A Paris!

Hi everyone! Just wanted to let you all know that I'm here studying abroad in Paris for all of July, so I apologize in advance for being slow at updating, if I do at all this month, especially with my lack of an oven here. By the way, do any of you have any suggestions for things that I must see/do/eat/buy in Paris? Any tips? Comments on such would be greatly appreciated :). Oh, and Happy (early) 4th of July!

Gnomes always make me think of traveling, in part due to those Travelocity commercials with the gnome in the hotels, but for the most part, due to Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, those polaroids of her dad's gnome abroad. Since I'm traveling in Paris, I thought gnome cookies and another Amélie reference would be appropriate. If the photo above looks familiar, it's because I saved it from Easter, when I also made a couple of gnome and mushroom cookies (because gnomes always seem to be associated with mushrooms). Enjoy!

Mushroom Cookies

sugar cookies, baked and cooled
sugar cookie icing
red food coloring
orange food coloring

(To get the mushroom shape when baking the cookies, cut out rectangles. Have them with the longer sides going up and down. Make small horizontal notches 1/3 the way down from the longer rectangle sides, then slice downwards vertically, so you have what appears to be a small horizontal rectangle lying on a longer vertical rectangle. Round the sides of the small rectangle and then bake.)

To ice the cookies, make the sugar cookie icing. Keep a little of the white icing off to the side. Tint half of the remaining icing red and the other half yellow-orange. First fill in the vertical rectangle with the yellow icing. Wait for it to dry. Then fill in the rounded top with red icing. Wait for it to dry. Take a toothpick and dot white icing on the red and slowly spread it out to form round dots of different sizes.

Gnome Cookies

sugar cookies, baked and cooled
sugar cookie icing
red food coloring
orange food coloring
yellow food coloring
pink food coloring
blue food coloring
black food coloring
blue nonpareils

(To get the gnome shape when baking the dough, cut out rectangles from your dough. Then cut diagonally downwards from the center of the top edge of the rectangle on the right and left so you appear to have a triangle on top of a rectangle. Then bake.)

To ice the gnome cookies, make the sugar cookie icing. Tint 1/3 of the icing red. Tint another 1/3 of the icing blue. Finally with the last 1/3 of the icing, keep 1/2 of it white for the beard. Tint the other half of the last third of icing a peach skin tone with a tiny bit of yellow, orange, and pink food coloring.

After coloring all the icing, fill in that top triangle with red icing to make the hat. Wait to dry. Next, use the white icing to make a beard, leaving a blank rectangle under the red hat for the face. Let the icing totally dry. Use the peach icing to fill in the empty rectangle and make little semicircles for the hands. Let the peach dry. Fill in the rest of the space with the blue icing. Place the blue nonpareils in the peach face rectangle for eyes. Lastly, place the black icing in a plastic bag, cut off a tip and pipe mouths onto the cookies.