Christmas Cakes and Cookies

Christmas cakes and cookies are always fun to make.  I made this cake with a snickerdoodle recipe and used the same flavor in the icing.  I used Christmas colors for the ribbonwork design and then added bouquets of poinsettas with baby pinecones and holly leaves.

I made Christmas cookies with a sugarcookie dough, rolled out and cut with large cookie cutters.  Since I was selling the cookies I had to charge enough to make a profit off of each cookie, and I wanted the customers to feel like they were getting their money's worth, so I always use the 6" to 8" cookie cutters.  I used buttercream icing to decorate with instead of the smooth royal icing recommended by Wilton.  I don't mean to knock Wilton so much, but they always want to sell you something and make you feel like it isn't right if you don't buy their products and use them for every thing you make.  You don't need every one of their products to make a decent product.  When my mother first started decorating cakes, I remember going to the Wilton store in Albuquerque just about every other day, because she needed this tip or that mixture, or that something or other to make one dang cake.  She spent hundreds of dollars on cake decorating stuff that she didn't really need, except for that one cake, that she made that one time.  It really makes me angry.   I have maybe 4 tips that I use on hundreds of cakes to make every kind of design immaginable and even though I have hundreds of tips, I usually just sell them or give them away, because I'll never use them.  My granddaughters might want them eventually, if they ever decide to do cakes.  But I will teach them my way first, so they won't be taken in by the "you have to have it all  Wilton people"

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This is another design idea to make that is Christmasy.  Strings of Christmas lights and holly berries and leaves.  Sprinkle with some edible glitter and it looks great.  P.S.  don't use the colored edible glitter, it looks like dirt on the icing. always use the clear or white edible glitter.  it always looks elegant and expensive.

I made these feather cookies, cut freehand, they were approximately 12 inches long.  I decorated them with buttercream icing and silver dragees' and placed them on top of buttercream pine needles and buttercream pinecones.  A pretty presentation on a silver platter.