Save the Dates

So begins my weekly series about our wedding. I'll be bringing us back to a year ago when we started planning for the big day. And how quickly time flies, we've been married for a month now! The day flew by and so did the honeymoon, I'm wish we were still lounging by the pool right now.

To start it off, the first thing we had to create were the Save the Dates. We sent ours out a year in advance because there was a travel component to it. While we would have loved to do a destination wedding, we knew that there was a chance that key people wouldn't be able to make it. So to incorporate the "destination" part, we opened up what would be considered our honeymoon to be a week long after party.

We sent out the save the dates electronically and to create it, I was inspired by the scripted icing that I spotted on Pinterest. This looked like a delicious way to announce our wedding date!

I whipped up a small batch of royal icing, took out a sheet of parchment paper, and lightly penciled in the cursive words. With shaky hands, I piped out it out in one try! Not bad! But looking back, I wish I made the icing a bit firmer as the loops in the h and e started to blur in. Or at least tried it again on another piece of parchment.

The next step was to decorate around the parchment paper. I poured some dragees into a cocotte (I recommend a funnel, they bounced everywhere). Took out some white coloured heart and star sprinkles and positioned the leftover royal icing and piping bag in the corners.

The next step was the most fun - snapping as many overhead photos as possible. Standing on a chair, I took photos of various angles and positions of the items laid out on my counter top. Then went through them on the computer before choosing one and doing some edits on the brightness.

The text was then added on using PicMonkey (still my favourite online photo editing). At this point, we hadn't decided on a venue in Toronto or a resort in Jamaica yet, so we left the details pretty vague.

But there you have it! We sent these out and even printed a few for family and friends to stick on their fridge.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Eve or Merry Christmas depending where you are! To get into a little creative mood, I made green tea Christmas tree cookies for our families.

Green Tea Cookies

Adapted from The Cookiepedia: Mixing, Baking, and Reinventing the Classics

(Makes about 18 Christmas tree cookies)

3/4 cup of powdered sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of matcha powder

1/2 cup of unsalted butter

3 egg yolks

1 3/4 cup of all-purpose flour

A pinch of salt

1. Gently mix the powdered sugar and matcha powder together.
2. Add in the butter and beat it all together until smooth. It'll look like spinach green icing!
3. Add in the egg yolks and beat until incorporated, scrape the sides of the bowl as needed.
4. Pour in a third of the flour at a time. It will take a minute or so for the flour to absorb into the dough. Also add in the pinch of salt and mix. Make sure that there are no dry or crumbly sections in the dough.
5. Flatten the dough into a disk and plastic wrap it. Seal it up and let it chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
6. Preheat your oven to 180°C (350°F).
7. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and roll it out to about 1/2-inch thick. Cut out shapes with your preferred cookie cutter. Set them on a parchment sheet or silicone mat.
8. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until you see the edges start to turn lightly golden. Cool before decorating.

You can eat the cookies as they are, but if you want to dress them up like sugar cookies, you'll need to make some royal icing.

Green Tea Royal Icing

(Makes enough to line and flood 18 Christmas tree cookies)

1 1/2 tablespoon of meringue powder

2 cups of powdered sugar

1 tablespoon of matcha powder

2 1/2 tablespoons of water

1. Beat all the ingredients together until icing forms peaks. I would recommend using a clean and grease free stand mixer. You can add more green colour if you like, but I found the light green from the matcha powder to be sufficient.
2. This is your stiff consistency, have your piping bag and tip ready, fill about a handful of royal icing into the bag.
3. Pipe along the edges of your cookies, refill if necessary. Add any remaining icing back to the batch.
4. To thin out the royal icing for flooding, keep adding 1 teaspoon of water until you reach the proper consistency.
5. Using the same piping bag and tip, carefully fill it with the thinner icing and pipe them onto the cookie. By now, the edges should have hardened enough to stay as a border. Decorate as you see fit!

Use clean toothpicks for correcting, if you need to slightly shift a line or pop an air bubble. I clearly need to work on my cookie piping skills.

I really like the look of the simple hollies on the tree.

I have an extra copy of Stacy Adimando and Tara Striano's The Cookiepedia: Mixing, Baking, and Reinventing the Classics. Would you like to win it? Our Christmas gift to one lucky winner!

Giveaway Regulations and Conditions: 

• The Cookiepedia Giveaway is open from Saturday, December 24, 2011 to Sunday, January 8, 2012. Entries submitted after 12 midnight EST on Sunday, January 8, 2012 will not be considered. 
• There are three ways to enter, post in the comment section below or on A Baked Creation's facebook page: I could eat ______________ cookies all year long. (Fill in the blank with your favourite cookie.) 
• To enter via twitter, tweet: @abakedcreation I could eat ______________ cookies all year long. (Fill in the blank with your favourite cookie.)
• Please leave a way for us to contact you (via e-mail, twitter handle).
• The winner will be randomly chosen and announced here on A Baked Creation on Monday, January 10, 2012. 
• The winner will have 7 days to claim their prize. If we do not get a mailing address, the prize is forfeited.
• This contest is available to residents of Canada and the U.S.A. only! However, if you have friends and family with a Canadian or American mailing address, feel free to enter. There will be four different winners, one for each book.
• Disclaimer: My copy and the giveaway copy of The Cookiepedia was not sent to us by the publisher.
• UPDATE: A winner has been chosen! Congratulations to SweetThingsTO who said, "I could eat chocolate peanut butter cookies all year long... or anything chocolate peanut butter actually..."

Happy Hanukkah

Gingerbread House

Busy busy busy these weeks! Yet, we couldn't turn down an annual tradition (3 years running). So I squeezed this one little project in. My little cousin brought over a gingerbread kit and we (we meaning mostly me) built and decorated it. Funnily enough, we weren't left with much to decorate with since all I heard during the process is him munching away on candy. One side of the roof is lacking candy, the royal icing lines are crooked, and sometimes the sprinkles fall off. But we love the home-made look of it and the smell! Absolutely sweet! Our gingerbread roof was featured on Photograzing!

Spiders, Mummies, and Ghosts Cupcakes

Halloween is here and it wouldn't be complete without some creepy cakes! Here is a scary assortment of spiders, mummies, and ghosts! Our friend asked for these custom cupcakes to share at work. I'm sure these will be a great hit at the office! We hope your co-workers enjoy them! As always, there are more photos posted on our facebook page and flickr account!

1. Big, black, juicy spiders made from fondant.

2. Spider webs made from royal icing.

3. Those innocent eyes! Ghosts made from fondant, royal icing, and marshmallows.

4. Chocolate cupcakes with orange vanilla buttercream.

5. Woof! The brave little dog can sense ghosts.

6. Mummies made from candy and fondant.

7. Spider webs made from royal icing.

8. Fondant spider on royal icing web.

9. Spiders, Mummies, and Ghost cupcakes!

10. All ready for Halloween!

Cute Birthday Cupcakes

For a sister-in-law's birthday, who can resist chocolate and more chocolate cupcakes? We made chocolate frosting on chocolate cake with cute gum paste flowers

1. Cute tiny pink flowers made from gum paste.

2. Adorable medium pink blossoms made from gum paste.

3. Cute large white daisies made from gum paste.

4. Finishing touches of the centre (royal icing) on the gum paste flower decorations.

5. Happy Birthday plaque made from gum paste.

6. Chocolate buttercream on chocolate cake - yum!

7. Decorating the cupcakes (the fun part).

8. A garden of cute flowers for the birthday girl!