Toadstool and Dragonfly cookies for Polkadot Prints Down in the Garden Party

You must pop on over and check out the lovely Down in the Garden Party created by Jordan of Polkadot Prints that has been featured on Hostess with the Mostess.


The cute little toadstools and dragonflies were made by little ole me.


The pictures there are oh so cute and the styling is so very cool and check out the printables and packaging which is all available at Polkadot prints.

I had a bit of fun working on this as I really like toadstools, I may have driven Jordan kinda a bit crazy emailing her different designs.


See here is an example of the craziness, want to know how many cookies will fit in your treat bag, I'll send you a picture of a few different cookies next to a ruler.

Oh and Besser nice work on that ruler I got in a sample bag like 15 years ago at the Ekka (fair), advertising is still paying off ;)

Toadstool Cookies

The toadstool cookies were hand cut chocolate sugar cookie decorated with hand cut rolled fondant and the white dots were a icing sugar glaze. Well actually just water and icing sugar mixed up to the consistency I wanted.

(The test cookies were all rolled fondant)

Dragonfly Cookies

The dragonflies were made using a cookie cutter from Details Details and decorated with fondant, silver cashous, white glaze, silver luster dust and the bodies were a mixture of cocoa and icing sugar, the same recipe I used for the cross on the hot cross muffins I made CLICK here for link. The chocolate glaze was not the best for piping but I was really loving the taste at the time. I just piped it in one big thick line up the middle.

Here is one of the reject dragonfly samples, he was too cute, sometime life is like that :(

Credits

Top 4 photos by Polkadot Prints
Party styling printables treat bags etc by Polkadot Prints

Coconut Easter Eggs fun for the kids

I love to spend time in the kitchen with my kids. We always have a great time even though more often than not it means 3 times the cleaning at the end.

Making these super sweet coconut Easter eggs together has become a tradition that we enjoy together every year. Sometimes we invite along friends and make it a Easter egg making party along with a bit of Easter basket making craft and the kids get to take home all the eggs they make at the end.

Make sure that everyone washes their hands before you start....although once you start there will probably be lots of hand licking. For that sticky spitty reason I like to make sure that everyone has a separate basket ready to pop their finished eggs into.


The sweet baskets in the pictures are from Sharnel Dollar Designs.

Coconut Easter Eggs make around  30 eggs

Ingredients

500gm icing sugar sifted
3 cups dessicated coconut
1 tin condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla (optional)
food colour

Combine icing sugar, coconut, condensed milk and vanilla in a large bowl and mix well and all ingredients are combined evenly. I love to let the kids do the mixing even though it takes a little bit longer and a lot of cleaning up afterwards. As this mixture is quite firm you might need to help the kids out towards the end.

Divide mixture into 4 and colour as desired. Make sure the colour is mixed in well and distributed evenly. If it's just for the family I don't see any problems with letting the kids mix the colour in with their freshly washed hands squashing it together and kneading it.

At this stage the mixture should not be too wet, you can leave it uncovered for 10mins or so to let it set a bit, or if you are concerned you have added to much colour pop a tiny bit extra coconut and icing sugar to firm it up.

Break off small pieces about the size of a ping pong ball and roll between the palms of your hands to form into an egg shape. This part is especially fun for kids and I always let mine break off sections and roll however they want. Making perfect eggs is not important but having fun is.

If you would like to make 'real' looking eggs leave some of the mixture plain and colour some yellow to make 'yolks'. Make the yellow into a tiny ball and then flatten out a ping pong ball sized piece of natural colour mixture, flatten it out and wrap around the yellow 'yolk'. Roll the egg in between your palms until it resembles an egg in shape.

Eggs can be stored in an airtight container for at least 7 days if they last that long.

Easter Egg Nests with Rose Fairy Floss Cupcake Toppers

My lovely friend Sandy surprised me the other day with a packet of super cute striped cupcake papers, some rosewater and beautiful rose persian fairy floss.

Oooohhh I thought to myself, what a lovely bunch of cakey things I'll have to make something special with them, and so I did.

They inspired me to make these very sweet Easter Egg nest Cupcake Toppers.

I am in love with the rose Persian Fairy Floss, it is so silky and stringy looking, it has a different texture to normal fairy floss. However sadly just like real floss it does not last long once out of it's packet and after a few hours my toppers had melted into a soggy nest. They still looked ok just not as spectacularly fluffy as when I originally made them. I would say make them just before your about to pop them out on display.

Also the Robert Gordon Paper Cups.....soooooo cute, however they do look a bit greasy when baked with a high butter content vanilla cupcake (and really do you want any other sort?) I just popped another one over the top and it looked fine. They are a significant improvement on the older, yet still super pretty ones.  I'm wondering if the Australian regulations limit the amount of plastic/waxish coating they can use I remember reading somewhere an issue with the Wilton nut cups in the US.

They do make cute containers regardless, see them with the mini Easter eggs.

Tutorial for Easter Egg Nest Cupcake Toppers

Ingredients
Cupcakes topped with a buttercream swirl
Fondant in various pastel colours
Persian Fairy Floss ( www.pariya.com)
mini Easter eggs - these ones were from Big W in Australia

Using a blossom cutter cut out fondant in the desired colour. My Blossom cutter was 6cm and I used a variety of pastel colours. Place the cut out shapes onto parchment paper and allow to set for a few days.

Make cucpakes and decorate with a swirl of buttercream.

Top each cupcake with a fondant disk.

Pull out small sections of the fairy floss ensuring your hands are clean and very dry. Shape the floss into small nests to fit on top of the fondant blossom disks.

Finally place a couple of small Easter eggs into the nests.