Oranges and Lemons

Oranges and lemons, sold for a penny,

Oh, those school girls are so many!

The grass is green and the rose is red,

Remember me when I am dead-dead-dead-dead-dead!

Most of us have grown up singing/playing this rhyme and the game. Everyone holds hands in a circle, sings it and everyone falls down at the end of it. A simple, mindless game that has been an integral part of our childhood. But why am I mentioning it here you might ask?

That's because I have been on a cookie decorating spree lately and as always, I have to share my creations with you guys :) I found inspiration for these online, thanks to Google images, so I can't take credit for the idea, just for the inspiration and execution. Regardless, I'm glad that they turned out so well.. The oranges immediately reminded me of this rhyme and took me back to school days, playing with my friends in school :) Sigh!...

I made the baby feeding bottle cookies for a friend who is expecting and I'm mighty pleased with the results. Not too bad for a first time effort I would say, at the risk of blowing my own horn :p Jokes aside, currently, I feel there really isn't a greater joy than baking for loved ones and seeing their joy on receiving them. I packed a few goodie bags with these treats among others and hearing the gasps of joy made my day :) For all my guinea pigs out there, oops, I mean friends :p, many more goodie bags to follow. I've got a baking itch that just won't go away.

Do give me your feedback on them and also share any other ideas that you would like me to execute on a cookie.

As always, I have used a simple sugar cookie recipe (added orange and lime zest for the fruit cookies to give them that added flavour) and designed them using tinted Royal Icing. For the feeding bottle cookie, there's no tutorial as such, as it is self-explanatory. I made them without any fancy cookie cutter, it was completely freehand. The oranges and limes take a bit of know-how, so if you are interested in replicating them, do contact me if you have any queries, I'll be glad to help. I can make a step-by-step tutorial like I have done earlier and post that too if I get enough queries for the same. 

If these have inspired you, like I say always,  Get, Set Bake.

Black Sheep Cookies

Counting sheep?

I love decorating cookies. Till a while ago, cookies to me conjured up images of either standard cookie-shaped biscuits or plain round mounds of yummness, occasionally spattered with chocolate chips, fruits etc. But all that changed the day I discovered cookies decorated with royal icing. Soon I realised cookies can be a work of art by themselves. 
While mine are nowhere near art, yet, I do manage to have fun with them and hope to inspire you to do the same. I recently joined a group on FB that gets all 'black sheep' together in a forum. The ones who paved their own path, didn't go with the flow and followed their heart. Admit it, we all have a bit of a black sheep in us :) If you think you are a fellow black sheep, do join the group on FB here
For the very first meet (oh the stories and people, I felt more grey than black compared to some of the amazing people I met and their adventures :) ), I wanted to bake the members something. Any excuse to try and make something yum I tell you :)
I wanted to make cupcakes and decorate them as black sheep, but kept that for another day thanks to transport issues. So cookies they were and I came up with this:

Black beauties

 You can personalize your cookies any way you want. For instance, I used a basic sugar cookie recipe and baked the cookies. After that, all I did was flood the cookies in black Royal icing (recipe here) and then once it dried, I piped white dots on the edges and the lettering to commemorate the event. You need not be a piping expert for flooding and dots. The text requires a lil bit of practice, but if I can do it with no training whatsoever, so can you :)
Happy cookie decorating folks.