Christmas Cookies 2008!

Hello everyone!
I hope you're enjoying the holidays! This weekend I hosted a First Annual Cookie Decorating Extravaganza with some of my girlfriends here in Charleston, and thought I'd share some pics.


Busy rolling out the dough!
I purchased 5 orders of raw sugar dough from a local bakery (The Cake Stand, and the dough was fabulous by the way!) so that way all we'd have to do was roll, bake and decorate.... leaving the tedious mixing to the pros. We only used 2/3 of the dough, so the rest is hiding out in my freezer until whoever's birthday is next.


This cactus cut-out is my favorite! Reminds me of New Mexico.


Shannon brought her cookie-spritzing machine and her amazing cream cheese & orange rind-flavored dough! Yum.


A messy messy table...


Some spritzed cookies all decked out.


So many cookies! ...some more anatomically-correct than others! (yikes, I'm sure all the wine was an influence on the sillyness...)
These were dipped in white and dark chocolate, which is the usual way I decorate. (My chocolate of choice is Merckens, but that was unavailable to me this time. I used a grocery store substitute, but the results weren't as good. If you're going the chocolate route, use Merckens only!)


Snowflake action.


These I decorated the day after my party. We had soo many cookies rolled and baked off, we were unable to get to them all! I wasn't happy with my chocolate, so I tried a different approach with these: icing. I think I agree with the reviewers here, this is the "Holy Grail" of icing recipes! Check it out: allrecipes.com
...although, I will admit, these are SO sugary, you feel that immediate JOLT of sugar in your bloodstream! Makes you only want to eat one, though :~)

Happy holidays.
~P.