My Sweethearts Bakery- Sydney: vanilla sugar cookies

Happy new year everyone!!

I'm now back in Sydney trying to climatize myself to the time difference and weather. For all of you who don't know, i was away for the last month in Singapore, Malaysia and Japan. It was one word A-W-E-S-O-M-E!

i really should do this more often . :)

Several months ago, i was asked by a dear friend to make her wedding cake. Today was the day.

I am so happy to be able to share this day with her and also be making her wedding cake!

This is my first time that i've actually made a wedding cake and attended the reception as well. I must say that i am proud and thankful to hear all the lovely comments of the cakes and cookies.

This makes me feel like floating on cloud 9 :)

Their theme was sunshine yellow and white and the bride instantly fell in love with one of my previous display cakes from this post spring/summer. They also chose some vanilla sugar cookies as their placement cards on the dining tables. It was a lovely idea and it totally matched the theme.

The Bride

The Groom

Placement cookie for the bridal table

Placement cookie for guest

Here's a placement cookie for unexpected guest

The table view of the placement cookies

My very own placement cookie!

The cake and cupcake tier

The bride and groom cutting the mini cake

Here are more cupcakes in boxes ready to be taken home by each guest

I love how each boxes has a little window for a peek look of what's inside.

OF COURSE NOT!

Just a few slight hiccups/exams in my life and now i'm back in the kitchen. Hehe

Since Christmas is literally less than a month away. I've decided to do something special for our family and friends since i will not be around!
For those of you that do not know, i'm off for a month in Malaysia and Japan! Yay for me. I still can't believe that i'm actually travelling out of usual Australia-Malaysia trip. I reckon Japan would be awesome (minus the language barrier and minus the really really cold snowy weather)

I made some Christmas Vanilla Cookies, decorated them and placed them in my AWESOME! cookie jar that i found of IKEA for $4.99 each! What a bargain huh?
Well, to me, the jars are just irresistable, and when i saw them on the catalogue, i just couldnt help but went straight to IKEA and bought like 2 dozens.

Here's a little tutorial on how to prepare the jars.

Materials:-
1. A medium size cookie jar (like mine)
2. Red and Green satin ribbons
3. Vanilla Sugar Cookies
4. Some colour tissue paper

5. Christmas cookie Tags/labels

6. Craft glue

You can download my cookie labels which i print an A4 size mailing labels. Another option is to have them printed on thick colour paper and punch a hole at the top to put through your ribbons. (Its like a christmas ornament :)

DOWNLOAD LABELS HERE

Here's my favorite jar i bought. Clean it throughly and soak it in hot water if necessary to remove any labels on the jar.

Measure your ribbons to the waist of the jar. Squeeze some craft glue on the ribbons and immediately wrap them around the jar

See these labels? I made them myself! I'm so proud. I love how they are round. I use as extra large round hole puncher (you can get them at any craft stores) to get the shape. Imagine trying to cut like 30 little circle with a scissors! NOOOOO

Use the label as a front cover for where the ribbon starts and ends. If your ribbon keeps falling off, try using a large rubber band to secure the ribbons and the labels. Like this

Leave the jar for about 10 minutes and there go you! A jar ready to be filled be sugar cookies (yum yum yum) *The coloured tissued papers are to fill the top of the jar later.

Now to the section of Decorated Sugar Cookies. I cannot technically post the recipe here but if you want, you can definitely make ginger cookies or butter cookies.

Here are my freshly baked sugar cookies

Here's a whole heap of sugar cookies waiting to be decorated!

Half decorated ones. Don't you just love the christmas tree?

I use flooding icing to do the decorations. Basically its just 1 egg white and about 2-3 cups of sifted icing sugar (flooding icing is very watery royal icing and if your mixture is too thick, add a couple of droplets of water till it goes watery. And if the mixture is too watery, add more icing sugar.

Remember to add you favorite color to it too!

I went with red, green, white and yellow. Very Christmas-sy!