My First Snow Sculpture
I had a list of things I was hoping to accomplish today, but then Mother Nature dumped an entire art supply store in my backyard. Use it or lose it.
Recent Posts
Final Art Project of 2017
Eleven days off work gave me lots of time to do fun things. Honestly, I spent most of it in kitchen and you can see that in the patterns that developed here. It was all entirely unintentional. I draw the large shapes first and […]
Cookie Cutter Sugar Cookies
Homemade Multi-Color Sugar Cookie Dough
This sugar cookie recipe is ideal for using cookie cutters because the dough doesn’t lose its shape or spread too much, and it’s nicely sweet and crispy. It is adapted from the Stained-Glass Cookie recipe included in The 1971 Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library. The original recipe card illustrates cookies shaped as Christmas trees and ornaments, and decorated with red, green, and yellow colored doughs that look a bit like stained-glass. For our cookies, we used black and blue doughs. Create whatever shapes and colors you like.
Ingredients
1 cup (227 grams) salted butter, at room temperature
1.5 cups (6 oz) confectioner’s sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2.5 cups (10.625 oz) all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar
food coloring
Method
-
- Mix butter, sugar, egg and extracts thoroughly.
- Blend in flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
- Divide dough in half.
- Set one half aside.
- Determine how many colors you’ll be using.
- Divide the second half in as many portions as there are colors.
- Add color to dough and mix until evenly distributed.
- Cover dough and chill 2-3 hours.
- Preheat oven to 375° F.
- Roll plain half 1/8 inch thick.
- Use cookie cutters to create shapes.
- Place each cookie onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.
- Roll color doughs.
- Cut into desired shapes.
- Place shapes on cookies.
- There’s no need to aid adhesion by pressing down or using egg whites between layers. The doughs will cook into each other and will not separate.
- Bakes 7 minutes, or until golden brown on the edges.
This recipe about makes 24-32 cookies, depending on how much colored dough is left over, and if you’re willing to use it as a cookie base.
Stained-Glass Cookies are approx. 111 calories each.
Grape Goat Cheese Nut Bites
Grape Goat Cheese Nut Bites After trying something like this at a party catered by Memorable Cuisine Catering, I knew I had to try making it myself. The ingredients in Grape Goat Cheese Nut Bites are simple and there’s no cooking involved (though you’ll want […]
Holiday Cards 2017
I usually start designing my holiday cards late summer/early fall. I’ve been preoccupied with other activities and decided to skip it this year.
One of my preoccupations has been learning linocut. Then I thought, maybe I can meld the two. I designed the snowflake below with pen and paper, then transferred the design with the infamous pencil shading technique. (See Method 4.)
Each print was made by hand, with varying levels of success, using only paper and inks I had on hand. The papers’ smoothness varied wildly. When the cards were finished, I used the linocut to print on recycled Amazon packing paper that will be used to wrap presents.
