We also ended up making the dough for some of the others since they needed to refrigerate anyway.
We both woke up early on Saturday, eager to get started. Here we are before everyone showed up.
See the aprons? We're such professionals!
We got started baking the Maple Yule Logs (since those also need to be frosted) and setting up the living room. My house is pretty small so I had to move some furniture out so I could fit all the tables and chairs in.
We only put out about half the sprinkles that we had and they still didn't make a dent in them. Maybe we can stop buying sprinkles this year.
Our Pre-Party started around 11:30 am when Kim arrived. She's our favorite decorator and she is fantastic at baking as well so we recruited her help early. I think she's doing dishes here.
See why we love having her around? She helped frost the Maple Yule Logs, made the Santa's Thumb Prints, manned the oven for long periods of time and was in charge of the icing. She was in charge of the icing last year and did such a great job that it might now be her permanent job. Anything we need done, Kim's right there ready to help out. Plus she comes up with some really cute cookie decorations!
This year we tried something new. Kim made a big batch of icing and then we transferred it to small containers to mix in the color. Then the icing was funnelled into squeeze bottles. It was a brilliant idea that either Molly or I got from some one's blog (and unfortunately I can't figure out which one so I can't thank the genius who thought of this). Here are about 1/2 our icing bottles.
You would not believe how much easier it was to decorate the cookies with the bottles as opposed to tubs of icing and knives and toothpicks. Plus it was much less messy!
Here's Matea showing her 2-bottle method.
I should also mention that Tea was a huge help as well. She was a champion icing mixer and stamped most of the Stamped Butter Cookies.
Mia even stopped by for a while.
She was wearing the most adorable pink boots. She came ready to party!
Here are some of the final products.
I believe these beauties are Kim's creations.
By the end of the day, we had made Cream Cheese Roll-Out Cookies (the ones with the cute colored icing), Gingerbread men, Santa's Thumbprints (peanut butter cookies with a Hershey kiss on top), Dipped Pretzels, Molasses Crinkles (I think they are really called Big Soft Ginger Cookies), Maple Yule Logs, Stamped Butter Cookies, and Amber's Award Winning Snickers Fudge (which we made and then forgot about so it all stayed at my house- Darn!).
We had a fantastic time and were so glad we could share that time with friends. Thanks to everyone who helped and we'll see you next year!
Oh one last thing. Of course we had to make the penis cookie. I told you last year that it's a tradition. One of these unlucky little dudes ended up losing a ball. He was still delicious. Plus it just seems mean to fault a guy for only having one ball.
We also made penis cookies out of the gingerbread dough (technically I made a toad stool). Sadly, after tasting them, we decided we actually could go back. (Get it? The dough was black).
4 Comments:
What a success! Of course I never had a doubt. Kim sounds awesome! I think I need to hire her for all of my parties.
I was totally worried that this entry was going to be a bust as I did not think the penis cookies were going to make an appearance! Crisis averted!
I'm glad to hear that you and Molly were both able to go back. That is Christmas miracle #5!
Boy what a great time! Well, now I'm really sad I didn't get to attend, but hopefully you forgive me. There's always next year! The cookies looked soooooo yummy......I was trying to eat them off the computer screen :-).
Marianne
How fun! This is exactly the kind of thing I would do if I didn't get bored of baking cookies halfway through....
Cookies come but once a year now it's here, now it's here!
Thanks for the good time Good time Gal!
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