Tag: Dr. Seuss

It’s a Seuss Kind of Day

Recipes, Uncategorized

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Oh the places I have been.  For a girl born in the Oklahoma  Panhandle and raised in Southwest Kansas, Reno Nevada is a whole different world; and the road I travelled to get here was (to quote The Beatles) long and winding.

The wonderful thing about the journey is that I have gotten to share every step of the way with my husband and girls.  From Kansas, to Texas, to Colorado, to Arizona and finally to Nevada, each stop has helped me grow and learn.

Now on to the Dr. Seuss cookies.  I’ve been making Dr. Seuss decorated sugar cookies for the last couple of years, usually for Dr. Seuss’ Birthday in March.  And I will be making them this March again.  But this week I got an order for Dr. Seuss cookies for a birthday.

Always up for some cookie decorating fun, I decided to throw the Dr. Seuss cookies in with all the Valentine’s Day hearts and flowers (that will be Tuesday’s post).

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For these cookies, I used by basic sugar cookie recipe (recipe is below).  I love this recipe because it is light and so easy to work with.  No need to refrigerate before you roll it out and it is very easy to adapt flavors.  Some of my favorite are lavender, chai (great with a cinnamon royal icing) and chocolate.  These are good old vanilla bean with vanilla royal icing.

Once the cookies were baked and cooling, it was time to get the pictures together for decorating.  I generally will use a picture for reference and free-hand it, but I do have Kopycake projector that I rarely use, and figured this would be a great time to practice with it.   I chose 5 books to represent; The Cat in the Hat, Oh The Places You Will Go, Horton Hears a Who, The Lorax and Green Eggs and Ham.

Working with the Kopycake is still tricky for me, but the more I use it, the easier it becomes.  I am sure that after a while, I will love it as much as many other decorators do.

The royal icing recipe I use is from Sweetopia.net.  If you haven’t already fallen in love with Miss Marion’s amazing work, trust me, you will.  This is the link to here royal icing recipe  http://sweetopia.net/2012/01/royal-icing-recipe-free-illustrated-recipe/

Now I outline and flood my cookies with the same tip and consistency of icing.  I follow the 10 second rule, also from Sweetopia.net found here http://sweetopia.net/2011/02/video-royal-icing-consistency-made-easy-the-10-second-rule/ along with a great video.

I’ve put a couple of pictures of outlining and then filling.  Please excuse the run-over in the 3rd picture, I filled the first petal too full.

I started with the base coats on any cookie designs that have a solid background (Green Eggs and Ham cookies have a white base coat).  These I let dry AT LEAST 4 hours if not overnight. These are shown with the image superimposed onto the base coated cookies.

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I will generally take a full 2 days to decorate cookies.  Much of this depends on the “layers” of detail, for example, the Cat in the Hat cookies can all be done at once, but the Lorax and Green Eggs and Ham had to dry between layers.

Thank you for letting me spend a little time with you.

Don’t cry because it’s over.

Smile because it happened.

Dr. Seuss

Basic Sugar Cookie Dough

Ingredients:

  • 227 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 175 grams confectioners sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 425 grams all purpose flour
  • 10 grams baking powder*
  • 5 grams kosher salt
  • 5 ml vanilla

Procedure:

  1. In bowl, sift flour, salt and baking powder
  2. In bowl of stand mixer, cream butter and sugar
  3. Add in eggs mix to combine
  4. Mix in dry ingredients and vanilla.  Don’t over mix.
  5. Roll to desired thickness, place on prepared sheet tray
  6. Bake at 325 9-11 minutes, just until edges begin to brown.

*if you don’t want your cookies to spread or puff, leave out baking powder.  Doing this will prevent the cookie from “morphing” shape while baking.

Rainy Tuesday Morning Musings

Uncategorized

Fun baking today, I get to start on a batch of decorated sugar cookies for a Dr. Seuss birthday party on Friday.  I LOVE making decorated cookies.  Watching them go from butter, eggs, sugar and flour to these beautiful finished cookies gives me a sense of accomplishment.131dfa09-291b-40d1-9b7e-05acdac95992

But as I am digging through the jumble of cookie cutters looking for the ones I need, I remembered a poem I saw on a Multiple Sclerosis site.

A little back-story here…My husband of (almost) 26 years, has Multiple Sclerosis.  He was actually diagnosed 3 years ago, but when I think back, he had been showing symptoms for the last 10 years, I just  didn’t connect the dots.

Our journey, and I include myself in this because this disease truly impacts the entire family, has been particularly rough.  With Wade’s diagnosis, our life changed, subtly at first, but like shifting sands of a desert, the changes rolled in one after another; until the whole landscape of our lives has been forever altered.

This disease is insidious, it creeps into every corner and aspect of our lives.  It affects our day to day, but it also makes our future very hard to plan.

Wade is diagnosed with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (PPMS), which is, in a nutshell, the most severe form.  He is the strongest person I know, and it is his strength to fight even when he is exhausted that makes me determined to do all that I can to get the word out so we can defeat this MonSter.

From the National Multiple Sclerosis Society website,

http://www.nationalmssociety.org/What-is-MS/Types-of-MS/Primary-progressive-MS

PPMS is characterized by worsening neurologic function (accumulation of disability) from the onset of symptoms, without early relapses or remissions. PPMS can be further characterized at different points in time as either active (with an occasional relapse and/or evidence of new MRI activity) or not active, as well as with progression (evidence of disease worsening on an objective measure of change over time, with or without relapse or new MRI activity) or without progression. Approximately 15 percent of people with MS are diagnosed with PPMS.

From the National Multiple Sclerosis Society website, http://www.nationalmssociety.org Approximately 85 percent of people with MS are initially diagnosed with Relapsing/Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS). RRMS – the most common disease course – is characterized by clearly defined attacks of new or increasing neurologic symptoms. These attacks – also called relapses or exacerbations – are followed by periods of partial or complete recovery (remissions). During remissions, all symptoms may disappear, or some symptoms may continue and become permanent. However, there is no apparent progression of the disease during the periods of remission.

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So, on this rainy Tuesday morning, I will go back to creating Dr. Seuss cookies, but I hope maybe to raise a little awareness about MS.