Oh Baby, Baby, Baby (Cookies)

Alright... I guess I've put this off long enough.*


You may or may not remember when I lost my mind over some royal icing in a condiment squeeze bottle. Well... that went down while I was painstakingly (it really wasn't that bad) piping out the decorations for these subtle, white on yellow cookies.

But these were no decorate-for-the-heck-of-it cookies. No ma'am. These cookies had a purpose. An inspiration. A (horrors!) deadline.


My friend Katie is having a baby and my friend Blair was throwing a shower. So... the only smart thing for me to do for both of them was... well... bake.

And since I'd recently seen this post on monogrammed cookies, I thought I'd try my hand at some flowers and swirlies.


I think they turned out really well. The flooding (the yellow base icing) was not my best work. I let the piped edge dry too much before I filled the cookies in, so you can see where one stops and the other begins. Not an eye sore, I don't guess, but also not amazing.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I had about an hour and a half to flood these cookies before I was picked up for a Project Runway finale festivus. I might have left the house in heels and a shiny blue dress, but I'm pretty sure I had some icing on my arm. You can take the girl out of the kitchen, but you can't take the kitchen out of the girl.


Anyway... the next day, the cookies were shoved in a big Ziploc bag for the 3 hr roadtrip to Katie's. They made it without incident and I think they went over pretty well.

If you want to know the details of how these cookies came to be, you can find it all right here.

Brownie Roll Out Cookies & Royal Icing recipes
Monogrammed Cookie tutorial

Oh... and I also helped the girls bake iced tea, margarita, and coconut lemon snowball mini cupcakes.



So... if you have a baby shower that needs catering... Call me. ;)

*It's an inside joke, but I'll let you in on it since we're friends. An admittedly odd friend's wife once prefaced her "Hi, I'm _______" with that very sentence. She had invited me to her house, but she made it extremely clear that meeting me was not high on her list of anticipated experiences. That fateful night still cracks me up. It ended worse than it began, if you can believe it.

Video Post: Straw that broke the camel's back, I guess.

I'm a rational person. I keep it on the level. I'm not easily chuffed.

That said... I don't hesitate to share what's on my very rational, very straightforward mind.

That's exactly what happened today while the camera rolled...



Sorry about the angle... you got a lot of chest and only half of my head. I realize that... but I was focusing on the icing until the rant began. Hey... I'm just taking my cues from the professionals.

Like Giada...


This chick... (anyone know?)


Rachael Ray...


and I can't mention Food Network cleavage without my nemesis, Sandra Lee...


Holy Cow. Anyway... see... you came to my blog to see what I was yammering about... but then you got the fringe benefit of cleavage. Don't say I don't love you, reader.

Julie, Julia, and Amanda (Part 1)

Now I've done it. I've cut the dickens out of my finger!

(Not really. But who doesn't love that skit?)

Anyways... this weekend I was invited to a little shindig. Here's the deal (broken down like those invitations you wish you got to the popular kids' parties in middle school).

What: Julie & Julia Dinner Party

When: Saturday, Feb. 6, 6pm until...

Where: Blair's

What to Bring: A Julia Chid dish and copies of the recipes to share.

Sounds simple enough, right?

And it was...

Until I woke up the morning of the party (alright, alright, it was 11am... which is still technically morning) and decided that - in addition to my Julia Child recipe that was mostly ready - I needed to bake and decorate Julia Child cookies.

Once I had a plan for the day that involved baking, decorating, and (most importantly) no paper grading, I jumped out of bed and into action.

I rolled out the leftover Brownie Roll-Out Dough that I had frozen the other day.


And I asked Twitter to spot the theme. For the record... no one even came close.


While the cookies cooled, I made the royal icing and got to the delicate, precise work of outlining the cookies. White first...


And here, dear readers, is the danger of using Ziploc bags instead of decorator icing bags. How-ev-er, this explosion can be easily avoided by putting less icing in the bag and double bagging those suckers. This one explosion was my only one all day.


But don't you worry... I made the absolute most of that one explosion by dropping the squooshed out royal icing in the eye of the stove. Brilliant, I know.

Back to the cookies... six hours after I sprang out of bed and into action... I had a collection of Julia Child themed cookies.


Et voila!

Hopefully, hoooopefully you can identify fish, onions, pots or cleavers (your choice), French flags, and wine glasses.

I for one was pretty pleased with the cookies. I know my royal icing skills aren't perfect, but I think they are serviceable and I'm having a lot of fun getting creative with the stuff. Next time I make and decorate cookies, I'm going to make one or two shapes and cut down on the ridiculous variance. I don't want to jump the shark.

Now, for those of you keeping track, I still haven't told you about my actual Julia Child recipe. That is a project for another day. Stay tuned!