Easter Cookies

Wow! What a week! I am EXHAUSTED! Somehow I ended up biting off way more than I should have for Easter "orders" from friends. It just didn't really seem like that many people, but then I counted the number of dozens that I needed and I was in way over my head! I have slept very little this week, grabbing an hour or two here and there. Last night when I finally crashed at 3:00 am, I'd been up for over 27 hours straight and had only had a few naps here and there in the two days leading up to it. I was supposed to meet a friend at 10:00 am, but didn't hear my 8am alarm and awoke in sheer panic at 11:41 am. I was sick, sick, sick. Thankfully, she was very forgiving and was just excited to get her cookies. I still have about 3 dozen to go before Sunday, but for now am sipping my coffee and trying to recover from the biggest part of 17 dozen this week.  Here's an overview shot of my Easter cookies for this year.

Easter Cookies, Easter Bunny Cookies, Easter Egg Cookies, Cracked Easter Egg Cookies, Easter Cross Cookies

Will update later with the challenges and specifics from this set, but for now just wanted to be able to get the pic up.

Here are pics that people who had some of them sent me of them being displayed or enjoyed:

Easter Cookies

 

Easter Cookies

Easter Cookies

 

Easter Cookies

So I've been working on cookies for Easter off and on all week and here's a sampling of all of the ones I did. I think there are about 70 all total:

Easter Cookies

Because I was doing so many, I just really played around and worked on trying to learn different techniques.  I had already planned to do the sheep with a round flower cutter I had, but among that huge lot of 27 cutters that my mother-in-law gave me was an oblong flower that I decided was even more perfect for them.  I did all sorts of things for the texture on them - tried Cornelli lace, dots, swirls, you name it.  

Easter cookies.  Sheep cookies

I had a lot of fun with the carrots, which I did in diagonal sections in order to give them some texture.  I'm super slow when working on cookies, so knocking out about 2 dozen of those in about an hour was a feat about which I was VERY excited!  

Easter Cookies.  Carrot Cookies.

On the small hopping bunnies, I decided to try out doing wet on wet roses.  They came out okay, but I definitely need some work on that technique.  I'd also try different colors next time, but I was just using what I had left over because the thought of making and coloring more icing was just too much for me.  Those little crosses were surprisingly difficult for me - I think mainly because my icing was likely a little too thin for how narrow they are.  I loved doing the eggs with the bunny sitting in the grass.  Of course I had to throw in some flowers, too and I had a new cutter that I wanted to try out and I think I'm in love!

A friend had a new baby girl last Friday and I decided that I wanted to do some baby girl cookies for her, but didn't have any baby specific cutters, so I went through what I had and looked at things others had done online and came up with these for her:

I had other things in mind for these, but within 10 minutes of starting to work on them, I had a migraine with aura hit me, so I didn't think I should try decorating cookies while I was blind for all intents and purposes, so I quickly knocked these out the next morning before work and turned the fan on them so that they'd be dry by the time I got home.  I just used the pink I was using on the cookies for Easter, although I really wanted to make a more pale pink, but with the aforementioned headache, I just didn't have any other option at that point if I were going to get these to her when I would see her on Wednesday afternoon.  I had also planned to do a couple of small lambs with pink accents, but in my haste of pulling them off the baking pan, I broke both of them.  Rather than putting them down my human garbage disposal, I just tossed them onto a paper plate.  The next morning, I was thrilled when I saw the break pattern and what I can use that same cutter for.  Take a look and see if you see it:

While making icing this go around, I realized I was out of almond extract, but just doubled the vanilla and kept working and never gave it another thought.  After giving my friend her new baby girl cookies, she sent me a text asking whether they contained any nut ingredients including things like almond extract because her 3 year old has severe nut allergies.  Fortunately this little guy was able to enjoy a cookie with his parents and older brother simply because I was out of almond extract.  My husband isn't a huge fan of the almond extract in the icing (and sugar cookies when I do them), so I may very well just no longer use it, unless specifically requested, as the idea of nut allergies never even occurred to me before.

The Mother-in-law Lode

So my mother-in-law called me and told me she'd picked up a few cookie cutters for me.  I should have known when she said a few that it meant a lot more than a few.  She doesn't just do anything - she DOES everything and does it big when she does.  She's the best.  Even still I was surprised when I went over to pick up the cookie cutters and found a bag of 27, yes, that's right, twenty-seven, cookie cutters.  And check out those bargain basement prices on them!  As usual, she did a fantastic job.  I'm so excited and will be using many of them this weekend as I make cookies for Easter.

So, there's a set of three patriotic ones including a flag, the outline of the US and a star; two spring sets including butterflies, flowers, a tulip and a heart;  a Wilton comfort grip bunny head; a Wilton comfort grip full bunny body; a Wilton comfort grip egg; a ducky; a four piece birthday set including a cupcake, cake, gift and a party hat; a comfort grip Easter set including a bunny head, an egg, a tulip and a scalloped flower; and another, yet different, Easter set including a bunny head, bunny body, scalloped flower, tulip, an egg and something else I cannot remember.  Wow.  Looks like I'm set for Easter, just wonder if I have enough time between now and then to try some of them all! 

I love when others encourage my madness!! 

UPDATE:  I decided that I was beginning to amass an actual collection of cookie cutters and decided that now would be the time to start an inventory of what I have instead of after my 60 has quadrupled, since I'm already beginning to forget some that I have.  Cristin, of Cristin's Cookies, was kind enough to share her Excel inventory sheet that is divided into categories on box.net, so that I didn't have to reinvent the wheel to get my inventory listing started.  You can find and download her form here.