keep calm and dance on

i'm always on the lookout for cute cookie designs that i hope to do someday.  i save them to a pinterest board, so i can find them easily later on.  one of those was sweet sugarbelle's bowing ballerina cookies, which i was pretty excited to finally tackle last week.

i somehow managed to even have the same cookie cutter she used in my stash, which was awesome.  after the usual routine - mixing dough, rolling, cutting, baking, and finally flooding, i had a couple dozen of these all ready to decorate.

in her version, she also bakes a mini cookie to form the head and ballerina bun and then attaches it to the top with a little royal icing glue.  because i'm lazy and am always looking for a short cut, i let the bases dry and then tried my hand at simply freehanding the design on with frosting.  first, the face.

then, the hair:

doesn't look like much, huh?  but then we add that classic ballerina bun:

her outstretched arms:

and little eyes, shut tight.

then we add a little accent around the bun (because i didn't really have room to make a little flower) and lines for the tutu, and we have this:

it wasn't until after i had all two dozen of these little beauties all wrapped up and packed, ready to ship, when i remembered something:  the little birthday ballerina that these were for has a milk allergy.  this meant that i'd needed to use vegan butter in the cookie dough and an alternate to cow's milk in the frosting.  CRAP.

after exchanging a couple of frantic e-mails, i realized that i had just enough time to bake a dairy-free dozen and still get them to their destination with a day to spare.  when i told the hub what i was working on and said that i was going to use different colored ribbons on the special cookies, he suggested that i change the frosting colors instead.  that way there'd be no chance of getting them mixed up and no risk of causing an allergic reaction.  and so a dozen of these went out along with the others:

phew.  and now i have 3 sticks of vegan butter kicking it in the fridge, just waiting to be used.

plus, today i get to bake up half a dozen cookies to submit for judging in this year's culinary competition at the los angeles county fair.  i've managed to place in the top 3 for the last couple of years and i'm hoping to continue the winning streak.  they get dropped off at the fairgrounds tomorrow, and then a short wait until friday when the fair officially opens to see if i placed again.

wish me luck.