Penguins of Madagascar Birthday Cake

I always attempt to do a special birthday party for my kids. It is just something that really makes me happy, and I hope that it is a tradition that at least one of them will pass on to their own kids. I think it creates lasting memories, and truthfully, it just brings me a lot of joy.
This year, my son wanted a Penguins of Madagascar birthday. He was turning 4. The "Penguins" are a new cartoon that is a spin-off of the Madagascar movies by Dreamworks Studios.  Even so, when I began my search there wasn't a whole lot out there specifically on the Penguins. I was finding lots of Alex the Lion and the whole Lion/Giraffe/Hippo/Zebra gang, but limited items (very limited, actually, hardly a thing) about the Penguins. I finally came to the conclusion that I was going to have to come up with most of the birthday party "stuff" and the cake myself.
I started searching the internet for ideas as to how I was going to do the cake. For me, getting my head wrapped around the cake starts pretty early, as it is usually the most complicated and requires the most forethought.  I found this cake out there that someone else had done, and I really liked it. This was the impetus for what I decided I would make.  The problem is, I had no idea how she/he had done this -- they looked so perfect! Yikes.

I started reading up on how this could have been done, and finally concluded that the person who did this cake must have used a technique called a "Frosting Transfer". A detailed explanation of how it is done, complete with pictures and step by step instructions can be found at Cake Central.

Searching for this image on the internet, I pretty quickly came up with a perfect match. I just downloaded the image, brought it into Adobe Photoshop to clean it up, crop and resize so that it would fit my cake pan appropriately.  It was important to get an image that was fairly large, clear and had a white background so that I wouldn't have any problems with the tracing.

 

At this point, I did not own a stand mixer. All my cakes up until last September (when this Birthday party happened) I had used **gasp** store bought frosting.  Oh poor me. I know so much better now. I have struggled for years to make frosting do what I wanted, only to have it sag, droop and look like blah.  Now I know. Homemade Buttercream is my new friend when it comes to making cakes.  I was worried about the transfer process not working out very well, so I did a dry run a week before (using the store bought frosting). I came to find out -- apparently, store bought frosting doesn't freeze.  Look at my dreadful results trying to flip over my Frosting Transfer that I made with the store bough stuff. Oh dear. What a lot of wasted work. What a mess.  But -- at least I knew in advance that I had to do something different to get this to work.

The answer apparently is to make your own Buttercream frosting. Since it is shortening/butter based and not oil based, it freezes much better, gets stiffer, and just works much better for this technique. And, after making my first batch, I doubt I will ever use the store bought stuff again unless I am in a real big rush.  At the time, I didn't have my own stand mixer, which you kind of need to do this.  Luckily, my neighbor Sara was nice enough to loan me her Kitchenaid. I have since acquired my own -- thanks to Walmart and Black Friday ($139! Woop!).  Quite a deal and to me, worth going there at 4:30am (ack!). Mine is the K4SSWH model, 4-1/2 Qt Lift Stand with the bigger motor and no accessories. I found the same mixer at Amazon for about $169, which still isn't bad at all!  So - mixer in hand, I scoured the internet for info on how to make the stuff. I ended up finding a couple of great instructional videos on YouTube. They were very informative and gave me confidence that I COULD do this.  Here's a picture of my first completed batch, prior to adding any coloring.

Butter Cream Frosting Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract

4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (approximately 1 bag)

2 tablespoons milk (+/- depending upon the consistency you want)

Makes: About 3 cups of icing.

Instructions

Let shortening and butter come to room temperature by setting them on the counter for 1/2 an hour to an hour before you get started.  

In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.

The next thing I did was to tape the printout of the Penguins onto a cardboard surface.  I then laid a sheet of wax paper over it. I divided the frosting up into separate batches and colored the frosting using Wilton Gel Dies. I put the frosting into separate plastic frosting bags (see top of photo, orange is showing) with a #2 or a #3 tip depending upon what areas I was doing. Above, I have outlined and filled in the beaks in orange (I forgot to do the feet and went back to do those later -- those are orange too!

Now did the black parts (wings, external bodies) and filled in.

Next, went back and did the feet, then did the white bodies.

Lastly, put a layer of white across the back of the whole thing. This is going to be what lays against the cake, the design actually gets flipped over. At this point, knowing what I know now, I would do this backer piece the same color as the color you are going to frost the cake with -- but that is 20/20 hindsight. I took this whole thing and put it in the freezer, obviously laying flat, overnight.  Set aside the black frosting in the fridge, you will need it tomorrow for the eyes.

My family is fond of yellow cake. The pan I was using is very large and requires 2 batches of cake to fill (if you are using a store bought mix). So, next I made a double batch of yellow cake.  Here's a pic with the beater blade removed. Yum!  I oiled the cake pan well and lined the bottom with parchment paper to be sure the cake wouldn't stick. This is always a very worthwhile step that you will thank yourself for -- at least I do. (I'm talking about the parchment paper).

Pour the batter into the pan, cook the cake, check the center with a toothpick to make sure it is done (sometimes on these double cakes it takes longer than the instructions indicate. You want the inserted toothpick to come out clean, and have the sides of the cake starting to separate from the pan.  Take the cake out of the oven and let it cool completely. Run a knife around the edges of the pan to make sure the cake sides have separated. Get your surface ready that you will be using for your cake base (I chose to use a Hawaiian tray -- shame, I should have lined it with foil so it would look prettier w/the Penguin colors and not distract from them, but I didn't.  Lay the "tray" or whatever you decide to use on top of the cake pan, and turn the whole thing over in one motion. Peel the parchment paper away from the bottom of the cake.

Next, frost the cake in the Buttercream frosting that you made (here, I tinted the majority of my frosting blue to be the background color of my cake). Make sure that the coating is nice and smooth. Let the frosting set a little bit (maybe 1/2 an hour) before going to the next step.  You can use a damped paper towel to wipe up the edges around the cake so that the presentation is clean.

Here comes the hard part -- you get 1 chance to get it right. Go get those penguins out of the freezer and take a good long look at them, then a good, long look at your cake. Imagine where the bottom of the penguin design needs to land on your cake. You are going to support the penguin design lightly with one hand while you tip the cardboard over and land the bottom of the design onto the cake and then let the rest just tip and fall into place (pulling your hand away). This requires holding your breath, biting your lip and saying a little prayer. :-)  It worked out great though. I was so happy when I looked at where mine landed. Then -- pull the wax paper off the back of the design really, really slowly and carefully. It was at this point that I realized that I should have used the blue frosting for the backer too...but like I said, 20/20 hindsight. (see under Kowalski's wings) I still think it came out pretty good.

By accident, I found these great graham cracker cookie letters at Tom Thumb (aka Safeway). They were in the area where the fruits/vegetables/cakes/fancy breads are, so I am not sure if they are standard. I was just in there to do my regular shopping and spotted these, and my brain started turning. They would be perfect! In fact, I have had so much fun with them. I used those to write the message on the cake.  You could also use something like the Earth's Best Sesame Street Cookies that are generally in the Organic Foods aisle of most grocery stores.

To finish up, I used the same black frosting that I had used the night before for the wings to dot on the eyeballs, and then used white with a shell tip to do a border around the bottom of the cake and then the top edge of the cake. I think over all it came out pretty darn good. I can't wait until another opportunity arises for me to try this again, since I learned a lot and I think I would do it even better now w/my new found "note to self" lessons. :-)

I'll have 2 more blog entries on the planning of the party (invites, goodie bags, games, etc) plus the decorations. This line was pretty hard to find at the time I did this party, but I'm not so sure that will continue to be true.

This article has been reproduced at my new blog website and can also be found here: http://www.bakingindallas.com/penguins-of-madagascar-birthday-cake/

An Orange Tabby Cat Themed Birthday Party

The Party

My daughter decided that for her 6th birthday she wanted a cat themed birthday party. We had just adopted a 1 yr old orange tabby not 3 months prior (his name is Kirby), and my daughter is just in LOVE with him. Lucky for her, he is very docile and puts up with most of her loving, which includes hugging, kissing, carrying him around and smothering him with affection. I was able to find quite a bit of cat themed stuff out there, but most of it was hello kitty or animated cat stuff. Then I found this line of cat themed party goods that focused on an orange tabby as the theme....and I was off! This lens is dedicated to my search and the cat party that I threw for my daughter, including the invitations, decorations, cake, party activities and goody bags. Maybe if you are throwing a cat themed party soon it will help you with some ideas or links that weren't so easy for me to find.

These were a little expensive I thought, but they were so cute. And -- I have to admit, Hallmark did a wonderful job on them. I think I could have had them print on the back too, just I was concerned they would charge more (the website didn't indicate that though, so I was kicking myself later on). They came quickly, and really were just too adorable. I was very pleased with the quality, cardstock and color. Oh -- and they printed my return address on the envelopes too. I could have even had them mail them if I gave them the addresses to send to, but I wanted to have them in my hands and see what they looked like myself. I have no complaints and would use them again if they had the perfect invite.

OK...this line features an orange tabby, so I just had to have this one. Problem is, there are a few lines out there -- Glamour Kittens, etc...that have something ALMOST perfect, but when I saw this line, called "Cuddly Kitten", I just had to have it. I found, at most, 3 places online that carried it, and even then the selection was sparse. I don't know if it is semi-discontinued or what. Anyhow, I finally ended up getting it from http://www.partypro.com, who I had not shopped with before. They had a great selection of this line, WAY more than anyone else I could find on the web, and I looked and looked and looked! I was really happy with their packaging and how fast it came, no complaints there. The pricing seemed pretty good too. I ended up getting plates, napkins, the firework danglers (2 packs -- SO CUTE!), the garland (LOVED IT), mylar ballons, notepads (for goody bags), tablecover (CUTE!), pin the tag on the kitty game (big hit), stickers and treat bags. I found this site AFTER I found the invites above, and if I had found it first I may have ordered the invites from them as they were a lot cheaper. The only thing is that the Thank You notes they have don't feature the orange tabby, so I didn't get those.


Websites that Carry the Cuddly Kitten Line

This line was a bit hard to find. The old standards -- Oriental Trading and Birthday Express had either NO or very limited choices. I found that Party Pro had most of the items of this line IN STOCK, which wasn't true elsewhere. Their prices were reasonable too, and the quality wasn't bad at all. I didn't show the tablecloth in the pics below, but it is really cool -- and better represented by pics not on the Party Pro site.

Party Pro Cuddly Kitten Line

Best Selection of this line I found, this is who I ordered from. Don't forget to order extra purple and teal balloons, I forgot those and had to go buy them the AM of the party.


EZ Party Zone

Just found these guys, and they have a value pack. I didn't even see this site before I ordered my stuff. You have to specifically search on Cuddly Kitten to find this, Cat Birthday apparently doesn't turn these folks up. Too bad too sad for me, but good for you maybe!

Pretty Party Place

OK...Now I am feeling a bit lame. An even BETTER party pack selection. I'm not looking at the prices, but these guys appear to really be trying to get your business, huh?  I also found that these guys (Pretty Party Place) apparently sell through Amazon.com too. If you are more comfortable ordering through Amazon -- maybe the shipping is cheaper, dunno? Anyway, here is the link to that:
Cuddly Kitten Party Goods at Amazon.com

Cuddly Kitten Mini Pinwheels!!!!

You have to buy a case apparently (24), but wouldn't these be great for the goody bags!!!! OMG, I am so SAD I missed this!

Cuddly Kitten Necklaces

OK. At some point you have to stop spending, but aren't these adorable? My daughter would personally LOVE this I know without a doubt in the world.

Cuddly Kitten Stuff on eBay

I was able to find some unique stuff for this line on eBay that I did not see elsewhere, so while you're at it you might go take a look over there too. The week I was doing this blog I found some cheaper invitations that actually match this line. The vendor selling these had a lot of other items from this line too, and offered free shipping for any item beyond the 1st that is ordered.


Cuddly Kitten Birthday Invites. Package of 8. $3.99 + Shipping

Here are a couple of pictures from our party showing the "Pin the Tag on the Cat" (it's very large, much larger than I expected) as well as the Garland that we hung from the breezeway between rooms.

The Cake

Orange Tabby Cat Ice Cream Cone Sugar Cookie Cupcakes

Yep..that's a lot to say at once, but that's what I made!  I decided to make cupcakes in ice cream cones, and I wanted to make orange kitty cat ones. I googled around and looked at images of cat cupcakes, and found a design that I kind of liked. Then a friend of mine suggested (and she drew this picture) that I combine the cookie and cone idea to make the cats look more interesting. King of a 3D image, with the body being the cone and the head being a sugar cookie. So -- this is what I started from.

I used a standard yellow cake mix and filled regular flat bottomed ice cream cones with the batter.  I have since learned a better technique than trying to spoon batter into cones (or even cupcake tins) -- put the batter into a large plastic freezer bag, seal the top, then cut a small/medium hole in the bottom corner and pinch it. Use the bag to "pour" the batter directly where you want it to go. Too bad I didn't know this trick back then, as things did get a little messy (as you can see). I could have filled the cupcakes higher with the batter, but I was afraid of creating a lip-like overlap on the edge of the cone.

I wrapped aluminum foil around the bottom of the cones and set them into a cupcake pan to hold them upright while they cooked. Big lesson learned here though -- do NOT wrap the foil UP the cone, keep it as LOW as you can. The foil will keep the cake in the bottom of the cone from cooking, and you will end up with a mushy bottom with raw cake batter and cooked cake in the top. Believe me, I had to do this 2X because of my mistake! :-)  The 2nd time, I kept the foil really LOW and had no issues. If you can come up with a better way of keeping the cones from tipping over, I'd be glad to take the advice. 
The image below doesn't actually show how I made the cookie cutter, but it shows me using it for the 1st time. This is what I did -- I laid down a cone on it's side and I drew the right sized "cat head" to fit the cone (and outline). I then used a lasagna pan to make the cookie cutter. I got that idea from a website that shows very clearly how to go about it. One thing I would change if I did it again -- I would make the cookie have a neck on it so that it would stab into the cone better and not be a "no-neck" cat.  I would also utilize parchment paper underneath the dough instead of rolling the dough out directly onto a floured table. (See my blog on Christmas Cookies for more on this subject).

Some links that show how to make cookie cutters out of lasagna pans:


http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Cookie-Cutters
http://www.ehow.com/how_4515739_make-halloween-shaped-cookie-cutters.html


Next, here are some of the cookies about to go into the oven, and then after cooking.  I used a generic sugar cookie recipe that I found online. My Christmas Cookie 2009 Blog entry has a really nice refrigerated sugar cookie recipe on it that you can also use.

I used store bought cream cheese frosting and added yellow and red food color gel. Another thing I know better than to do anymore. :-) See -- all these lessons learned the hard way that you can benefit from! If I do this again, I will NOT use store bought frosting, it is just too oily and doesn't come out good on cookies or even on the cupcake tops in my opinion. I would make a homemade cream cheese frosting or a butter cream frosting. Now that I have my handy-dandy kitchenaid mixer, that's certainly what I'll do next year. The buttercream frosting would most likely work the best -- as it dries with a crust and leaves a great surface for decorating.
Here's the frosting in the bowl being mixed with the color. Our cat is orange, so I went with that same color.

After the cookies had cooled, I frosted them with the orange frosting I had made.  The rest of the face parts needed the orange coat to dry before they could be applied, so I set the frosted cookies aside.

After the cupcakes had cooled, I frosted them with the same orange frosting. The coat of frosting on the cupcakes needed to be generous, as I was going to use some of that frosting to hold up the cat head that would be "stabbed" into the cupcake top.


When the cookies were dry, I used some leftover white cream cheese frosting to decorate the ears and the mouth area white. I colored some of the frosting with blue gel coloring and put it into a pastry bag with a med/large round tip, and used that to do the eyes - but you could also use one of the disposable frosting "writers" that they have at the grocery store. I used that to make blue eyes.  The red nose was made from a piece of licorice that I cut with a knife into a triangle. I drew the mouth with black frosting that I colored with black gel (same cream cheese frosting), and used a writer sized tip (I think a #2) -- again, the frosting pen would work fine here too.  For the pink part of the mouth I used pink tic-tacs that I cut in half and turned on their cut side to stick into the orange frosting, so that only the pink round part was showing.  On some of the cats I actually did black whiskers too with the same frosting that I used for the mouth. I was running out of energy and time at this point though, so most of the cookies didn't get whiskers. The ones I did do with whiskers were SO cute though!


After the cookies dried, I stuck them into the cupcakes by their "neck". This resulted in a somewhat chinless cat. Like I said, if I did this again, I would make the cat cookie cutter have a rectangular neck piece sticking down that would be left without frosting and act as a tab to stab the cookie into the cupcake.  The kids didn't mind though...I think I'm the only one who noticed.


The final touch was to add a red licorice whip off the back of the cone that acted as a tail.

The kids LOVED the cat cupcakes. I know I could make them better next time (always learn the hard way), but it wasn't really that difficult, just time consuming. I used supplies available from the local grocery store and Michael's.

BTW -- I know this one looks really haggard, but it was one of the 3 leftover from the party, I didn't get pics soon enough before the kids had attacked the stash. So -- this one is a REJECT, but still gets the point across of how cute they were!

This article has been reproduced at my new blog website and can also be found here:
http://www.bakingindallas.com/an-orange-tabby-cat-themed-birthday-party/

Christmas Cookies 2009

Since I have my new handy-dandy Kitchenaid Mixer, I felt especially motivated to do the Christmas Cookie thing this year. My Mom made Christmas Sugar Cookies with us most every year while I was growing up.  We decorated them with a simple frosting tinted with different food colorings and sprinkles/choc chips, raisins, mini-marshmallows, etc. I have very fond memories of this activity. Having my own children now, it's kind of fun to pass on what I hope will become a tradition.

First thing I had to do was to find a good Sugar Cookie recipe that would work well for Cookie Cutters.  I went online and ended up (as is common for me for some reason) at http://allrecipes.com/. I found a recipe that looked good, and in reading some of the reviews found some interesting, new to me techniques to try.

Here's the recipe I used. It had nearly 3,000 feedback comments with a 4.5 star rating out of 5.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/The-Best-Rolled-Sugar-Cookies/Detail.aspx

The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

+ I added 1/2 tsp of almond extract into the dough, just because in the reviews I read where the dough was a little "bland" by some people's standards.

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

I chronicled my little adventure with some photos (loving that new mixer!). So, I started w/the 3 sticks of butter. (note the bowl has already been used, the pics are from the 2nd batch I made)

Add 2 cups of sugar and cream it, which in this case just means "turn the mixer on low and laugh with delight thinking about how your arm doesn't hurt AT ALL"

 

Oh the sweetness of just that one piece, I was SO loving it.  OK, next, add the vanilla, eggs and then baking powder, salt and flour. I was seriously able to make a whole batch of cookie dough about 5 minutes. Did I mention how much I love my new mixer?

 

So, after this, I just unplugged the mixer, lowered the bowl, took off the beater attachment and scraped it off, then divided the dough into 2 even piles onto wax paper, wrapped it like a burrito and tucked it into the fridge overnight. I made 3 total batches of cookie dough. Over the next 3 days, I used up 2 batches, and decided at that point to freeze one. The recipe did not indicate how many cookies it would make, but the answer should be "a whole lot!" I made enough cookies for 3 parties on 2 batches of this dough.

Here's some of the batter on the wax paper about to be wrapped like a burrito and tucked into the fridge.

Next, I took a little side trip to one of my new favorite stores in Dallas, Cake Carousel, to pickup sprinkles and to let each child pick out a new cookie cutter for this year. They have an enormous selection of both there, and much more than that. If you are into cake, candy or cookie making/decorating, that place is insane. And I overheard the lady behind the counter today telling another customer that they had been in business for 35 years!  

My daughter picked out a gigantic snowflake, and my son picked out a bumblebee/wasp looking thing. I got a few other ones too that I found interesting. We are getting quite a collection going at this point.

Here I go now with the hints that I read from the sugar cookie recipe comments. Previously, I have always floured a surface well, and rolled the dough out right on that surface, then cut all my shapes, peeled back the extra dough, then attempted to pickup the cookies with a spatula and transfer to a cookie sheet without distorting the cookie. After baking, I would pickup the cookie again with a spatula and try to transfer it, once more, without distortion.  After reading comments on the website with the recipe, it seemed like a lot of folks were having success with using parchment paper. I have had parchment paper in my kitchen forever, but I don't know why. I don't even know when I bought it or for what. I don't know how to use it, and don't understand how it actually differs from wax paper, other than it feels "less waxy". But I had made a TON of cookie dough and had enough extra dough, and time before I needed the cookies, so what the hey.  I decided to try something new.  So, I put some parchment paper down on my surface and floured the parchment paper, and then rubbed/pushed most of the flour off to the side to use for flouring the cookie cutters. Here is the floured parchment.

Next, took some of the dough (mountains of dough, I have!) out of the fridge. Split some of it into a workable quantity and formed it into a ball. One thing to note -- one of those future "Note to Self" moments that I am putting down here. The dough seems to stick more at first -- either when it is colder, or when it has been through less "recycles" and thus has less flour in it. I'm not sure which it is. But the point is, when you first get started, this stuff sticks. So -- flouring the parchment paper very well is important, and also, flouring the rolling pin AND the cookie cutters is doubly important. On the website with the recipe, I was reading in the reviews where some people actually "flour" with powdered sugar. I thought that was a little silly, and did not try it myself. My thoughts were that would make the dough overly sweet, but since I didn't even try it, who am I to judge? I just put that info here in case one of you more adventurous types might want to try it sometime and let me know how it went.

Ball-o-dough on the parchment paper ready to be rolled out.

And then rolled out.

Funny thing is, I have had a couple of people in the last few days ask me "how thick do you roll the dough" or "how do you control how thick you roll the dough". In this last bit of cookie making I did experiment a bit. I tried doing dough about 1/8" thick (by eye), and then went thicker, to say 1/4" to 1/3" thick. I thought the thicker dough would make for a softer, maybe more tasty cookie. No beans.  The thicker dough resulted in deformed cookies, so don't do it. I have read about these rings that you can buy and put around your rolling pin, they help to guide you so that you roll the dough to the perfect thickness. I don't have any of those, I feel pretty comfortable doing it by eye...but then again, I've never tried them, maybe they are great?

Here is what 1/3" dough versus 1/8" dough looks like after coming out of the oven -- same cookie cutter. Notice how the fatter cookie dough kind of "messed up" the cookie.

The next piece that I tried, which was new for me, was to put all of the cookie cutters into the dough, and leave them there. Basically using only 1 cutter per batch. You then (while leaving the cookie cutters down) peel up all of the excess dough and make a pile of it for the next go-around.  I found a metal kabob skewer to be invaluable in this process, as there would always be some darn piece of dough that somehow, despite all of the flouring I had done to the parchment, managed to stick itself down.  Also, if you put the cookie cutters too close to each other, the kabob holder helps to get in between the cutters to pull up the dough. Here are the cutters on the parchment with all of the excess dough removed and put into a ball (top left).

I then removed the cookie cutters and set them back into my "flour pile". After that, I used a pair of scissors to cut closely around the cookies (cut the parchment) so that I was able to lift the entire batch of cookies up by the parchment and transfer right to a cookie sheet, parchment and all.

Same goes for after the cookies come out of the oven. No need for a spatula here! (And much less cleaning of the cookie sheet). I just carefully picked up each side of the parchment and transferred the cookies to my cooling rack, parchment and all.

Lesson learned here (the hard way, of course): Do not put the cutters too close to each other, as they end up expanding in the oven and then bumping into each other while cooking. This is especially important if you go with thicker cookie dough. Gggrrrrrrrr....this is NOT what you want to see after all your hard work.

So, now I just let the cookies cool (doesn't take long, 10-15 mins and there is no heat left to them). Having them completely cool is important, otherwise the frosting melts off the cookies while you are trying to work. I stacked the cooled cookies onto a tray and moved them to the table for easy selection. I also went to work on some frosting.  I had some leftover cream cheese frosting from the other day when I made pumpkin bread for the kid's party. It was bright white, so I used that for the "white" frosting. I then made a large batch of frosting using powdered sugar and milk. Well -- I was going to use powdered sugar and milk, and then I got an idea....what would happen if I used EGG NOG? I must say, I was kind of pleased with myself. I'm not usually that imaginative, I'm a great copy cat, but not always the most inventive on my own. I poured a whole bag of powdered sugar into a bowl and then slowly started adding egg nog one little bit at a time, stirring gently and working it through the sugar. I'm not sure how much egg nog I used, as I poured, then stirred, then looked at it, decided it needed more, poured a little more and stirred...until it looked just right. You want the frosting to be thick, but not too thick. You want to be able to "paint" with it, but not have it fight you when you go to spread it. I guess I may have used about a cup of egg nog, but that is just a guess. It's not hard to do it slowly and get it right. Just don't add to much at a time toward the end (1 tbsp at a time will take you a long way when you are close).

Then I got out some of those disposable glad-ware containers and divided the frosting up into 5 little "buckets". I used regular food coloring to make the following colors: red, blue, green, yellow and purple.  I put a paintbrush in each and a spoon. Having a box of toothpicks on the table is also handy for that "fine placement" that you may want to go for.

 

Here's the recipe for the cream cheese frosting if any of you are interested in that, it's pretty darn yummy too. .

Ingredients

• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners' sugar. Store in the refrigerator after use.

My son found the frosting somewhat irresistible, even though I had said 3-4 times just prior to this for him to wait for us all to get started together. My husband had the camera out, and laughingly took this primo shot of the boy giving in to temptation. SLURP!

We had a great time. We decorated cookies 2 days in a row. Once with just our family, then we had some friends over the next day and did it again.  And I still have a whole batch (of the 3 batches I made) of sugar cookie dough left in the fridge -- I think I'll freeze it.  Here are some pics from our 2 afternoons having fun last weekend.

This article has been reproduced at my new blog website and can also be found  here: http://www.bakingindallas.com/christmas-cookies-2009/