Moving on to the next installment of Teaching Yourself How to Decorate Cookies...

The next set of cookies I made (well, WE made) were these Christmas cookies.  My mom, my sister and I made these.  This is my mom's cookie recipe that is SO GOOD... but it's a little poofy, so I think I am going to try to tweak it to see if I can maintain the taste but get it to not spread so much.

I used royal icing again for these, which is a must for things like the leaves on the wreath, the snowman's nose and the detailing on his hat because it maintains its shape and dimension... but this is where I discovered that I don't like royal icing.  After we let these cookies dry, they were rock hard.  I gave some to people at work and I was afraid they were going to break a tooth.  Enter...

Corn Syrup Glaze

I got on the forum at cookiedecorator.com and asked for advice about my too-hard cookies.  They suggested I try corn syrup glaze, which is what my mom had been using.  So I did and I fell in love.  I use this recipe from Cookie Crazie, only I flavor mine with Creme Bouquet, which is a combination of vanilla, lemon and who knows what else, it's really yummy.  I buy it at Cake Crafts in Denver.

For my first glaze cookies, I decided to try camouflage.  I think I was still using a bottle at this point, so I had to make the icing pretty thin in order for it to come out easily.  Which is fine if you're making random blobs, but later I found out that if you want some control over it, you need to make it a bit thicker. Check out this post by Sweet Sugar Belle for complete instructions on making these camo cookies.

This is a picture of the cookies right after I made them.  They look great, don't they?  Well, a couple days later, they started to kind of fade... the color got milky and dull and the icing looked splotchy.  I was not ready to give up on corn syrup glaze, though... more on how I persevered in another post coming soon...

I made these cookies for our two admins at work for Administrative Professional's Day.  It was a labor of love over 3 days... not three whole days, I did fit some hiking and laundry in there.  That's okay, it was good practice and I learned a lot.  I also got to try Lila Loa's vanilla cookie recipe... it's a great cookie for not spreading, but it doesn't taste like my mom's :-) 

I found these gift boxes at the dollar store, 3 for a dollar.  They are the perfect size for 6 cookies! 

Add a cute label made with a free digital scrapbooking kit (okay, I re-colored the bird so he would be blue), and it's Happy Administrative Professional's Day to two of the nicest, hardest working girls you'd ever want to know!

Thanks to Sweet Sugar Belle, Glorious Treats, and Brandi Girl Blog for the inspiration!

This didn't really end up very soupy... it was more like a noodle stew, but still very yummy!  Next time I think I will add more broth.  I ended up using chicken broth -- some real stock that I made and some water mixed with Better Than Bouillon.  I used some turkey that we had frozen from Thanksgiving, but you could easily sub chicken.

Couldn't find frozen carrots, so I used frozen stew vegetables.  I halved the amount of white pepper and it was a good thing, too, because it was plenty peppery.  I also added a heaping 1/4 teaspoon of herbs de Provence, my newest love.  Kevin gave it a big thumbs up!!