Woodland Tree Cookies

These Woodland Tree Cookies were inspired by the late oil painter Bob Ross and the hundreds of trees that I watched him bring to life with his brush on his long running PBS show, "The Joy of Painting."

Bob's "happy trees" were just the trees I imagined in a magical woodland brimming with beauty, peace, joy and gnomes.

Now I am not a painter, but Bob's motto, "there are no mistakes, just happy accidents" is something I try to always remember and encourages me to not let a fear of failure hold me back.

As a college student, I religiously watched the "The Joy of Painting." It was on Sundays, early in the afternoon, and it was a relaxing end of the weekend ritual. Watching Bob paint was meditative and made me feel positive and ready for the upcoming week.

I never painted alongside Bob, I just sat and absorbed his creations and his sweet and wise narrative.

So, with tinted and thinned royal icings as my paint, and flooded and dry cookies as my canvas,  I made these woodland tree cookies.

Some are better than others since as with just about everything, practice makes perfect. But, I wasn't afraid to try and I hope Bob would be proud.

Here's my inspiration:

 And,  here's how I made them:

Make some cookies and outline and flood them with white icing. Let them dry completely before painting the trees.

I mixed a paint by tinting thinned royal icing with a bit of moss green and leaf green gel coloring.

Paint a line to mark the center of your tree.

Now load your paint brush and starting at the top fill in the branches and work your way down making the tree wider as you go.

Then go back and add some darker areas for dimension.

You can also add some brown royal icing paint to mark the trunk, branches and ground.

If you want to make a group of trees just make the one in the foreground bigger and darker.

Keep practicing and experimenting. This was one of my favorites.

Warm Bread

Today we served 340 lunches at Trinity Episcopal's Wednesday Community Meal and the highlight of of every plate was warm, just baked bread.

The bread was donated to us by Good Samaritan Hospital and came par baked and frozen. The hospital gave us three cases and it was so simple to prepare. All we had to do was bake it for 5 minutes in a 350-degree oven and voila! — fresh bread!

As the one who in the past has made bread dough from scratch for the meal, I can't even begin so say what a convenience this was.

In the hopes that we could get away with serving the bread without butter, we topped it with a bit of cheese, minced garlic and parsley before baking. Our plan worked and the guests loved it.

One man came up to the window as he was leaving and asked if he could have some more bread to go. When I handed it to him he said, "oh my,  it's still warm," and gave me the biggest smile.

Warm bread is spirit lifting and was exactly what our guests needed on this damp Portland day.

Gnome Cookies

I like my gnome cookies but they also turned out to be one of the most labor intensive cookies I've ever made.

And, after all the work, I have to report that there was a sad casualty. You see, I was so pumped with how they turned out that I lined them up for a final photo and in my excitement, dropped my camera on one of the poor guys. He was pretty messed up and sadly there was no way to resuscitate him.

With a good 40 minutes devoted to decorating each gnome, I'd have to say these are cookies you should make for the experience or for very very good friend. With the time spent on them, I'd have to charge $15 a cookie if I sold them and I can't imagine anyone would want to pay that.

If you want to make each kind of cookie from my woodland set, make extra mushrooms and just a handful of these little guys.

Here's how:

I knew it would be all in the details when it came making the gnome cookies come to life. Before I started decorating, I traced my cutter and sketched multiple designs on paper. I always find my results are better if I have a solid decorating plan on paper. Trust me, it's time well spent.

I started by outlining and flooding the hats.

Then I outlined and flooded the boots and used an edible ink marker to break up the face, shirt and pant sections and draw where I wanted the gnome's hands to be placed.

I added the face and hands. As you can see, I decided to move the placement of the hands down a bit.

Then I outline and flooded the pants, going around the hands so that that they look like they are inside pockets.

Outline and flood the shirt.

Add the eyes, eye brows and beard with white icing.

White the white icing is wet, add the ears and nose. Let this dry completely before moving on.

Once the icing is dry, use a brush and thinned icing to add details — black above the eyes and for the mouth; a bit of pink to highlight the cheeks, ears, nose and mouth; and more skin colored icing under the eyes and on the ears and under the mouth.

I used a brush and thinned black/blue icing to add details to the shirt and mark the gnome's arms.

The addition of two tiny drops of blue on the eyes brings the gnome to life. I used a scribe tool to add it.

Now it's time for some textured details on the pants and hat, again using thinned icings and a small brush. As you can see, I decided to bring the hat down farther on the gnome's head and covered its original eyebrows.

I also brushed on some darker brown icing on the boots.

Now it's beard detail time —  Using piping consistency icing and a #1 tip, add strands of hair.

Also add piped hair to the mustache and add new eyebrows.

Looking good!

Woodland Mushroom Cookies

Of all the cookies in my woodland set, these mushrooms took the least amount of time. I could have easily made more of them and trust me, I don't feel that way about too many cookies.

For the smaller mushroom, I just outlined and flooded the stem with white icing and outlined and flooded the top with red. While the red icing was still wet, I immediately dropped on small and large dots of white icing.

For the large mushroom, I outlined and flooded the stem with white icing and the top with brown. Then, I let that set for at least 30 minutes before adding detail with some piping consistency ivory icing.

I could have stopped there, but decided to add some green grass at the base of the mushrooms after the icing dried overnight. As paint, I used thinned green icing and I applied it with a small soft brush.

Here are more details:

Outline and fill the stem.

Outline and fill the top and have your white icing ready for dropping on the dots.

For the large mushroom, I outlined the stem with white icing and the top with brown. Then I let the icing dry for 30 minutes before adding details with ivory piping consistency icing and a #2 tip.  With the ivory icing, I outlined the stem and then piped some lines for the gills.

I let the mushroom cookies dry completely before I added the grass at the base.

For the grass I painted on thinned royal icing using a small soft paint brush. I tinted the icing with leaf green and moss green gel coloring.

All done!

Woodland Cookie Set

I had been thinking about designing a set of Woodland Cookies for nearly a year, but it was a recent trip with my friend Cindy to Blake's Decorette Shop that really pushed me into action.

I already owned the gnome and large mushroom cutter but found the smaller mushroom, deer and small plaque on our shopping trip and immediately couldn't wait to get started. 

I devoted a good amount of time to planning and designing the cookies, and two full days to baking and decorating them.

The mushroom and tree cookies were by far the easiest of the set to make. The deer was a little frustrating because it was hard to release the cookie dough out of its long thin legs. Cindy mentioned this might be a problem when I picked up the cutter at the store but the deer's cuteness won me over and trumped practicality.

Then there are the gnomes — The only way I could figure out how to bring them to life was to base coat them and then after that dried, add more details by painting on thinned royal icing. Each gnome took a good 40 minutes to decorate but despite the work, I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

Stay tuned for detailed tutorials on how to make each cookie in this set. Up tomorrow will be the mushrooms.

Great Gleaning

Desserts gleaned from New Seasons Market.

Just like last week, had lots of good luck with our gleaning for Trinity Episcopal Cathedral's Wednesday Community Meal and were able to keep our costs low.

Thanks to three local businesses, today's dessert course was well covered. From the New Seasons Market on NW Raleigh, we got brownies, cupcakes, tarts, and cakes; from the Trader Joe's on NW Glisan we got pies and cheesecake; and from Ken's Artisan Bakery we got chocolate chunk cookies and an assortment of buttery pastries and tarts. 

All of the soup and entrees we served today were courtesy of Lift Urban Portland, Good Samaritan Hospital, Phil's Uptown Meat Market and The Oregon Food Bank. Because of their generosity, our guests today got treated to sliced pork, leg of lamb, chicken, salmon, crab cakes and as a side, tortellini that we baked in a cheesy red sauce and topped with oven roasted tomatoes.

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral purchased the ingredients for the salads that we served. 

An entree of sliced pork, tortellini and green beans.

But that's not all, as guests were leaving, we handed out bananas and the cutest little red delicious apples that our gleaners picked up from The Oregon Food Bank. 

Our gleaners picked up a case of these cute red delicious apples from The Oregon Food Bank.

Thanks to the work of our gleaners and volunteers and the generosity of our community partners and Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, we served 277 meals today.

Sour Cherry Cupcakes

These Sour Cherry Cupcakes are fresh tasting, not too sweet and even better when topped with a very light cream cheese buttercream.

I made the cupcakes by whipping up my favorite buttermilk cake recipe and adding a splash of almond extract and three cups of sour cherries that I cooked down with a bit of sugar and cornstarch.

When it comes to the frosting, I'm almost too embarrassed to share my recipe because it's so basic and takes just a few minutes to make. It's only cream cheese whipped with unsalted butter, a bit of powdered sugar and vanilla —  and I hope proves that difficulty doesn't correspond with deliciousness. There really is no need to ever use sickly sweet frosting from a can.

Here are the recipes:
Sour Cherry Cupcakes
(makes 30 to 36) 
3 cups frozen or fresh pie cherries
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 heaping tablespoon cornstarch
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs plus 2 egg yolks, room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, room temperature

In a saucepan combine the cherries, 1/3 cup sugar and cornstarch. Heat the mixture over medium high heat until simmering and the juices exude and thicken. Use a potato masher or back of a spoon to break apart the cherries as they cook. This takes a good 5 to 7 minutes.

The cherry mixture after cooking.

Let the mixture cool completely to room temperature.

Now for the cupcake batter — Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line cupcake pans with papers.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar on high until light and fluffy, about 6 minutes.

Beat in the eggs plus egg yolks, one at a time, until combined. Beat in the vanilla and almond extract.

In another large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. With mixer on low, add a third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, beating to combine. Beat in 3/4 cup buttermilk, another third of the flour mixture, another 3/4 cup buttermilk, and remaining flour mixture until just combined. Scrape down the bowl as needed. Once the batter is mixed, add the cooled cherries.

The cupcake batter and the cooled cherries are ready to be combined.

Pour the cherries into the batter.

Fold the cherries into the batter just until they are combined.

Gently fold in the cooled cherry mixture. Don't over mix.

Fill the cupcake papers 3/4 full.  Bake for 18 to 22 minutes in a 350-degree oven or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

Before baking.

After baking.

Let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting.

Easy Cream Cheese Buttercream
12 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup powdered sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whip the cream cheese and butter together until smooth and creamy. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and whip again.

Frost the cupcakes after they have cooled completely. I used a piping bag fitted with a 1M tip to add the frosting but you could also just plop on a few spoonfuls and spread it with a table knife.