Good Things by David

It's so difficult to resist an iced sugar cookie, especially when it is bright and colorful.  For Valentine's Day, heart and cupcake cookies iced in reds and pinks make for very festive treats to give to your loved ones.  Who doesn't remember having to pass out Valentine's Day cards in elementary school, making sure that every single classmate had a card in his or her little "mailbox"?  These days, handing out iced sugar cookies to those kids and teachers who are allowed to eat such treats, seems very appropriate for the holiday. Variations of sugar cookies in the shapes of hearts and cupcakes abound online, which is why I think it's a great idea to ice them as you see fit.  There really is no way to go wrong because the end result is always sweet. For my Valentine's Day cookies this year, I decided to give each one a little sparkle, a little pizzaz and lots of eye popping colors.  All of the designs are easy and I may have even repeated m...

It seems as if steamed puddings are rather underrated these days.  Most of us have abandoned the tradition of steaming desserts over a burner for hours on end, opting for baking our delicious sweets instead.  I admit that I don't steam puddings too often, but whenever I do, I know that the end results are always unbelievably good. In essence, steamed puddings are nothing more than cakes which have been steamed in bowls, molds or cake pans.  Just about any good butter cake recipe can be made this way if so wish.  However, it's always best to choose those which have deep, spicy flavors.  Pumpkin, persimmon, ginger, chocolate, apple and fig are just some examples of steamed puddings that have the perfect assertive flavors for steaming. An apple spice cake recipe that I make every single year was turned into a set of steamed puddings over the weekend, and the results were well worth the effort. From the eggs, flour, butter, sugar, fruits and spices...

Happy New Year to you.  I want to thank everyone who takes the time to read the blog, learn from it, and get inspired by it. Many of you who send me photos and share stories, inspire me in turn to try something new or approach a project differently. I love seeing people get creative with their baking, cooking, decorating and collecting. Keep it up! Let's all make 2019 a fantastic year for ourselves and for our loved ones.  Cheers!

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 ...

For those who are celebrating Hanukkah, the eight day holiday is a great time to eat traditional sweets of all kinds, but I personally think it's even better if you get to share a few of them with those who are dear to you.  This year, if you have a moment, bake and ice sugar cookies in the classic shapes of Hanukkah that we all know and love. Two dear friends of mine recently asked me if I would make special Hanukkah cookies for their family and friends.   I immediately set to work on assembling my tasty sugar cookie dough as a base, and several batches of that good royal icing recipe I created many years ago. Hanukkah cookie cutters were then taken out, and I began one of my favorite tasks of all time.  Baking! During the Festival of Lights, one candle on a menorah is lit for every night of the observance of this holiday.  Eight nights and eight days require a menorah with eight candles, plus an additional candle (in the middle of the candelabra) used fo...

In the latter part of the nineties (late twentieth century), the L.E. Smith Glass Company of Pennsylvania manufactured a special shade of glass, called caramel glass, for the Martha by Mail catalog.  This particular color was used on a limited number of glass items that were already being produced for Martha Stewart Living, back when their exclusive catalog was in business.  The production run for this shade of glass lasted for less than a handful of years. Many of us collectors tend to classify this particular opaque glass as 'slag glass', while others label it chocolate glass, brown glass, and of course, caramel glass or caramel slag glass.  Make a note of it while searching for pieces online.  Not everyone is going to call it caramel glass. Slag glass is characterized by swirls or whorls of cream or white glass mixed in with the dominant color portion of the dish.  Antique slag glass was actually made by combining molten metal ores with molten colored g...