under the sea

first of all - happy birthday to my mommy!  love you, see you tonight!

ooh, and i got to contribute my first article for a local parenting website.  it's run by one of the girls i met in the JLP, and she asked me if i had time to write a little suh-in' suh-in' for national chocolate chip cookie day.  well, hell - more exposure for this little ol' blog?  sure!  i decided to share my experience with those fantastic oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies, and if you're bored enough, the article is here.

another of my JLP buddies had contacted me several months ago to see if i'd be interested in making the cookie favors for her cousin's baby shower.  she was even willing to track down the cookie cutters she wanted and have them shipped to me.  there were two fish cutters, a seashell and a crab.  easy peasy, lemon squeezy. 

i'd overestimated how much dough i needed and found myself with a good amount of it leftover.  and so because the hub was going to a BBQ with his cigar-smoking buddies, i thought i'd make him a plate of fun cookies to take along with the homemade ice cream i had chilling in the freezer.  i took a doggy bone-shaped cutter, bent it a little, and ended up with the perfect shape.

yeah, yeah, i know.  I KNOW.  but the bean had other ideas - she took one look and asked me why i was making cookies shaped like a pickle.  i almost pissed myself.

decorating the sea-themed cookies was fun.

except that the next morning, like the bachelorette cookies - the icing was still tacky and would most definitely stick to the bags i was going to package them in.  crapola.  i'd even left them in the oven with the light on overnight, but apparently that still wasn't enough to dry completely (cookiers, WTF am i doing wrong?  i've been thinning and tinting my royal icing the same way for months now!).  but since i was semi-prepared for it this time, i busted out some sanding sugar and put the bean to work.  she was more than happy to help me fix "nemo."

 

and then i realized that i didn't have any red sanding sugar for the crab-shaped cookies.  bah!  so i took a tip from one of my favorite cookiemakers and dyed my own.

after letting the sugar dry for a while, i was pleased to see that it turned out just fine.

except that there were a couple of casualties as i packed them in the bags and tied the ribbons on.  oops.

and those cigar cookies - still not the best, but fairly recognizable, don'tcha think?

i'd had so much fun making those eyes on the crab cookies that i decided to make some for use another time with the shitton of leftover royal icing i had.

i always feel like...somebody's waaaaaaaaaatching meeeeeee...