It is good these are for kinders, becuase the buttercream was incredibly sweet. I think they were well received though. Toppers are marshmallow fondant trees decorated with quinns.

The striped cupcakes were done by putting the two different batters into seperate freezer bags, cutting off one corner and piping the layers directly into the cupcake cups before they were baked. The mixed flavor was a nice complement.

Merry Christmas! Part 1

These are cookies I made for my colleagues. Christmas ornaments made of gingerbread with royal icing. The red food color I used for the royal icing was a little bit of a problem, as always. The red is so hard to get right and takes so much coloring to get a decent shade that the icing eventually breaks down completely and turns into a watery mess. In this case I was able to rescue it using more powder sugar, but then the color was not what I was looking for. Luckily, the cookies still looked great once they were finished.

Also, the gingerbread, a Marth Stewart recipe I have been using for years (which includes a little bit of pepper!) turned out well and is even easier now that I can use the KitchenAid. As long as it isn't overcooked, the gingerbread stays moist, which is much nicer for a cookie, at least I think so.

The second shot is the packaging for the cookies I made, which was what started the cookie idea to begin with. I have been seeing these little personalised wrappers in the Amy Atlas candy buffets and I thought that I could find a way to make this myself. Surprising what you can do with Word and a color printer. Stay tuned for Christmas baking part 2, next post.