It's That Time Again

Yesterday I "officially" (like that matters to anyone but me) began the Baking Of The Christmas Cookies.

I'll post more on that tonight, once I've got the rest of the pictures I want to use.

But for now...

Remember these cookies?  Well, I had some leftover dough that I wanted to bake off, since otherwise it would make its way to the back of my fridge and not be seen again until springtime.

And I'd been thinking about those stained glass window cookies you make by crushing candy (lifesavers or other similar candy) and sprinkling that in the center of a cookie outline, and baking that.  Most of the ones I've seen are simply that - an outline with a pretty color in the center.  And there's nothing wrong with that - I think they're pretty.  They don't appeal to me as a cookie, to eat, but I still think they're pretty to look at and might make a lovely ornament for your tree.

Anyway, while I was at work on Friday - yeah, Friday, wallowing in my post-turkey have-to-work misery, I had a little part of my brain busy at work with this stained glass thing.

And I thought, also, about the woman who cuts my hair.  Her name is Roberta, and she's an artist.  No, really.  She was a graphic artist, and she has recently been taking courses in stained glass work.  And the windows at the salon she co-owns are adorned with these beautiful stained glass images of fish and seahorses and starfish - in keeping with the ocean-side location.  They're gorgeous.  She designed them and made them and I keep thinking of them.

So I thought, in my copycat way, why not do something like that with cookies?  I figured I'd start small, and just do a little experiment with the rest of that gingerbread dough.  Maybe little fish bowls with little gingerbread fishies swimming around in blue jolly rancher water.

So that's what I did.  And here they are.  My stained-glass fish bowl experiments:

Kind of cute, huh? 

They were fun.  There are things I learned from the experiment, things I'd do differently next time, etc. 

As far as eating them, well, my son and the kid across the street didn't like them, but my daughter and my husband did.  I haven't tried them, actually, but I know my taste preferences, and I don't think I'd enjoy them either.  If you're gonna have candy, have candy.  If you're gonna have a cookie, have a cookie.  Plus, I'm just not really nuts about hard candy anyway. 

These hard candies, by the way, were blue jolly ranchers - THIS shade of blue, or close to it.  But in the baking process, they became greenish.  Interesting.

Anyway, I've got to go now, but I'll be writing probably tonight about the first batches of cookies I've made - namely, Pfeffernusse and Springerle.

Comments

[sheila]

Jayne - these are amazing!!