After uploading photos to Flickr a few weeks ago, I spent some time exploring other Flickr members food-related photo streams.  I came across an amazing set of photos of three dimensional Halloween cookies.  I’ve seen 3-D cookies before, like Christmas trees built from a variety of different sized stars.  The cookies I saw on Flickr were built from two pieces with matched notches that fit together.   You can buy fancy cutters that have the notch, or use very plain cutters (like pumpkins or round ornaments) and use...

Tags: sugar cookie dough, Christmas cookies, three dimensional cookies, Halloween cookies

Our grandson, Blake (1 ½ years old) spent last weekend at our house. I decided that he could help me decorate some Christmas cookies for my mother (Blake’s great-grandmother). I started with a nice sugar cookie dough (from the Christmas Cookies issue of Betty Crocker supermarket magazine #246) and rolled it out with my new nonstick rolling pin from the BettyCrockerStore.com. Then I cut ...

Tags: Christmas cookies, decorating cookies, Heart Sandwich Cookies, sugar cookie dough

If you have been in the holiday candy aisle of any store, you’ve probably seen chocolate gelt—chocolate disks wrapped in foil to look like coins, usually in a mesh bag.  These candies are a fun part of Hanukkah. The word gelt means “money” in the Yiddish language, and at Hanukkah, children traditionally received coins as a gift.  Coins are needed to play dreidel, a game traditionally associated with Hanukkah.  A dreidel is a top with four sides, and each side has a Hebrew letter on it.  Dreidel is a game of chance played with at least two people.  In addition to a dreidel, each player needs 15 coins (at my house we use Cheerios, but...

Tags: chocolate, Cookie, sugar cookie dough, bake, celebration, chanukkah, dreidel, gelt, hanukkah, Jill Bloomfield