Christmas cookie Tree centerpiece
Dec 25, 2011 Cooking & Baking
A couple weeks ago I saw this video of Gail Dosik, of One Tough Cookie, making a Christmas tree out of cookies. I was totally inspired.
I immediately started searching Amazon for graduated cookie cutters and found a set of star-shaped ones from Wilton. I never make a holiday centerpiece. If we have one, it’s because Fiona took it upon herself to make one. So I decided that this year, our centerpiece would be a Christmas cookie tree!
I’m rather glad that I couldn’t find the kind of cutters that Gail used because her tree requires a kind of precision that I just don’t have. Maybe next time. If I take a Valium first.
Last night I made a massive amount of roll-out cookie dough, and this morning made the cookies. At first it seemed like the cookies would take forever, but once I got past the two biggest stars it went a lot faster.
I used Gail’s method for rolling out the dough. Before discovering her secret, I rarely made cut-out cookies because they always looked fairly terrible and tasted even worse, due to all the extra flour I’d have to use to keep them from sticking. But trust me, her method is genius. You’re crazy if you don’t use it.
I’ve never used icing on cookies, so I decided to give it a try. I wanted to outline the cookies in frosting then pour the icing on very thin and let it spread, but I just couldn’t get it thin enough. The recipe I was using said to just keep adding light corn syrup until it was the right consistency but I started getting afraid that it would taste funny. So I spread the frosting to the edges as best I could.
Assembly was really easy, since it didn’t have to be exact. I just had to check every few cookies and make sure the tree wasn’t lopsided.
You can see that some of the frosting near the top gushed out and dripped down. I decided that those looked like icicles and weren’t a mistake. :-)
I sprinkled the whole thing with silver-colored sugar, although I think it would have looked better if I’d done that before stacking the cookies.
I’m quite proud of myself, but this design left a lot of room for error. I’d like to try another one that’s not so haphazard. I think it may be time for some private lessons with Gail. :-)
I made way too much dough, so I let Fiona make some cookies (I think The Ass ate about half of them).
When she got tired of it I made some to share with the choir at Christmas Eve service.
And I still have about a third of the dough left. I might try making some smaller trees with it tomorrow – just the top five or six layers. Maybe I’ll make a whole cookie forest! And populate it with little gingerbread men! And the men will need a house…
I think this is the most relaxing Christmas Eve I’ve ever had. The presents were all wrapped days ago, and I did nothing today but bake.
I hope you all have a nice Christmas, filled with cookies and gifts and family. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, well, at least your kids will let you sleep in tomorrow.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
I think @TheToughCookie would be proud!
Dec 24, 2011 Posted From My Phone
I’ll put up a how-to post later, along with the video from Gail Dosik that inspired this cookie tree. But for now I have to jump in the shower to get to Christmas Eve service for choir!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom, from Amy’s cell phone (so please excuse any weird formatting). All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Santa identity crisis
Dec 21, 2011 Kids
So I’m sitting here surrounded by gifts that need wrapping, a task I actually enjoy (as long as I’m not doing it at 3am on December 25th, which has happened many other years). The problem is, I don’t know how to make out the gift tags.
Two years ago, when Jake was eight, I almost told him the truth about Santa. Then last year at this time he nudged me about it again, but he still wasn’t ready.
Then, one fateful day that spring in St. Thomas, everything came out. Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, everything. We were at Easter brunch at the Ritz Carlton, and there was an Easter bunny taking pictures with the kids. After her picture Fiona said to me, “The Easter Bunny isn’t real, right?” Finally! Making up all these silly stories was getting old. I said, “Nope, it’s just something parents tell kids to have a little fun when they’re little, but you’re old enough now to know the truth.”
Fiona went white and stared back at me with saucer eyes, and said “I just meant that that one wasn’t real – I could see her ponytail sticking out!”
Oops.
She ran and told Jake. The next morning at breakfast they said they had some questions. Was Santa real? I asked them several times if they really wanted to know everything, and they insisted they did. So I told them. Everything. The Tooth Fairy was the next to fall. And that was it.
Or so I thought.
About a month ago, Jake came to me and said he was writing his list for Santa. “OK, Jake, for ‘Santa.’ Got it.” I made air quotes around the now-fictitious Santa.
Jake got a weird smile and said, “So I think I might have fallen down and gotten amnesia about Santa. He’s real, right?”
Oh bloody hell.
He still wanted to believe, even though he knew the truth. And even though he knew that I knew that he knew the truth.
Later I asked Fiona about Santa and she said “What do you mean?” Except she seemed genuinely confused. Had she really forgotten about the big reveal? Had she convinced herself that the whole conversation hadn’t happened? Or, like Jake, was she just pretending?
I’ve been absolutely terrible about keeping the whole story going since that day. When they told me what they wanted for Christmas I got right onto Amazon and told them whether or not each item was a possibility (“Will be delivered after December 25th” became “Sorry, Santa can’t guarantee delivery in time”). But now here I am with the gift tags, and I don’t know what to do. I know Jake knows. I think Fiona knows, but I’m not sure. As the person who perpetrated this once-fun lie in the first place, what’s my responsibility here in dragging it out?
And good grief, what if they want Santa around for another year, when they’ll be eight and eleven? I just don’t think I have it in me.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Christmas, gifts, Kids, Santa Claus
Christmas in November, courtesy of Belgium
Nov 5, 2011 Around NYC, Posted From My Phone
I was just dropping my babysitter off at home, and there was a commercial being filmed for a Belgian airline on her block. They were even making fake snow. So pretty! And unlike the rest of the Christmas Creep, it will be gone by tomorrow.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom, from Amy’s cell phone (so please excuse any weird formatting). All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Christmas, Filming In Brooklyn
Merry Christmas, and good luck
Dec 25, 2010 What's Going On
As the clock ticks down to the end of another Christmas, I wanted to say how grateful I am for everything I have. My family is healthy and happy, my husband has a good job, and I’ve been fortunate to turn a hobby I love into a fledgling career. I’m lucky.
It makes me sad to see so many tweets and posts and articles about people who aren’t as lucky. Because really, for a lot of people, that’s all it boils down to. I don’t mean to discount hard work – pretty much all of what my husband and I have can be tied directly to hard work. But luck gave us opportunities. Luck gave us great families. We were lucky to be born in the U.S. We were lucky to meet each other. We are lucky that our children were born healthy and remain so. We’re lucky every time we get into our car and it doesn’t crash, every time we get sick but then get better. Luck has kept us out of falling planes and burning buildings. Where we had good luck, many many others had bad luck.
I wish all of you good luck in the year to come.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, Momtourage, and podcasts with The Blogging Angels.
Santa is real…for a little while longer
Dec 17, 2010 Kids
I came very close to telling Jake the truth about Santa tonight. Earlier he had asked me point blank if I was the one who put the presents under the tree on Christmas, and since Fiona (who is six and still very much a believer) was in the room I said “Of course not!” But later, after Fiona had gone to bed, I asked him if he wanted to talk about it. He said that I had been asking questions about his letter to Santa (I had; I was explaining that Santa was not going to bring him a Fushigi, because Santa had looked up the reviews on Amazon, and learned that it’s not actually a magic ball, that it’s for much older kids, and that it takes 30 hours of practice to do even the easiest tricks, and Santa doesn’t like to risk his reputation with As-Seen-On-TV crap), and that made him think that I was buying the gifts.
I looked at him good and hard, and asked him who he really thought brought the presents and put them under the tree. He said he thought it was Santa.
I asked him who he wanted it to be.
His eyes teared up and he whispered “Santa.”
He’s nine. It’s getting a little ridiculous that he still believes. I mean, it’s sweet, but it worries me a little. This is a kid who walks to school alone and wants a cell phone and has been known to say the F word to me on occasion. It’s just weird that he’s still holding on to the idea that a fat man in a red suit climbs down chimneys and leave presents under the tree without setting off the motion detectors.
The thing is, I don’t think his near-tears have anything to do with being a child or believing in magic. I think he’s really afraid that if he tells me he doesn’t believe, he doesn’t get to ask for presents. But I can take all of next year to break the news to him, and reassure him that he still gets gifts. And, as a bonus, he gets to be my special helper keeping the magic going for his sister. I think he’ll like that.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, Momtourage, and podcasts with The Blogging Angels.
Tags: Christmas, Santa Claus
Santa Claus: I almost spilled the beans
Nov 24, 2009 Kids
I put Jake to bed a little while ago. He looked huge in his bed. He’s big for eight. And I can’t believe he still believes in Santa Claus.
I took the kids to an event on Saturday where they got to hang out with Santa. Which, frankly, was a little weird. Nice weird, but still weird. I think it’s what living in Orlando would be like. Disney World would lose some of its magic if you could just go there any time. When you can sit with Santa for an hour and talk to him about more than what you want for Christmas, does he lose his magic?
I thought that might have been what happened, because as I was covering Jake up tonight (he always puts the sheet on top, and I always have to reverse it), he said “I want to see the real Santa Claus.” What do you mean, Jake? “That guy was just a helper, right? Fiona pulled his beard, and that was real, but he wasn’t the real one, was he?” They’re all helpers, Jake. Santa can’t be everywhere.
He thought for a minute, and I paid extra attention to his blanket as I tried to figure out what was going on. “Mommy, why do they always hire big fat guys to be Santa?” [treading carefully] Because in commercials he’s big and fat and jolly and if the people they hired didn’t look like that you wouldn’t believe it was Santa.
I waited to see what he’d say next. If he had asked me in that moment if Santa were real I would have told him the truth. After what seemed like forever, he decided to go with the safe choice, the choice that would assure him gifts and magic for one more year: “Next time let’s try to see the real Santa so that I can give him my list.”
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Christmas, Santa Claus
This week’s time sucker, Christmas edition!
Dec 24, 2008 Time Sucker
Here’s a whole page of Christmas-themed games! Snow line is my favorite. Have fun!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: Christmas
