My thank you cookies are packed and ready to deliver.
My 4-day adventure is chronicled below
My 96 year old Mom has resided at a local nursing home for the last 6 years. There's no way to properly thank the dedicated staff of aides, nurses, activities staff, cafeteria staff and cleaners for the loving care and kindess they extend to the residents everyday but thought I'd extend a show of appreciation with some special cookies for Valentine's Day.
Mom on her 96th Birthday
Making these cookies turned into a 4 day adventure.
Day 1 - I mixed the dough and put in the refridgerator to chill
Day 2 - I rolled out the dough and baked the cookies
Day 3 - Preparation for decorating began by preparing the Royal Icing used for this decorating technique. During the 10 minutes beating process for mixing the icing my mixer set up and I had to send hubby to the store for a new mixer. In our little town this was a dollar store and the resulting mixer had the capablity of whipping cream! I finally acquired the required texture and proceeded to dam and flood the cookies. Damming is the process of piping a border around the cookies. Flooding is done by squeezing a thinner icing onto the cookies. The dam holds the icing and a smooth glassy surface is created as the canvas for further decorating. The cookies have to set overnight for the icing to set up completely.
I wish I had thought to take pictures of this process but really hadn't planned this post until it was too late.
Day 4 - At last the fun part and the decoration begins. Or so I thought. I started with a new mixer and fresh batch of icing but couldn't seem to achieve the right consistancy to hold the designs for piping borders, flowers and leaves. After several times of empting the pastry bag and adding more confectionary sugar to the icing I gave up and settled for dots, squiqqles and waterever else came off the end of the pastry bag.
After 2 hours of decorating cookies and fighting with the icing I was totally exhausted and my kitchen was a total disaster. I placed the cookies on cookie sheets to finish drying and at this point decided that I should take some pictures.
After cleaning up the kitchen (no way was I taking pictures of that mess) it was time for me.
