Gingham Bunnies

Eggs are dyed, bunny has been visited, Easter basket prepared.  I know that Amelie went to bed dreaming of bunnies and eggs.  Even our prayer this evening included bunnies. Amelie's basket is full of books and little toys because we don't really eat candy in our house, but there is an exception of one necessary chocolate bunny and of course a white sugar cookie bunny.  My cookies were a bit of a mish mosh this year.  Some weird bohemian paisley rabbits....

 A couple traditional bunny scenes.....

And one new pattern that I love for spring and summer. Gingham!  Yes, they do have holes in their necks.  I was going to string them on a ribbon garland in front of the patio door but I didn't get to.

Summer picnic tablecloth cookies are in my imagination and now on my agenda.  Maybe some ants and picnic baskets....

I was so happy to find this stencil paper at Michael's.  I've been wanting to create stencils to be used with my airbrush. Luckily, I also own a Cricut machine.  In the picture below, you'll see this gingham stencil.  It was created using the Cricut and it's deep cut blade.  It was very easy, but required multiple cuts to break through the paper.  I'll be trying some more intricate designs.   Oooooo I just realized I could create monograms for cookies.  I guess you'll be seeing those soon too!

I thought you might like to see my airbrush area.  I use a trifold cardboard and some plastic sheeting over the countertop.  The first time I used the airbrush I tried gold food coloring and it turned out to be a beneficial choice.  It was a sunny day and beams of sunshine were filtering through the window.  You know how those sunshine beams show off all of the lovely dust dancing around your house?  Well, my dust particles were a very sparkly gold.  I realized then that at the very least something need to catch the overspray.  Until I could figure out a better solution, I'd also keep my airbrushing to a minimum until warmer weather came around and a box fan can be placed in the patio sliding doors with a spray station nearby.

Well, I hope everyone enjoys their Easter!  Have a great day!

Naughty Bunny

I'm a little late with this, but Happy Easter!

I spent quite a bit of time baking in preparation for Easter this year. I started with egg-less sugar cookies for Heather Picard's son Brayden.  He has an egg allergy and I was up for the challenge to find a tasty egg-less cookie recipe. They turned out great! In the process I came across a blog called "Egg Free Bakery." It's a great resource for anyone with this unfortunate allergy. I used a glaze instead of an icing, as the icing uses meringue powder. It was fun to see him scarf one down. I'm really bummed because I completely forgot to take a picture of the cookies!
Of course I had to make some regular old sugar cookies for my family for Easter. I chose a non- traditional color palette for my eggs.

The last time I was at Hobby Lobby I discovered an Americolor food dye called Ivory.  You would think that you could just add a bit of brown to make ivory but it turns out a lot different. Well, a lot different to me, but I'm a color nerd and I kind of like studying color. So you might not agree. I got on a kick and added Ivory to every color I used and it gave it a really unique tone.

I mentioned that I spent quite a bit of time baking this past week. I have been asked how long it takes to make a batch of sugar cookies.  A lot depends on how fancy I get with them and that is the fun part so I could spend hours and hours if I wanted to stay up all night.  Mixing, rolling, and cutting out about 18 cookies takes about an hour. Whipping up a batch of icing takes about half an hour. Coloring the icing and preparing the bags or bottles with tips takes an hour. Both the base layer and details of icing takes about 2 hours with clean up.  It's usually between 4-5 hours total. Yes, it's a long time, but I have never done it all in one day.  I break it all up over the course of several days so it doesn't seem like that much. I'm not really counting the time I take to come up with a design and draw it out but that part is fun and it's not always necessary if it's an easy cookie.

So needless to say I'm always looking for ways to shorten up the time it takes for everything but the actual icing details - I love that part. I've tried protecting my pastry bags with saran wrap for easy clean up which does sort of work.  And these new squeeze bottles that accommodate decorating tips, they work great!  I know most people can figure out how to do a simple batch of sugar cookies, but I've narrowed down some preparations that work great for me. I think I'll use a post soon to share some tips in case anyone out there might be trying it for the first time.

I also made a cake with a recipe from my mom. She found it on the Allrecipes website and it's a pretty tasty cake. It's a 9" round, 3 layer carrot cake with a crusting cream cheese frosting.  I saw a cookie with a bunny butt and I knew I had to use that somehow. What is better that a mischievous bunny stealing some carrots from the garden?  My husband wouldn't think that it's funny.  Every chance he gets, he protects our landscaping from the vermin with a bb handgun. It's makes me a little sad but I don't particularly enjoy our bushes eaten down to the ground either.

What a naughty bunny!

Here is our mischievous bunny in her pajamas having fun with her Easter basket.

I hope everyone had a great day!