Christmas Cookies, Round 2

Today was round two of seasonal cooking baking - I tried a new recipe for sugar cookies this time - they taste "okay", but not great. Sugar cookies are more appropriate for cutting out shapes, because they hold together better than shortbreads (but I think shortbreads taste better). Of course, we could use a batch of cookies that aren't super tasty - the shortbreads only lasted 3 days!

Cutting out the cookies - remember, add some flour to your rolling pin and rolling surface, but not too much, or else you'll end up with a tougher dough.

This is a decent level of browning for a sugar cookie, they get much browner than shortbreads do.

I bought a very inexpensive cake decorating tip set, that comes with several metal tips, and the little plastic contraption that you put in a pastry bag that allows you to screw the tips on. I highly recommend picking one of these up, they make decorating SO much easier! And they last for years and years, so it's a good investment (I think mine cost about $12 CDN). You can skip buying expensive pastry bags, and use Ziplock style (tougher plastic) throw-away bags - cut a small corner off the bag, insert the contraption as you would in a normal pastry bag, and you have an inexpensive alternative that you can throw away after you're done. :)

This year I made some Nova-Scotian and Canadian themed Christmas cookies, just for fun. Check out these lobster (we're famous for our lobster around these parts) and maple leaves. Very fun! :)

Here's some fun designs I did of trees, with lots of different colors of Royal Icing. You can really let your creativity go wild with decorating, be sure to have fun with it! :D

Only a couple of weeks 'till Christmas! I can't wait!!!!!

[EDIT: See closeups of some of the tree cookie decorations here.]