Happy spring!

I hope April is turning out beautifully for you. I thought I’d share with you a couple cookie designs I made for a bridal shower a few weeks before the Easter bunny left us with the flu!  We much rather preferred chocolate bunnies left for us but apparently he didn’t get the memo!  Bad bunny!!

While watching re-runs of Celtic Thunder that seemed to always be on PBS that made me feel like a middle-aged groupie that you see in the audience shots and any movie I could find while recuperating, I had fun with an app called “BokehPic”.  It added the delicious lights of confetti. So fun to play around with. 🙂

I’ve made champagne cookies before but I wanted a saucer shape this time. I didn’t have a cutter so I hand cut over 50 of these. Unless the dough is very, very cold when the knife cuts the dough like buttah, the dough can pull with the knife drag and make rough edges.  You can smooth it and put the cut cookies back in the fridge but I think next time I’m going to have a custom cookie cutter made so it goes much faster. I made the stems of the glasses a little thicker than I normally would because it was supposed to have rained for the bridal shower and it was going to be held outside in a tent. I didn’t want any thin cookie stems breaking at the party when guests held them up to toast the couple!

When I’m in cookie production mode, I like to make as many shapes as I can before I bake because the kitchen starts to get too warm for the dough.

This is what I do:

• I take a half-sheet pan and line it with a Silpat mat or parchment paper.
• I begin to cut out as many shapes that will fit in one layer on the cookie sheet.
• I refrigerate the full cookie sheet.
• By the time I cut more shapes, the first layer of cookies have chilled and hardened. I then stack the first layer of cookie shapes on top of each other to make room for more cookie shapes on the sheet. The chilled and harden cookie shapes will not stick to each other so this works well to save space.
• With all the cookies cut out and chilled, I place however many I can on room temp parchment-lined cookie sheet to bake.  It’s important the cookie sheet you put into the oven not be chilled as this effects the baking time of the cookie and the cookies will have a tendency to brown on top while not being fully baked because of the cold metal.
• I work alternating 3 cookie sheets, one to bake, one that is cooling off and one that will be ready to go for the next batch. Eventhough I have two ovens that are both convection, I only use one oven and one rack at a time. I feel, for me, they just turn out better this way.

I hope this makes sense because this approach has really helped to streamline my cutting and baking process with using minimal refrigerator space too.

Confession time. I have horrible handwriting and it’s even worse in icing so I only made a few fancy “S”‘s and “D”‘s for the engaged couple’s initials.

For the mini gold heart bubbles, I made a “paint” of edible gold luster dust and vodka and painted over tinted gold icing. You can see the color of the icing on the “D” before I added the gold paint.

For the gold heart cookie, I brushed them with dry gold luster dust.  It makes for a softer gold color and not as metallic.

To ice the mini heart cookies, I dipped them in thinned royal icing.

Recently, I ordered stickers from Sticker Mule to add onto the boxes of finished cookies. I think it’s a nice look and it holds the ribbon in place.  I always try to use a ribbon that corresponds to the cookie colors and design. I loved this light pink ribbon with it’s own bubbly look.

I’ve got quite a few cookie projects coming up, one party to welcome a little baby boy, one baby shower, a bridal shower and rehearsal dinner favors! On top of this we’ve been invited to Mumbai for a wedding in June!  What a birthday trip that would be for me!

First things first and I better get baking!

p.s. It seems a lot of you are making the Best Chocolate Cake Ever and letting me know! I’m so glad you are baking it, loving it and making it one of your own traditions. It’s fun to spread the chocolate love! 🙂

xoxo