Making Monogrammed Cookies and Summer Time Cookies

I had an order for monogrammed "G" sugar cookies. I usually just pipe the monogram on the cookies free hand, but I was worried about doing a pretty "G". So, I used a template. This worked really well. I spent TOO much time in MS Word looking at G's in different fonts until I found one I liked. Then, I printed a sheet with 15 G's on it. I placed this sheet under waxed paper and piped over the pattern with royal icing and sprinkled little white nonpareil sprinkles over them. I let the G's dry for several days and then just removed them from the waxed paper and placed them on freshly iced cookies. This would work great even if you aren't using sprinkles...and of course for any letter or shape. :)

A couple of tips:
* Put the sheet of letters in a cookie sheet with sides so that the extra sprinkles aren't lost.
* Only pipe a couple of letters at a time before you sprinkle them, otherwise they aren't sticky enough to hold the sprinkles.

My sheet of G's with waxed paper over them.

Piped G's with sprinkles. Just tilt the pan after a few minutes to get the excess sprinkles away from the monogram.

Here's a pic of some summer time cookies I made for a beach themed birthday party.

Frank's Birthday

We just celebrated Frank's birthday Saturday evening. All but Kimberly was there...we missed you Kimberly! We had a light supper...and then a very heavy dessert. This was my second attempt to make Paula Deen's chocolate mousse cake. This time I made it as a square cake and it seemed to hold its structure better square. This cake is so rich that you can only eat a sliver at a time...but it is soooo good! Just look at it...I think I gain weight just looking at the picture!

Six thin layers of cake with mousse in between and iced with fudgy chocolate! Frank didn't even want me to send any home with the kids...but I did of course. :)

Jessi gave Frank a RC helicopter and that was definitely the "hit" present. Everybody had a ball playing with it. I would never have thought to buy him one of those. It was so much fun, we have to get a RC boat for the pool this summer.