Good Things by David

If you're looking for some Christmas cookies that are very much of the holiday, but are also holiday neutral images, look no further.  Wreaths, snowflakes and snowmen can be made for any winter occasion.  They can be given as gifts to friends, family and neighbors no matter their religion, and they can be shipped anywhere in the country or across the pond if they're made thick enough and packed well.  Holiday Sugar Cookies Can you believe that I don't actually own a wreath cookie cutter?  How utterly embarrassing, I know.  This, by no means, should prevent one from cutting out beautiful wreaths as long as there are fluted rounds and/or plain round cookie cutters on hand.  These are a must for any baker of any baking skill level.  The snowflakes and snowmen cookies do require you to have cutters in those shapes, but they can be found just about anywhere baking supplies are sold.  Online is best these days! Christmas Wreath and Snowflake Sugar Cooki...

Does one say Merry Catsmas or Meowy Christmas?  Whichever way you think kitty pronounces it, it's so easy to make kitty cat gingerbread or sugar cookies for Christmas.  This is exactly what I did for my niece and nephews over the weekend.   For over a decade, I have made it a tradition to have a set of cookies with me as I travel out west to spend Christmas with my family.  I don't like to repeat myself with cookie designs for the niece and nephews, so it's a bit of a challenge coming up with things they've never seen me create.   Kitty cats are beloved pets in our extended family.  Using my Martha by Mail cat cookie cutters and a Wilton snowflake cookie cutter, I quickly iced cookies in a matter of an hour or so.  Nothing fancy.  Nothing difficult. For the kitty cats, I applied two consistencies of white royal icing.  A very stiff icing was used to pipe the scarves on each cat with a #18 open star tip.  Using a flowi...

It's difficult to imagine a Christmas without cookies.  For this year's sweet edibles, I turned to that mid-century colored glass known as jadeite/jadite/jade-ite for my color palette.  Working with three particular shades of green, I decorated several holiday shapes for our town's Christmas cookies.  Ornaments, mittens, candy canes, tiny houses, hemlocks, junipers, arborvitae, and spruce trees, were given the jadeite treatment in royal icing.   When you're in charge of decorating dozens upon dozens (I can't photograph all of them) of cookies and you are working solo, you tend to stick to easy decorating techniques.  Most of the cookies that you see here were decorated with multiple colors of royal icing, and were then either sprinkled with nonpareils or were enhanced with holiday-themed candies.  That is it.  Nothing fancy. For this project you will need royal icing tinted with Americolor Avocado, Wilton Kelly Green and Wilton Leaf Green....

To change things up a bit for my niece and nephews this Christmas, I settled on making them a set of woodland sugar cookies in the shapes of adorable animals and figures.  Among these shapes was a set of gigantic gingerbread boy and girl cookie cutters, which I found several years ago at a consignment shop. These particular cookie cutters were beautifully made in the United States by the coppersmiths at Copper Gifts ,  in Missouri.  Although mine are vintage, you can find a similar set that is currently being made (click on the link provided)! Woodland Sugar Cookies Several of the cookie cutters, such as the adorable hedgehog, the mushroom and deer, came from my good friend Janet back when she was cleaning her cookie cutter pantry.  She loves everything woodland, and is known for imbuing her home every single Christmas with things that one finds in nature. With a nod to my friend and how she decorates for the holiday, I decided do something similar with su...

For local clients and customers I decided to go a little retro with their Christmas sugar cookies this season.  Snow globes filled with beautiful evergreen trees covered in icy sugar crystals, jadeite-colored Christmas trees strewn with garlands that look like tinsel, Christmas stockings that are stenciled with snowflakes, and a few Victorian ornaments that are shiny and bright with colorful drageés, are just some examples of what I made. Let it be known that not only do the cookies look pretty, but they taste the way a good sugar cookie ought to.  It doesn't matter how nicely a cookie is decorated or how elaborate the artwork is, the cookie base and the royal icing has to be delicious.  Being in the business of making custom cookies for special clients and local customers here in Pennsylvania, my ultimate taste testers and critics are the kids.   Well, I think it's safe to say that this year's retro Christmas cookies are going to go down in the history ...

It's a very charming and special thing to have homemade ornaments strung throughout one's Christmas tree.  Whether they're crafted by the kids at school or are made by a very creative member of the family, handmade Christmas ornaments become keepsakes that eventually turn into family heirlooms.  A lot of us have such mementos in our homes. Homemade Christmas ornaments, however, can be of the edible variety. These types of ornaments are really meant to be enjoyed for a present-day Christmas season.  They're great if one is hosting a holiday party, as each guest can pluck whatever he or she wants.  A set of homemade candies, chocolates, and cookies, can make any Christmas tree extra special for the season.  It's a nice way to have something that's both sweet and decorative for a holiday party. For weeks I had been thinking about the types of royal icing cookies that I would make for a small, tabletop feather tree of mine.  I knew the shapes would be ...

'Tis the season to partake of fruitcake.  Fruitcakes have been around for millennia, and they have developed throughout the centuries based on what was available and what was allowed by religion.  Countries around the world are known for their own distinct versions of this holiday sweet.  Panforte in Italy, Birnebrot in Switzerland, Stollen in Germany, Le Cake in France, Bollo de Higo in Spain, Christmas Cake in Canada, Black Cakes from the Caribbean, and our very own American Fruitcake which is rich in nuts, candied fruits, brandy or other liqueurs. My very first memories of fruitcake were from the time I was around five years old.  My father's cousin, Rachel, and her son would bring us homemade fruitcake several weeks before Christmas, and although us kids never ate any, mom and dad loved having it.  I can still see my cousin Peter walking up our driveway holding that small loaf of baked-from-scratch fruitcake.  The thing that seemed odd to me, tho...