Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Merry Christmas! Sugar High!

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
~Charles Dickens

Christmas Cookie making! Baked, iced and fretted over by me!

This Christmas is slightly bitter sweet for me. Although I'm home with my parents after spending many years abroad, my sister is not here and it's hard to forget that there is a family member missing in all things that we do.

Family secret: My Dad and sister are Christmas Nazis. The tree must be perfect! The lights must be perfect! The christmas balls must not be near another of it's colour and I swear when my mother and I aren't looking they are on their hands and knees measuring the distance between the lights with Christmas rulers. If you don't believe me, Let me let you in on a Mehrer tradition- get a tree, set it up and walk around it 360 degrees. cut branches out of crowded areas, and drill new holes and insert said branches into the blank areas. And once the tree is full of decorations, you must have one person stand on the street and use hand signals to tell the other to fix the bits of the tree that might not look perfect to people walking by. So taking on the Christmas traditions was a daunting task that's been passed on to me this year.
Blinded by the light of Christmas.

Luckily, I passed tree decorating with flying colours, literally. In fact, after I had arranged the lights we had, with dad's blessing, I went to town in the truck and bought 300 more blinking mini lights. Our tree would blind regular Las Vegas Gamblers! My mother, of course, is wondering how much electricity we are spending with our stupendously blingy tree, so dad told her to go out and check the electricity metre. "It's probably whizzing so fast you could use it as a fan if you get too hot!" he said.

Gotta love my Dad.

Christmas cookie plate! How Festive!

Anyway, the next daunting task was baking. My sister is the baker in the family. She is also the decorator. I have piped cookies with her before, but under stern direction. so here you are Rene, not only did I bake these cookies, but I iced them myself! And it took me hours. Now I feel like a little Christmas elf sweat factory worker. but if you'd seen the cookies my sister made last year, where the guests refused to eat them, but rather wrapped them up in little napkins to take home and admire, you know I had lots to live up to. So here they are!

(And yes, Nae, you were greatly missed during the piping of these cookies. And the tree decorating. And all that will come in the next week to come! And FYI, there is no WAY I am going to make a gingerbread house!)

I kind of got into the snow flakes. They were really hard to screw up, so we have a plethora of them in many shapes and sizes.

These ones weren't easy to arrange on the baking pan, so they are slightly skewed. But as my art teacher once said,"never strive to make anything perfect otherwise you erase the idea that it was handmade." I agree! (Design of the two nicer looking cookies stolen from Rene's cookies from last year.)

Wonky Who trees. (I love Grinchy green!)

Cookies of the bells.

Snowflake Christmas tree!
Shockingly, there is still icing left over! What to do with all that icing?
Dad says make more cookies!!!

Merry Christmas!
xxMelanie

9 comments:

  1. Oh my, they're gorgeous! Are they regular sugar cookies? Where did you get the cutter for the wonderful big flakes?
    You are inspiring me to make cookies this weekend. (Love the quote, yet again.)

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  2. Awwww. I'm missing you guys as well. It's hard to believe all that is happening over there while I run around in sun dresses and flip flops. Perhaps it's a blessing that it just doesn't feel Christmassy
    here at all.

    I'll go into Abu Dhabi on the great cookie sheet hunt this weekend. I made the dough and then had to freeze it as I had the parchment paper, piping bags and tips, and even cutters and colouring but nothing to bake them on!

    The cutters this year are very disappointing, it's been hard to find anything with a Christmas theme, so I'll have to improvise. Stay tined for pictures!

    I bought that big snowflake cutter at Winners last year, it was a bit of a splurge but worth it.

    I love the bells and the grinchy trees Mel! You get an A+ from me!

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  3. I must have had your snowflake in my subconscious because I trolled Winners for elaborate cookie cutters yesterday. But there was nothing. (I did see three three-foot wisemen though!)

    Al Wahda Mall has some kitchen stores- I think there is one down the hall from MacGrudy's or one floor down! Or there is always Ikea!

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  4. Kate! Here are the recipes I used:

    Sugar cookies:
    http://allrecipes.com/recipe/the-best-rolled-sugar-cookies/detail.aspx

    And the royal icing:
    http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/royal-icing-iii/Detail.aspx

    Good luck! : )

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  5. Winners has cookie cutters?
    Thanks for the recipes, Mel. The cookie recipe is probably the one I used for my autumn cookies, and I was wondering how to find it again. I got red and green colouring today. Don't have snowflake or bell cutters though. Do you mind if I steal your decorating ideas? :-)

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  6. Go for it! Dad ate all my cookies! Lol. I've got to make some new ones! But I can't complain, cookies are for eating. ; ) (He left the big snowflakes though!)

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  7. Much appreciated. Pictures of my efforts are on my blog. Now if I can just figure out how you do those tiny flower-like designs...

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  8. Ahh, the tiny flower design is a special star like tip! Easily found in any kitchen store. ; )

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  9. I must reinvestigate my star-shaped tip!

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