Melissa is Jeff's beautiful daughter, and I decided to give her a fancy box full of cookies for her 21st birthday. Mel likes my sugar cookies, and I was more than happy to put this together for her. Also in the box: a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces, one of my top 5 books, easily.
World premiere cookies: purses! These were a blast to decorate because with purses anything goes in terms of color and pattern. I particularly like the green one, and the yellow one is really strange and random. As with all of the cookies I make, I either iced them with a flat color or swirled a couple of colors together. Then I added sprinkle decorations, and after the icing had set somewhat, I painted details with water-thinned gel food coloring using a tiny paintbrush.
Also new for Mel's box of cookies: purple food coloring. I've been using red, yellow, blue, and brown, and while I'm a whiz at mixing different colors from those four, the red and blue didn't make a satisfactory purple.
Flowers and an extra large butterfly. This was the only butterfly that didn't break during the baking process. They were hard to pick up while they were still cooling. I'd grab part of a wing and the rest of the butterfly would break off, so I was happy that one survived.
The pineapple and strawberry are new. Gift idea for me: any cookie cutters of food, especially fruits and vegetables. I've always felt a great and inexplicable satisfaction from creating things that resemble food.
I think I've made these dinosaurs every time, whether it's Easter or Christmas. I can't resist making their South Park-like faces. I'm worried, though, because I'm running out of those little white discs that I use for their eyes. Can I hope to find the same ones again?
Ice cream cones. Love making them. Will never stop.
Owl quartet. It's nice to have some small, skinny cookie cutters to take care of the scrappy pieces you get after you cut out the big ones. These owls are also eating up my white discs.
Mel loved the cookies. I told her that she could invite a bunch of her friends over to her apartment for a little cookie party, but Mel likes the idea of keeping them to herself a little bit better. Happy birthday, Melissa!
Confederacy of Dunces is one of my top 5 fav books too!!! Kindred spirit alert! Although luckily there are LOTS of people who feel this way, which means lots of people have good taste.
Posted by: The Beautiful Kind | January 11, 2010 at 06:17 PM