GO RAMS! COOKIE BOUQUET

I am making a new cookie bouquet for my Secret Pal at school.  She, in addition being one of the Vice-Principals,  is an avid sports nut.  She not only plays all kinds of ball and was a coach, she attends all of the games.  Currently it is Homecoming Week at Rockford High, so all eyes are on football (well, not mine, but all others apparently).  Anyway, I am going to make a cookie bouquet for her for Friday (the day of the game).  The first step in the process was to find a Ram Head cookie cutter the main part of the  design.  Checked out the internet for one, but absolutely no dice.  Not even close.  But I did find several websites that gave good information on how to MAKE  cookie cutter out of copper strips.  I happened to HAVE some copper sheet (24 gauge) so I decided to cut it into strips and launch into the process.

It's FINISHED!!

Once again, a HUGE learning curve on the whole process. Many mistakes made, but a TON of information gained. At this point I know that I am going to completely trash the one I began for Charlie and start over. It will be well worth it.

Three days of summer-in-Michigan's sub tropical humidity really took it's toll on this whole project. The cookies did not take well to it at all, and (since I live in a house with only zone air conditioning, and the kitchen is NOT a zone) there wasn't a thing I could do about it. I tried to keep them as dry as I could, but with not much success. So some of the cookies just collapsed and died. I could find no information on the web about how to fix a broken cookie so I came up with this solution: trace the shape of the cookie cutter on a piece of card stock (or a piece of photo paper or a recipe card), cut it out, slather it with Royal Icing, then stick the cookie to it. A bad fix, but a fix, none the less.

I am going to try Michelle Bommarito's cookie recipe next time, since she is a Michigan chef and must have learned to deal compensate for this problem.

I found a neat tissue set at Meijer that had the same colors as the bouquet - in polka dots. Gut it into squares, scrunched the, then wired them up. Nice result. A bunch of curly ribbon and I am ready to take it to the party to see how it is received. I am REALLY ready to give it away and move on!!

Helene's Rams/Sparty/Happy Birthday Bouquet

The cookies are all decorated, except for the birthday cake, which broke (due to the high humidity softening the cookies). I have to hie myself off to the hardware store for a flower pot and the grocery story for some tissue, and I will be DONE! This has been a ton-o-fun and I can't wait for the next one - Charlie's birthday bouquet. It, too, is almost completed

A 60th Birthday Cookie Bouquet for Helene

I started with my favorite sugar cookie recipe, an old one from my ancient Betty Crocker Cookbook. I also found Pastry Chef Michelle Bommarito's recipe at Cookie Madness on the Internet, and I am sure it is surefire, too. It will be for my next bouquet. I am using thin bamboo skewers (from world Market, Pier One or the supermarket) because they are cheaper, in the long run, than sucker sticks from the cake supply store. And they work just fine. I cut them with heavy diagonal wire cutters.For Helen's bouquet I needed some Happy Daisies, some butterflies, a birthday cake, a boxer dog, a Michigan State Sparty and a Rockford Ram. I didn't have cutters for the cake or the boxer dog so I had to improvise. I found images of cutters that would work on the Internet, then drew their outlines on a piece of card stock. I cut out the patterns, laid them on the dough then cut them out with a NEW CLEAN craft knife. Worked not too bad.

I found (again, by trial and error) that the process of inserting the skewers worked best for me if I first laid a small scrap of thin dough on the parchment paper lined pan. Then I put down the stick. Then I cut out the cookie and placed it on top of the dough and the stick and pressed it all together LIGHTLY. I found this process much less likely to break the cookies during the skewering process. When the cookie baked it all melded together.