Elegant Halloween cookies

Coming from Hungary, where Halloween is not a traditional holiday, I've never got the feel of it. This spooky holiday kept being strange for me. We used to celebrate "day of the dead" November 1st, when we remembered those who have passed. I tried to combine the playfulness of Halloween with my feelings of the day of the dead.

Wanted to do an elegant black and white designs, using traditional Halloween shapes smoothing the contrast of black and white with a layer of pearl sheen. 

A tombstone with black rose and vine was the first design that came to my mind. I had some white royal icing roses, I just needed to paint them black.

Then added the same rose to the little cheerful bat.

 The ghost did not need contrasting color, I kept its rose white.

 The little pumpkin did not need a rose at all, its leaves with vines help it blend in pretty well.

Originally I did not plan a centerpiece for this set, but during my Texas trip, I received this gorgeous stencil designed by Jennifer at Make it Sweet and created by 2T's Stencils. Yes, you guessed, I had to try it! I've never ever used a stencil before and it is so much fun!

And speaking of firsts, I've never used my airbrush before either. But I also received a bottle of Dinkydoodle Mother of Pearl airbrush color, that begged me to be part of this project. So I took my airbrush out for the very first time and did it! This color is amazing! It's practically dry seconds after it lands on the cookie, and I am not a great photographer and sheen is hard to see on pictures, but I think you can see on this one how amazing this pearl color is:

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

3D winter scene - Santa's sleigh

I love 3D creations and always wanted to create a Santa's Sleigh. I designed a cutter set and Cookie Cutter Kingdom created it for me. Did you know, that they have a great custom order tool now? If you have a jpg picture of the shape you need, then your cutter is just a few clicks away. I love this tool.

First I baked all the pieces (using the recipe of the 3D hearts): 2 sides, bottom, back, front and the 2+2 reindeer. 

Used brown egg yolk glaze to color (see recipe at 3D hearts) all pieces and decorated the pieces using royal icing.

 I glued together the open legged reindeer with his closed legged buddy.

Now he has 4 legs.

This way it will be easier to stand him up.

Then I laid one side of the sleigh down and glued the bottom and the back to it.

I added the front panel.

Finally glued the other side on top. My icing dries pretty fast, after 30 minutes I could work on it.

I used bead border to hide the glue and to decorate the top.

I coated a cake board with a layer of icing for base and glued the parts on top. When it dried, I added a few icing lines to connect the deer with the sleigh and each other.

I hope you like this project! If you make it, please send me a picture. If you need the cutters, find them at https://www.etsy.com/listing/616162076/santas-sleigh-and-reindeers-cookie?ref=shop_home_active_1&sca=1.

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Blue Christmas ornaments

This set is almost the same, as the red and green ornaments with lace I posted a few weeks ago, just a little easier, as the lace is white, so it's not painted.

I started with ornament shapes of Cookie Cutter Kingdom.

Flooded all cookies white.

And painted the cookies with TruColor airbrush colors Deep Blue Shine and Sky Blue Shine. I love these all natural, bright and shiny colors.

The decoration is a simple white lace.

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Baking with cookie molds

In my book Gingerbread Academy there is a chapter about baking with cookie molds. I will be honest with you: working on the book with Aniko was the first time I made molded cookies and also the last - until now.

I just came back from CookieCon, where I got this gorgeous cookie mold from Springerle Joy. Just looking at it makes me happy. You can imagine, how excited I was to play with it!

And the time has arrived! I had some construction gingerbread ready and my friend came over for a cookie play date. (What a blessing is to have the kids at school - the past 10 years only they had play dates.)

This picture shows the pure beauty of the molded cookie. I left it as it is, just brushed with a little water when I took out of the oven, to enhance the natural color.

This cookie got this nice color and shine when I brushed it with egg yolk right after baking. Egg whites give the same shiny look without the yellowish tone. (See the big hearts of the cover picture. The left one is brushed with yolks, the right one with egg whites. They are both shiny, but their color is slightly different.)

This cookie is colored with the egg yolk glaze. I mixed one egg yolk with one tbsp of milk, divided it in 3 cups and added gel food colors to the mixture.

 I also made bigger heart cookies. I pushed the mold into the middle of the big heart shape and decided to highlight the beauty of the molded pattern with a lace border.

Would you like to play with molds? Check out Springerle Joy, they have hundreds of gorgeous antique replicas! So hard to choose!

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Christmas ornaments with lace

I decided to create new ornaments for this season. When I was a child we had some fancy shaped glass ornaments, I wanted to create something similar.

I designed these shapes. Cutters are now available at Cookie Cutter Kingdom.

Flooded each cookie with white icing.

And painted them with gorgeous and healthy TruColor colors. I chose Super Red Shine and Holly Green Shine. They come in powder form, I use distilled water to dilute as much as I need.

I wanted to decorate them with golden lace, so I made some yellowish icing. It will look nice with the gold paint.

When the lace was ready I let it dry completely.

Then I painted the lace with TruColor Gold Shine. I love to use this color instead of the "non toxic" gold dusts available on the market. 

I still need to learn how to make nice pictures of shiny cookies, but I hope you still like it!

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.