Minecraft, take 2... this time with more FLAVOR :)

So I met the sweetest girl at CookieCon last November named Rachel. She lives in Wisconsin and is an aspiring, and super talented, pastry "artist" of all types of tasty treats. She saw my Minecraft cookies from before and asked for some to give her husband, Luke. While I know Rachel is perfectly capable of making her own cookies, I decided to do something extra special... just for them so don't ask  I took all the little bits of flavored dough I had in the freezer and made a variety platter for them. Vanilla bean, Red Velvet, Lime, Chocolate, Lemon and Gingerbread. Today is Luke's birthday... Happy Birthday Luke!

Doctor Who... Happy Birthday Casey

Happy New Year... Cape Cod style

I friend asked me to make some New Years cookies to send her family who lives in Cape Cod. I was given freedom to do anything I wanted so I challenged myself to do something in all white to go with the orange gingerbread flavor. This set was a lot of fun and even though there wasn't any color I really liked all the texture and detail I got. The seagulls were my favorite :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Here is what my kitchen looked like at 7 am this morning... these were all naked when I got home from work at 6 pm last night. All in all there were about 460 cookies decorated for a work Christmas bazaar. I did Sweet Sugarbell's Orange Gingerbread cookie recipe along with my own Eggnog and Candy Cane flavors this year. I found the cutest bags at Target and Hobby Lobby and tried to do cookies to match. It was a lot of work but they were very well received... next year I may have to do more ;)

Christmas Time...

I tried 2 different recipes for Christmas this year... Orange Gingerbread courtesy of Sugarbelle (orange gingerbread recipe), and Vanilla Eggnog, that I made up on the fly. Overall I wanted to keep a really fun and traditional look to these. I gave away way more of these than I was able to keep... I think I was decorating gingerbread in my dreams :) Everyone seemed to love them though, and I can't wait till next year to see what fun flavors we come up with.

Summer Gingerbread

I read about this recipe here and just HAD to try it. My husband had a coworker who is leaving this week and shared that he used to love a gingerbread lemon cake his mom made for him growing up. I thought these would be the perfect going away gift... something different, delicious, and deceptively easy to make. This was my first time making anything "gingerbread" and I have to admit I was a little scared, but they came out delicious. I highly recommend you make them today, or better yet let me know and I'll make you some because this recipe is some of the tastiest bowl licking material ever made.

P.S. There were only 3 cookies left when I got home so I had to get a picture QUICK before they all disappeared, sorry there isn't a better shot of them all (for reference, I made half of her recipe and it made 24 cookie sandwiches).