Gather To Enjoy

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. Norman Vincent Peale

I LOVE the smell of gingerbread cookies baking at Christmas time! I also love rolling out the dough and cutting out with a cookie cutter! Another thing I love about the holidays is watching all the baking shows/competitions! Recently I saw 2 different shows where they used a copper candy cane cookie cutter with a slight swirl. Imagine my surprise when I walked into Williams Sonoma a few weeks back and was first greeted by Mrs. Claus in a rocking chair! Mrs. Claus really put a smile on my face and was so friendly and warm! Then as my husband and I shopped we came upon this cookie cutter! I was pleased to find it on sale as well!  As I left with my beautiful copper cookie cutter and stopped to speak one more time with Mrs. Claus, I had visions of cut out sugar cookies and cool designs.

The more I thought about it, I decided a gingerbread cookie might be the best option for my first use of this Candy Cane Cookie Cutter. I decided this year to try a different gingerbread cookie recipe and found this one at Real Simple. http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/old-fashioned-gingerbread-men. You will need to copy and paste the link. It is a very friendly to use dough! I stuck with a simple design since I was making many cookies that week! I try to put just a little frosting on my gingerbread cookies since you want the flavor of the gingerbread to be most of what you taste. I used my well-loved cut out cookie frosting recipe and put the frosting in a frosting bottle with the small writer tip. I used a mix of clear sugar sprinkles with a coarse red sugar sprinkles. For the packaging I used the special cardboard bottom cello bags and placed the cookies in upside down. Even though gingerbread is a strong cookie I wanted to make sure they would travel well!

I try each year to find one special extra to add to my baking tools. This cookie cutter was my unexpected find this year! Enjoy the pictures and give the recipe a try, you will not be disappointed!  ENJOY! Happy Baking!