How about a big round of applause for my 15 year old daughter on her second attempt ever at royal icing, the outcome being these too adorable for words snowglobe snowman cookies! There is just something so wonderfully irresistible about royal icing, though since I'd rather not spend my creative time baking I'm more than happy to let my daughter have all the fun with this one. Since I'm there in any case I do get to live vicariously......though hoping we can figure out how to do this kind of thing without the huge time investment required, at least until we get to the top of the learning curve. We are learning all about royal icing and getting totally inspired to get really good at it from a lovely online cookine decorating class from brit and co, that I can recommend. Plus winter is a great time to spend learning something new, and especially something you can then use to spread joy all around.
The response when we served these cookies with desert this past shabbat was worth all the effort, though the Israeli born folks at the table aren't all that familiar with snow globes, so it was largely lost on them, nonetheless, the American guests appreciation was enough for the crowd. And as it turned out, we were in the middle of a huge storm, that even included a very nerve wracking power outage on Friday night, so the snowglobe theme fit right in.
Two of my nephews happened to be visiting, and so my daughter made custom cookies for them, which as you can see are just oo adorable. This would be a great way to make place cards for a party, just wrap them in cellophane so they can be taken home as party favors. Then again, don't expect all the folks to actually take them home, as resisting them is too great a feat for some.
At this moment we have some frozen planes and sunglasses cookies that are waiting to be iced, so stay tuned for round three! And if you are looking for a great gift for a teenage girl that loves baking, give her the brit and company online cookie decorating class, together with some cookie cutters and an amazing gift is born! Ah yes, and one of those rollers with caps on the ends so you can roll out dough to the desired thickness would also make a great gift, together with some fun sprinkles. Enjoy!