Painted Christmas cookies

asakiyume has some lovely painted cookies, and she shared the recipe with me in the comments of this post (do click through, even if you don't plan on making any cookies, to admire more angels).  I made a batch to take to a Christmas party today* (um, many cookies did not make it because we had to, um, well, eat them.  For research purposes, you understand. Oh, and I gave a few to my housekeeper in her Christmas gift bag).

I wanted to experiment with natural dye and a red-and-white color scheme so used lingonberry (similiar to cranberries but smaller) juice. I think two things went "wrong."

First off, I perhaps made the icing a bit too thin. Not from a taste standpoint because, being made from powdered sugar, the icing was already sweet enough, but maybe the icing would have held up better to the juice? I dunno know.

The second problem, then, was the juice was too acidic and ate through the icing, making it hard for me to do detail. Instead of painting smoothly *on* the icing, I found that the colors pooled a bit under the surface. You can't tell in the photos, but looking across the cookies, you can see where the glossy surface of the icing has been disolved. Maybe beet juice next time?

Still they are pretty, I think, and I had a lot of fun doing them.

Sprout helped, but she ate all of her creations (except the unfrosted tree you can barely glimpse with the brightest red touches). My favorite was when she painted big swatches of red across a hedgehog, adopted a squeaky voice, and said, "Oh, I'm bleeding!" before she gobbled it up. :P

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*It isn't late for Christmas parties because here in Egypt we get the fun of having celebrations from the Western-assigned 25 December Christmas day until the Coptic Christmas on January 7.

Sex Ed at the Supper Table

Tonight, Sprout enjoyed telling us (pseudo-enacting?) her conception at the supper table.

Sprout, pushing J's beer bottle next to the water carafe:  This is Papa and this is Momma, and you have to put them really close because, you know, they have to be touching so...

Sprout puts the salt shaker behind the water carafe, opposite the beer bottle: This is me. What do sperm look like?

J: Comme des têtards (Like tadpoles)

Sprout, taking pieces of bread and molding them into tadpole shapes: OK, so we're going to have the girl's team and the boy's team, and we're going to see which one gets to Momma's egg first.

Me: On your mark, get set, go!

Sprout, making the sperm swim, with the girl sperm in the lead: Ha! You know why the girl sperm got there first? Because all the other girls were holding the boys' tails!

And that, friends, is why Sprout is a girl.