Champagne Flute Decorated Cookies

I'm popping the cork this Valentine's to say ...

You go to my head, Valentine!


If you wish to toast your love or friendships this Valentine's Day these cookies couldn't be easier to make.

Draw a champagne flute out of card stock to use as a cookie cutter template.
In-fill with thinned golden colored icing (I used Ameri-Color Gold with just a touch of Wilton Lemon Yellow), sprinkle gold dragees (I used small and large sized) from the bottom up to look like rising bubbles. In-fill the glass stem and the upper glass rim with thinned white icing. That's all there is to it.
Cheers!

Soon I'll be toasting a new blog in addition to Pink Martinis and Pearls so I hope you'll join me there too .
It will be a place we can go ga-ga with cookies with more how-to information and detailed photos but it won't be all cookies all the time but other pretty things from the kitchen as well.

In the meantime, make today a celebration and have a wonderful day! xoxo

Cookie Decorating Tip: Glass Heart Cookies

That's what I call these cookies that have a melted hard candy center. I make them every year but this time I'm going to show you how to make them too.

You'll need cinnamon candies or red lollipops or Life Savors.
Any hard candy that is red.


Pulverize the candy to a powder.
I use my Cuisinart Mini Mate Chopper. It does a fabulous job in a few pulses.


Spoon the candy powder into a cutout space you've made in your cookie from a smaller heart.

My cookie recipe bakes at 375 which is hot enough to melt the candy during baking time. I specifically don't use a lower temp. convection setting to bake them. The temperature has to be hot enough to get the job done before the cookies burn.

I use a Silpat baking sheet liner so the cookie comes right off.

Glass Heart Cookies.


Enjoy! :)

Royal Icing Recipe

It's Always Sunny In.... Coto

When you think of SoCal do you think of mountains and green rolling hills? The green won't be here for long so I'm really making a point of enjoying our spring weather. I'm very fortunate to live in a pretty location and I know I don't always appreciate my surroundings as I'm driving in and out so I grabbed my camera yesterday and took some photos on my way out. One rule I adhered to was to take the photos from the car from the routes I usually take either coming or going.


One of the many Coto windmills.

The Saddleback mountains and the 'old' golf course with another windmill.

The 'new' course and golf club.

Always breathtaking.

And patriotic.

And there really are oranges in the OC.

I was hoping to see some colts or foals but it must be too early.

But I did see a couple of miniature horses.

Maybe one day they'll play here.
Don't quite understand a small dirt arena for polo, do you?

"Arff!"

It wouldn't be SoCal without prickly pear cactus too.

I knew I was drawn to the plant for a reason ~
Prickly Pear Margarita
And it's pink!

Have a wonderful Wednesday! :)

Cookies, Picnik and Bokeh Hearts!

Originally this was going to be a post on a Valentine's Day cookie with a familiar look but I decided to share my heart bokeh find with you. You know what bokeh is, right? ~the little glittery out of focus lights on your photo.

Cookie Note~
I created this decorated cookie design for my niece's nautical themed wedding this past September but with pink hearts they're perfect for Valentine's Day too.

Nautical Wedding Part 1
Nautical Wedding Part 2
Nautical Wedding Part 3

Okay, back to bokeh ~

Because my camera and I don't seem to be getting along very well lately, I Picnik-ed the heck out of both photos. If you aren't familiar with Picnik it is a free online photo editing site that allows you to have a lot of fun by adding text, frames, graphics, making collages and offering a lot of very cool things to preoccupy your day when you know you should be doing something else of much greater importance.

For both the cookie photos I added a fun effect called Bokeh Hearts. You can find it by going to the Create tab, then the Seasonal tab, then Valentine's Day. You will find Bokeh Hearts there. They also have Glittery Stars - oh-so-pretty.

Here is some fun I had on Picnik with a holiday photo of my guys. This was especially for College Boy2 who muses he is missing the beard and chest hair gene that runs in the Norwegian side of the family. With a click on Picnik he now has Santa subtle stubble!
Ho! Ho! Ho!


Here's another example of a photo with and without the Heart Bokeh and added text.


I wish I could make my cookies with bokeh!
(More on the champagne flutes cookies next week.)

This is addicting. I better go and actually do something of much greater importance.

Have a marvelous Monday and a terrific week, friends!

I Should Really Get Out More Often or Should I?

Saturday was date night per se. We drove up PCH through Laguna Beach for dinner at Modo Mio. The sunset was gorgeous after a crystal clear day reaching into the high 70's. This is an unexpected little jewel of a restaurant in the Crystal Cove center between Laguna and Newport Beach. The food is very good and it's nice to know you can still get cozy ambiance with table linens and an entre under $20.
This makes me want to get out more often.

We then continued up PCH to Newport to the Big Newport theater. What makes it 'big'? The main theater holds 1,108 and is not the typical stadium seating. The floor gradually inclines and the screen is huge - 40' x 80', the largest on the west coast, so the website says. The room is cavernous and unexpected and is a real treat to watch a movie in this setting.

We had just come from another screening room, still quite impressive with a big screen albeit with less seating, having seen True Grit (recommended) and we thought we'd hit the late night showing of The King's Speech. Mr. PM and I were numbers 3 and 4 to sit down. Then it happened ~ numbers 5 and 6 sat right in front of us!! Come on! They had 1,104 other seats to chose from! Both Mr. PM and I burst out laughing and the guy asked us if we would like them to move. I was dumb struck. First, from the obvious and second, that if he had to ask wasn't that a clue he could be more considerate without our prompting? For some reason, I think I was still in shock from his audacity, I told him if we needed to move we would. Mr. PM was more tolerant (and taller) than I and of course I couldn't let this go. I was comically ticked that there were over 1,100 seats to chose from and he and his date chose the only 2 that would obscure our view. We moved over about 4 seats to the left. About 10 minutes later another couple sat in front of us - again! There were still over a thousand seats to chose from. What were the odds? We then moved over to the far right of the original screen blockers and I put my bag in the seat in front of us just in case until the movie got started. In total there were only about 20 people in the theater when the movie began.
It's moments like these that makes me wonder why I go out.
It's Colin Firth's acting that makes me happy I did.

Cookie Decorating Tip: Straight Lines

This past weekend I was making some sample Valentine's Day cookies and I needed very straight lines to create a dotted Swiss look.


First, I thought to use a ruler marking the cookie with an edible pen but using a ruler is cumbersome and I didn't want hard contact on the cookie. I decided to place a string over the cookie and secure the ends with tape on my pastry board. The string acted as my guideline. For every new row of dots I slid the cookie up each time.

It worked out great.
I just eyeballed how far apart to make the dots. If I wanted to get exact I could have used a soft tape measure but the thinness of the string allowed me to see more of the cookie surface as I went along.

Not a fancy trick but it worked for me. :)

Have a terrific Tuesday, friends!

Emerald Earrings 'as seen on TV'

I must confess.
I'm watching the Beverly Hills Housewives franchise this season.
I didn't mean to, honest, but I was bewitched by the jewelry. Particularly by the emerald earrings Kyle wore. I can't even believe I dare to name one of the characters on my blog. This is where jewelry will take me.

These are the earrings that fueled my weakness.
Did you see how gorgeous they looked against Kyle's dark hair?
Faux.
No doubt like many other "accessories" on the show, if you know what I mean.

By Jennifer Miller

Very Angelina.


So, confession time. Are you watching the finale this week?

I am. Let's just say the jewelry is making me do it.

Me and Martha!

Yesterday I got an email from Martha Stewart. Well, sort of. My banana cookies photo was chosen to be a featured photo on Dreamers Into Doers on marthastewart.com. I don't know how it was chosen, could be random for all I know, but it was fun yesterday telling my family members Martha and I were BFFs!! HA!

Seeing my photo on Martha's site...
"It's a good thing".


Have a good weekend, friends.
Next week I promise something besides banana cookies!

Going Ape Over Decorated Banana Cookies!

I had so much fun coming up with a creative idea for the presentation of family memberships for our local zoo for a give-away. The business who sponsored the give-away asked me to come up with something that would coordinate with such a nifty gift.

My project began with this...
...membership certificates in a paper scroll.

The presentation possibilities were endless but you know me...

... 'cookies must be involved!'

The zoo is known for their monkey exhibit and what is more fun than monkeys?

I found this Curious George-esque fella at Toys R Us.


So friendly, don't you think?

And what goes with monkeys? Bananas!


And what's better than a few bananas? A bunch of them!


I wanted the cookies to be more than just yellow crescents so I rubbed on petal powders in orange, brown and green to add some shading giving them more depth.

I drew the stems and tips on the bananas with an Ameri-Color brown edible ink pen.


'Ripeness' was added by dipping a toothbrush into a cocoa mixture and flicking it over the cookie for those little brown specks.



I did this only on a few cookies because I didn't want the bunch to look like they were all destined to become banana bread.


I couldn't believe the ribbon I found at Michael's with adorable monkey faces.
I couldn't wait to get home a make a bow with accent color ribbon.
Is anyone else like that?


George is enjoying the late afternoon sun of a day that reached 72 today.
I promise spring will be here, and it's coming to the mid-west, northeast and south too.
But we're going to keep it over here for awhile longer. :)


George was finished with a wrap of poofy cellophane, a big beautiful bow and a custom made tag of the sponsoring company's logo. He also found a new friend and family today.

Next week another lucky winner will be chosen.

I hope the winners' visits to the zoo are more fun than a barrel full of monkeys!

Tuesday

Hello friends! Thank you for your patience while I attended to real life last week. I had a huge list to accomplish and I got all of it done except one! I've also been rockin' the new year with 2 - 4 hour lunches with girl friends and today's included 3 martinis! By 5 o'clock we even contemplated ordering appetizers for dinner accompanied by another martini. I felt so decadent.
I've had a great year so far. I hope you have too! :)

I also took an online photography class last week which means I really messed up my camera settings and can't get them back to normal without reading the manual. In class I figured out the ISO on digital cameras takes the place of film speed. It was my complete 'ah-ha' moment. If I'm wrong don't tell me. I was so proud of myself. The instructor then gave a short explanation on the concept of film and film speed for those who might have thought Kodachrome was only a song by Paul Simon. What? Who? Right. Which made me wonder ~
Who among you has never used film?!?
Go ahead, this you can tell me. I can't feel any older.

Two pictures (below) I did manage to take in natural light. It's the artificial light pics that are way off so I have to wait until daylight and wait until I have my camera again. Mr. PM and I share when he needs it for work. I have my eye on a Nikon D7000 clearly realizing I am not worthy.

Anyway tomorrow's post is about a creative project that includes decorated cookies and this adorable guy...

and this place...

So stay tuned. It's been a barrel full of monkeys over here!

Today.

Work piled up.
Offices neglected.
Wrapping/junk room to be dismantled.
Calendars needing to be updated.
Copy to revise.
Photos to edit.
Website to complete.
Cookies to decorate.
Decorations needing to be put away.
One son back at college.
The other to return tomorrow.
Overwhelmed but functional.
Wonderfully hungover on holiday happiness.

Got to get crackin'.

What does today have in store for you?