Trains, Valentine Hearts, Leprechauns and Shamrocks, Easter Eggs ,Bunnies and Chicks, Teacher Appreciation

As some of you already know, I've been decorating cakes as a hobby since I was 10 years old.  My mom even bought me my own decorating tool caddy with, like, a dozen different tips to use, a handful of couplers, flower nails, and those oh-so-fun-to-clean piping bags.  Every so often I'd pick up a copy of the latest Wilton decorating magazine and I had a blast, it always felt good to be able to zone out in front of a blank cake canvas and get my creative juices flowing.

Nowadays, 30 years later, I still do decorate the occasional cake, but it seems like the chore of cleaning grease-based frosting from tips and couplers (at least we have disposable piping bags now, or else I'd have completely quit a long time ago) over-rides my desire for creativity.

Earlier this year, as I was planning my little one's first birthday party, I was trying to come up with a fun party favor when I came across decorated sugar cookies online.  Well, sure, I've seen lots of them before, but never gave them much thought until I decided to make some for little one's party.  The flooding part is different than frosting a cake, but the piping technique is very similar.  And royal icing, unlike buttercream, is just sugar, water and meringue powder, no grease and easy to clean!

So here's what I've done over the past 4 months.

February - Train cake and cookie favors for little one's first birthday party
Still learning about icing consistency, it was too runny but the cookies still turned out cute. Can you believe I baked and decorated 60 trains?!  Crazy first attempt at decorating cookies.  5 dozen vanilla sugar cookies.
 

February - Valentine's Day playdate; heart cookies
Much better icing consistency.  These were time consuming but so much fun!  1 dozen chocolate sugar cookies.
 

March - St. Patrick's Day playdate; leprechaun and shamrock cookies
1 dozen chocolate and 1 dozen vanilla sugar cookies.
 

April - Easter brunch at in-laws; bunny, baby chick and egg cookies
18 chocolate sugar cookies.


 May - Teacher Appreciation Week for big one's teachers; square and daisy cookies
1 dozen chocolate and 1 dozen vanilla sugar cookies.
 

That's it for now.  I'm having so much fun with this that I wish I had more time to do it more often.  I'll post more as I make more.  I need a place to keep these pictures for reference, and I can't keep up with two blogs, so they'll make the occasional appearance on here.  Thanks for bearing with me.