A few years ago I started making ginger bread men at xmas time, they get better every year (as my decorating skills improve!)
I am at the moment in the midst of a pile of 150 various sizes of honey biscuits cut with the ginger bread men cutters .
My SIL's Baby shower is this weekend and I promised to make up the favours for her, my idea was to do baby themed stack of 3 different sized gingerbread (honey) men, tied with ribbon.
I have spent the last 2 days scouring the net looking for inspiration and ideas and am now overwhelmed by just how much is out there!
WOW! there are so many very talented people out there! a huge wealth of info on how to and ideas! my problem is theres just too much! LOL!
I think this is quickly becoming a passion for me though, I enjoy it hugely! I love baking at the best of times but this is really a great outlet for my creative side!
Anyone else as excited about cookie/ biscuit designs as I am??
Have seen shows on Austar where it seems to be a popular business in the USA, i have to say i love the idea certainly some huge creative ideas out there
I'm actually thinking of making dinosuaur shaped cookies personalised
with the kids names for the lolly bags at my son's dinosuaur themed Birthday party.
What do you think is the best icing? I'd love to know any tips you have.
DH and I tried to make a ginger bread house at Christmas - major fail. I would love to be able to do it though - I love being creative with food and making it art. I have recently gotten into creative cupcake decorating, but that seems easier to me and less exact than cookie decorating.
Teni and Feeb, Im enjoying looking so much!! TBH I dont really like eating them that much! Everyone else does though, so they must be ok!
Eluned- let me know what/how you go!
Smiles- all the sites I have seen so far have mostly been American, it does seem to be a HUGE thing over there. I cant say I would make a business of it! too time consuming!
Spring- I use the Royal icing, 1 egg white with icing sugar till at desired consistency, but a cheeky sneaky way I learnt today is to colour that roll out icing/ fondant stuff (buy it at the supermarket) and cut it out with your cutter the shape as your biscuit, then use glucose syrup wash to stick it down, easy peasy!
also learnt today that you can use that pavlova magic stuff instead of egg whites.
Just me- LOL at your ginger bread house! I am going to attempt one this year, meant to last year but ran out of time/ inclination! ooh sounds like it may be trickier than I thought...
Mak- the baby shower is on sunday, I have started cooking and icing now so I can have fun with the decorating after the Jbaby goes to sleep, if he is around all he does is steal my biccies!!
When these ones are done I will add to my FB folder of stuff I made, You should be able to see some of my ginger bread men stuff I made | Facebook
I think if you have all the basic skills and a good icing recipe that you know works, it wouldn't be that hard. We just saw it done somewhere and thought we could do it but we didn't have the icing right so it didn't harden properly. By the time we had two wall stuck together (finally) we were just so over it we didn't feel like doing anymore. Also the shapes we cut out didn't work the greatest - we were a bit over ambitious with the size and they warped slightly while cooking. I did see after Christmas though, you can buy sets from the kitchen shop that are cookie cutters for gingerbread houses which is better than the templates we used and cut with a knife. They wouldn't make huge houses, but they looked alright so we might try them this year if we are brave enough. I really want to make one that kids can decorate but we may just stick to star Christmas trees - they are bit more foolproof.
I love making shaped biscuits here, the kids help to now. I have just about every shape I can come accross including the alphabet. Thankgod for the invention of disposable piping bags, much easier for the cleanup unless the little ones get to the icing.
spring- I bought the pavlova magic tonight and used that instead of eggwhite...its FANTASTIC!!! the icing is soooo fluffy and such a nice texture and colour too! I dont know if Ive got the icing sugar to eggpowder/water ratio right yet though, I should I have looked at a recipe or something (duh!!) tastes a lot better too.
if you google "karens cookies" she has a heap of video tutorials, they have come in very handy!
HJ- if you are lucky I really will send you some this time! you have to promise to be nice though! :P
Kitten2b- I have been using baking paper cones or small freezer bags, works pretty well!
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Anyone else into Biscuit/ cookie art?
but I don't think I have the talent to try to get fancy myself
Im enjoying looking so much!! TBH I dont really like eating them that much! Everyone else does though, so they must be ok!
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