Christmas Sugar Cookies & Royal Icing

You know how you watch people make sugar cookies on the Food Network and you think to yourself "I can totally do that," and then you watch them frost the cookies perfectly with simple icing and you think to yourself, "I got that too.."??? Well guess what. You don't. Because frosting sugar cookies is the most difficult baking task on the planet. And the worst part about it is that it appears to be so deceptively easily. So the whole time you're frosting, you're feeling terrible about yourself because really, ANYONE should be able to do this. LIES.

Skipping a bunch of steps, we started by rolling out the cookie dough, and using cute Christmas cookie cutters. (We used this recipe for Soft Cut-Out Sugar Cookies  if you'd like to try it at home.)

Cutting out the cookie shapes, very simple!

Variety of Christmas cookie shapes. My favorite is the Christmas light.

 

 

So the Christmas cookies were baked, and really, we had no difficulty with these. They were thin and crispy, but moist when you bit into them. The shapes were really cute too, and we were able to get as many possible cookies out of our dough.

 

As the cookies were cooling, we moved on to make homemade icing: Royal Icing for Sugar Cookies.

 

This was the real treat and challenge of this MIHM baking project, as my mom and I have never really worked with homemade icing before. The recipe was simple enough, and after mixing everything together with a hand mixer, we had icing ready to go.

 

 

We planned to put the icing in little bottles for easy use, and use food coloring to have white frosting, green frosting, and red frosting. But guess what? Our food coloring was bad...as in hard, chunky, stuck to the bottle, etc. STRIKE 1. So we sent the MIHM Holiday Intern (aka my brother) to the store to get some food coloring at 8:30 p.m. He came back with pastel food coloring because the store didn't have standard Red, Blue, Green, Yellow food coloring. STRIKE 2. So here we were, 9 p.m. on a Monday night, all the frosting odds stacked against us. It's ok! MIHM will prevail! We broke out all of the sprinkles we had, and got to decorating the sugar cookies.

 

See how easy the frosting looks above? Yeah. It's not. Between my sticky fingers and runny frosting messes on the counter, I really slacked on the photography part of this project. Here's the issue. The more liquidy your frosting, the more it runs off the cooking past the point of no return. Even after you think you've put just the right amount on, added your sprinkles, and called it a day, nope...the frosting is not done moving around on your cookie. We used the squirt bottles, toothpicks and knives to frost the cookies. I think the toothpicks were probably the easiest to manage.

 

In the meantime, imagine if your Girls Team partner is yelling words of "encouragement" like, "take your time, try to make it look professional, don't make it look like a Kindergartener's, be creative" etc. etc. etc. All of this leads to a bad MIHM. I was TRYING to be creative. I was TRYING to make my cookie look like it was decorated by a 27 year old. I was TRYING to stay in the lines. It's IMPOSSIBLE.

 

Apparently it is possible though, because after my Girls Team partner had her own issues with the frosting, she reached out to Google where she would find that you are supposed to make two frostings. One: a thicker frosting you use to line your cookie shape. Two: a thinner frosting (like the one we made) to fill in the cookie. And also, you were supposed to wait a while for each part to dry before creating more designs on the cookie. SIGH. I don't know you guys. It just seems like a lot of work when they sell frosting at the grocery store...So, STRIKE 3.

 

Regardless of the disaster that was Royal Icing, my mom is up for trying it again. I need some time to think about it. But, our cookies did turn out cute, and despite looking a bit amateur hour, were actually very tasty! The icing was really sweet the night we made it, but was toned down some in the days to follow.

 

So here's a nice picture of some of our best work. No need to spoil the fun by positing some of the worst. :)

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM MAKE IT HAPPEN MONDAY!

Remember Thanksgiving?!

Remember Thanksgiving?! Yeah...we barely do either. But! We can't let this awesome MIHM Thanksgiving project get left behind. 

When we took our field trip up to Apple Hill to make our Salted Caramel Apple Tart  we found these really unique gourds. My mom had a vision of Tea Light Gourds for her Thanksgiving table scape so I let her run with this project! There were three big bins of gourds, and my mom picked out seven gourds, trying to get all different looking ones.  

Gourds from Apple Hill. 

Unique colors, shapes and warts! 

The toughest part of this project was carving out the space in the gourds where the tea light would sit. Gourds are really hard and very thick. You'd think gourds would be similar to pumpkins, which you can carve "easily" with a plastic knife from Target. But, these gourds are tough and required a special trip to OSH and a call to our favorite construction guy, my dad. 

Gourd, carved out, with tea light.

Final products! 

A tip if you're planning to do this project: after carving the gourds, they go bad rather quickly. Plan to make them one or two days in advance, no sooner, and then be prepared to part with them after using them. The bottom of the gourds get mushy and moldy...leading to another tip: don't put the gourds down on a table without something underneath it like a table cloth or coaster if you care about your table. Just in case the bottom gets mushy before you're planning to dump them!

Completed table scape, looking festive! 

Gourd tea lights in action, illuminating the beloved cranberry sauce.

The Gourd Tea Lights turned out beautifully, but my mom won't take any credit since my dad was the one who did all of the work (the carving). But she gets creative vision points! They added a very live and festive fall feeling to our Thanksgiving table. 

My mom would definitely make these again, but next time she wants to try and find gourds that are more unique from one another. I have to admit - I wanted nothing to do with this project. I wasn't a team player, and I don't really have an explanation why. But, my mom said she would definitely make these again, and now that I've seen the results, I'm intrigued and will be a more active Girls Team member. 

MIHM Field Trip: Paper Source!

You know what I'm obsessed with? Stationary, cards, wrapping paper, crafts, cute gifts, etc., etc. etc. So basically everything they sell at Paper Source. Devastatingly, the Sacramento area does not have a Paper Source so I do all of my shopping online, paying a ridiculous amount of money in shipping costs for something as light as, well, paper. (Fear not, MIHM followers! One is coming to the Roseville Fountains next summer!)

My MIHM partner hadn't been to a Paper Source yet, and with the holidays approaching, we decided it would be the perfect time for a MIHM field trip! So we hoped in the MIHM mobile (a.k.a. my mom's car) and sped off to Walnut Creek.

At Paper Source we were on a mission. One. Buy as many things as our budgets allowed because why wouldn't we do that after spending 90 minutes driving to the store. And two. Get some cute ideas for projects we could make at home.

We've arrived!

Wall of stamps. This is what's so dangerous about Paper Source. I wouldn't even consider myself someone who likes or needs stamps, but as they are so cutely displayed here, all of the sudden I somehow convinced myself that I needed 45 stamps. For budget reasons, I actually only purchased one. It's a really cute "G" that I plan to use...sometime...

This was cut out for budget reasons, but look at this adorable Peace Joy Love stamp.

These are glitter numbers on a stick. So cute, so easy to make ourselves. We snapped a pic so we could try this at home using the Silhouette.

 

Another example of a cute sign we could make at home: GIVE THANKS.

 

Look at this cute display board of DIY holiday cards. So clever and talented. My MIHM partner was so inspired by this that she ended up buying all of the materials necessary to make her own Christmas cards this year. Very ambitious of her, but she has the skills to make it happen!

Cards that look like mittens!

 

So here's what happens when you go somewhere on a field trip and get really excited and want to buy everything in the store: you're too busy shopping to take great photos. These are the only insights into our trip that you're going to get.

 

It was fun to mix up our MIHM project and actually take a trip for inspiration and MIHM team bonding. It was a great day spent shopping with my mom (later in the day I introduced my mom to the Container Store which was worthy of its own field trip post!) and a great day for MIHM creativity.

 

Wishing our MIHM friends a happy holiday season!! 

Guinness & Onion Soup with Irish Cheddar Crouton

As we get back into testing new recipes at MIHM, we thought it would be fun to find a guiding theme. We decided it would be fun to try making internationally inspired foods. So first, stop - Ireland! I found this recipe for Guinness and Onion Soup on the Food Network website. I thought the Guinness part sounded interesting, and the cheddar crouton couldn't be bad, so my mom gathered all of the ingredients and we got started.

Ingredients, including SO many onions.

 

Yeah, you read the recipe correctly - 8 cups of sliced onions. As a courtesy to our readers, we're giving this recipe a health and safety warning for this onion job. We are both pretty sensitive to onions and had to take multiple breaks out of the kitchen to give our crying eyes a break. The sacrifices we make for this blog, I swear...

 

I minced the garlic as my mom battled the onions.

Garlic, onions and olive oil heating up. (It's a miracle this photo turned out so well since I was blinded by the onions while photographing!)

 

Next up, I added one bottle of Guinness to the garlic and onions and let it reduce down to half. Immediately the entire kitchen switched from the aroma of onions, to a strong smell of beer. :)

Beef broth added, then the soup simmered for 10 minutes.

 

While the soup was cooking, my mom preheated the broiler, which isn't something we cook with a lot. I don't even think I have a broiler at my apartment? No clue. I toasted the French bread for the cheddar crouton. I tried a few times because I didn't want the bread to be too toasted, as it would get cooked more in the broiler.

 

My mom sliced the Irish Cheddar. By the way, if you've never tried Irish Cheddar you need to stop reading this blog and go buy some right now. It is SO GOOD. Soft, with a little tang. Delicious, delicious! My new favorite cheese.

 

Once the broiler was ready and the soup had simmered for 10 minutes, we ladled it into oven proof bowls. We weren't totally sure at the time that these were oven proof; thankfully they are. :)

 

Bread added to the soup...

 

Cheese layered on the bread...

 

Cooking for about 10 minutes, until the cheese melted completely.

 

The final product!

 

My mom, brother and I ate the soup right out of the broiler, as the recipe said you must eat it piping hot. And although we all enjoyed the soup, we agreed that we didn't need to make it again. The recipe was easy to follow, and there wasn't anything out of the ordinary about the ingredients. But that was just it. Once you ate the cheesy bread crouton, it tasted like your standard French Onion Soup, with a slight hint of beer in it. Not bad, just not exactly original either. Which makes sense, this is basically the Irish version of French Onion Soup. So it made for a good cooking blog night, and was overall pretty tasty, but it's not going to become a staple around our house.  

 

See you guys next week when we will be reporting on a MIHM field trip!

Wedding Card Organization: A Simple DIY Project

I know we said we were officially done with wedding crafts over here at MIHM, but there was just one final craft we had to sneak in. And it was for a good cause: organization. Over the last year we received so many cards for our engagement, showers and parties, and of course, the wedding. I wanted to find a way to keep them organized and together since they are special, and I could see myself losing or misplacing them over the years to come. Naturally, I scoured Pinterest and found a clever and easy way to organize our cards.

I had been keeping all of the cards we received in this Ikea box.

But as you can see, it was a disorganized mess.

So, I copied a Pinterest project that would bind all of the cards together in an organized manner. Only tools required: a hole punch, twine and scissors.

I started by organizing our cards by topic - engagement, bridal shower & bachelorette party, wedding, and Crate & Barrel cards (as these are an odd size of 2x2). Then I started hole punching.

I hole punched one hole in the top corner of each card.

Once each card had a hole, I strung them onto a piece of twine.

I tried to sort by size too, with the largest card in the back, but then I selected some meaningful cards to be placed in the front.

After all of the cards were on the twine, I tied a simple double knot. Between the cardstock paper and the tough twine, I'm not at all worried about cards breaking off or slipping out.

I repeated this process for each stack of cards, which took about an hour...Hole punching was the most time consuming part of this project, but I also stopped to read through cards which sidetracked me a bit. And hey, this wasn't a race!

Tada! My final four card bundles.

Obviously, this project was super easy. So while it wasn't exactly a crafting challenge, it was definitely a useful craft project, which I'm all about. For now, I've placed the card bundles back into the little blue Ikea box, but now I can rest assured that all of the cards will stick together. No loose cards to go missing or haphazardly stored ones to rip or bend. The other perk of this binding project is that it's still super easy to open up each card and read what's inside.

I love sending cards, and receiving cards in general, and with this project I was happy to give our cards the respect they deserve from what was one of the happiest, most memorable times in our lives.

Ok, now for real this time, NO more wedding stuff on MIHM. We swear!