HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A collection of my 2014 work:

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Chocolate gingerbread with snowy landscape

I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas with this video!

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Gingerbread decoration for your Christmas table

Today I would like to share a few ideas about how to decorate your Christmas table with gingerbread.

This first picture is a white centerpiece made of bells and stars.

This napkin holder is made of two Christmas trees and an oval. There is also a rectangle piece inside to help the assembly. Step by step instructions for this project (and many more) are available in my Gingerbread Christmas Wonderland book.

This set of white napkin rings is very easy to make and nicely complements the white decoration.

The first piece of the holy set is a simple centerpiece. Just a big circle cookie with a big, fat candle.

And a napkin holder with the same holy pattern.

Finally some matching place cards.

You can also combine the napkin ring with the place card.

Some simple red and white candle holders.

All natural - chocolate gingerbread and regular gingerbread with white icing.

 Still the natural combination.

Red and white candle holder: powerful and elegant.

And finally the festive white and gold combination.

I hope you enjoyed this collection and I could give you some ideas...

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Gingerbread Christmas Ornament

I love Christmas trees with edible decoration. This is a collection of the gingerbread ornaments I made in the last two years. I hope more and more people will replace the plastic ornaments with these...

This is the simplest set ever. I just baked a variety of Christmas shapes and decorated with white royal icing.

Same simple decoration with a mix of regular gingerbread and chocolate gingerbread.

This set has a red base color and I also used flood icing to fill parts of the cookies.

The red color is a mixture of 1 egg yolk, 1 tbsp of milk and red gel paste food coloring. I use a brush to paint it on the cookie and let it dry before decorating with the royal icing.

These ornaments can make nice little gifts too, they just need a nice packaging. 

White flood icing with white icing makes elegant ornaments.

Adding some pictures to the white on white ornament. This can be a nice gift set for family members.

  

Still white, with some edible beads. 

 These sets use only one shape, but they are not boring.

Red and white combination: powerful and elegant.

And finally a white and gold set.

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Snowflake cookies

I love snowflake cookies. It's easy to make beautiful snowflakes, because symmetrical patterns always look great. And of course snowflakes are all different, just like in nature. This first picture is my 2014 snowflake set. I used gorgeous shiny blue edible pearls to decorate them. I found them in Hungary during my summer visit and could not wait to use them for my winter cookies

This is my very first snowflake set from 2013. Just white icing and the cookies. Also played with different shapes and sizes.

And here is the big snowflake. This is a giant cookie cutter with all the details built in it. It's a gorgeous shape and I used a few pink edible beads with white icing. This cookie is also from last year, you can find step by step instruction to make it in my book, Gingerbread Christmas Wonderland.

Enjoy the beauty of winter!

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Szaloncukor - The Hungarian Christmas Candy

This year I decided to decorate our Christmas tree with edible decoration. You might think that I am a little late... But in Hungary we decorate our Christmas tree December 24th and I still don't feel comfortable doing it earlier. So I still have time to work on the decoration.

The most important decoration of our Christmas tree is the special candy called "szaloncukor" it comes in different flavors and is always covered with chocolate. My kids' favorite is the marzipan filling. Something that is almost as hard to get here in the USA, as szaloncukor. Luckily both of them are available at some online retailer, so we are not completely deprived. But this year we made it from scratch.

To show you how important part of Christmas szaloncukor is, I have to tell you the story of my grandmother who was a child during World War II. Those were tough times and they were also poor. So they could not get szaloncukor for Christmas. But they saved the candy the wrappers of the szaloncukors from the previous year and they wrapped some sugar pieces in them, so they can hang them on the tree.

So let's see, how we did it this year.

First I made some marzipan, my kids' favorite treat. It has just a few ingredients: blanched and finely ground almonds, confectioners sugar and an egg white. That's it. In Hungary we can not imagine a birthday cake without a marzipan figure. They are totally cute and so much tastier than fondant! So I made the marzipan, cut it to candy sized pieces and put it in the fridge.

Then I melted some chocolate and dipped the marzipan pieces in it. It went to the freezer for a couple of minutes to harden the chocolate.

While I was working on the candies, the girls prepared the wrapping. We cut some squares from food safe tissue paper and Viola  cut the two ends of each to make it pretty.

We also needed some foil pieces. The candy goes to the tissue paper, then the foil and it's ready for the Christmas tree. Now, I just have to hide it well, so they actually make it there with my three kids in the house...

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Christmas tree cookie - variations for one cutter

I recently bought a 5 inch Christmas tree cutter and I decided to play with it a little. 

Let's see the result.

This first set is just simple cookies. I started with green flood icing on all of them, just the decoration is different.

 This is the ideal project of we work with kids: just a few Christmas sprinkles decorate this tree.

 This tree is decorated with white icing, using brush embroidery. We will make this cookie Monday during class at Gallery 916.

 This tree has some curly curves and a few golden pearls make it more festive.

The lines on this tree are painted with green twinkle dust and I added some silver pearls in two different sizes. This looks gorgeous in person, I would definitely need to work on my photo skills to be able to show all the lights and sparkles.

The next set is a few Christmas tree candle holders. I cut a hole in the middle of the cookie after baking, when it was still warm. I also baked some circle cookies to put under the candle.

 This is the back side. The candle sits on the circle cookie. The two pieces are grued together with the icing.

 This candle holder has a little brush embroidery with the same color as the flood icing and a bead border around the candle.

 Just a few lines and a few silver pearls...

 ... and the gold version.

And yes! I run out of the flood icing before icing the last cookie. But I did not mind too much: decorated the bare cookie with green icing and I like the result.

 Here, instead of the circle base, I baked together two trees to make a nice base for my candle and placed the third tree in the middle. 

Will you decorate some Christmas tree cookies this year?

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Gingerbread candle holder

We don't always have a lot of time for decoration, but still want it to be beautiful and unique. These candle holders are truly pretty and they can be decorated really fast. They can make a nice little gift around Christmas.

For each candle holder I baked two snowflakes using my yummy gingerbread recipe.

When the cookies were still warm, I cut out a circle from one of the snowflakes with a round cutter that is large enough to fit a candle inside.

I let the cookies cool completely, then made simple white, piping consistency royal icing.

First I decorated only the tips of the bottom snowflakes (we don't see much of them). Then used royal icing to glue the second snowflake (the one with a hole) on top. Put a tea light candle inside and decorated the top snowflake.

If you look closely, you will see, that the middle is the easiest pattern ever. Just a few straight lines to make the snowflake, a few dots to fill the gaps and an outline. And still, how pretty it is?

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.