Dumpster Fire Cookies

Happy New Years!!! I'm a couple days late, but we survived 2020! It was a tough, eye-opening year for all of us, filled with lots of "it can't get any worse, right?" dread and disappointment. This year for New Years I was debating what to bake, and instead of the usual gold glitter, pretty sparkles, champagne and strawberries type of dessert I would normally made, I decided to switch it up and make something more representative of how awful 2020 was.

It was a dumpster fire of a year, so why not make dumpster fire cookies? Some people make gingerbread houses, apparently I make sugar cookie dumpsters now :P. I had an internal debate on whether to make 2D vs 3D cookies, as usual 3D won. I decided on a base of colorful sugar cookie dough that would be cut into parts and glued together with colored royal icing. I free hand cut the cookie flames and baked them with my fingers crossed hoping they would turn out ok (they ended up way better than expected!). And made a chubby little trash panda (meet Kevin!) with the leftover dough. So there you have it, 2020 in cookie form.

I wanted to ring in the New Year with some "out with the old, in with the new" positive affirmations. I decided to symbolically "throw away" all my disappointments and frustrations from 2020 into the flames (to name a few: never-ending construction while working from home, everyone who spread false information about COVID-19 and undermined medical experts, the current administration, all those cancelled vacations, "all lives matter", fake news, racial and socioeconomic injustice...) and smash them with a hammer. It felt very cathartic :)! From the ashes and debris of 2020, we see a new dumpster representing 2021 (it's green because we're going to work on climate change this year, along with continuing the fight for equality :D). Hopefully 2021 will be a better year!

Bow Tie Macarons

Here are the other macarons I made for NYE! As I mentioned in my last post, I made black & white macarons for NYE. The black sprinkle macarons in that post were definitely more New Years specific and more time consuming to decorate, so for my white macarons, I wanted something simpler that would take less time to decorate, yet still be cute and classy.

Like how the black macarons were influenced by my New Years manicure, these macarons were inspired by my New Years Eve dress (actually, to be more accurate, the dress I was going to wear… I'm ridiculously indecisive, so I came prepared with 3 dresses and ended up wearing something black instead :P… while this bow dress ended up as the background for these photos, lol). Half of my white macarons were decorated with bows, and the other half were covered with rainbow sprinkles for a pop of color, both designs perfect for any party or celebration!

New Year's Eve Macarons

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you all are enjoying the holidays :). I'm currently trying to get all my holiday cookie photos edited, but hopefully I'll have them up soon. This year I made a variety of cookies for Christmas and then a few more sweets to celebrate New Year's Eve last night. I'll start with posting my New Year's desserts, then move onto my Christmas cookies.

For this New Year's Eve, I really wanted to make some black and white macarons. Today I'll present my black macarons, and in my next post, I'll share my white macarons. Other than black and white, I also associate New Year's Eve with a ton of glitter and confetti, which inspired my manicure from last night: mixed rainbow glitter (Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday) over black nail polish (Chanel Black Satin). In turn, my manicure became the source of inspiration for these macarons.

I knew I wanted to make these macarons glittery and rainbow, since I figured that would contrast well with the black color, sort of like how fireworks show up so well with a dark night sky. So, I decorated them with the edible equivalent of glitter and confetti: shimmer dust and sprinkles. I also wanted to try something new, so rather than just cover the macarons with nonpareils, I ended up spelling out "NYE" and "2014" on the macarons to make them just a bit more fancy. These were definitely the perfect dessert for celebrating New Year's Eve.

^A preview of my white macarons.

Happy 2013!

Another year over and a new one beginning! Happy 2013!

The beginning of a new year is always a time for self-reflection (I'm big on New Years Resolutions). This year, one of my New Years Resolutions is to find balance. As you've probably noticed, these past few months have been lacking in posts. So a part of this "balance" is figuring out how to introduce hobbies back into my life, things like art, baking, learning languages, and of course blogging.

With a semester of medical school behind me, I have a better idea of what I can handle. This semester, I hope to find a way to work my hobbies into my schedule so it's not just study study study all the time. In terms of art, I'm thinking for February, I'm going to challenge myself to do at least one sketch a week (I'll save painting and pastels for summer), and for March, a photograph a day. In terms of baking, I'm going for a more structured approach since the process takes such a large chunk of time, what with planning, buying ingredients, the actual baking, and decorating. And, of course, my goal for blogging for now is to post at least once a month; no more months with no posts >:|.

A little bit on these cookies. For NYE this year, my friends and I decided to stay in for a casual get-together (lots of Mario Party while sipping sangria). To match the mood, I opted for something a bit fancy, but not over-the-top, which resulted in these cookies. They're not too hard to make and are quite pretty. I really like the contrast between the more demure pink icing with white pearls and the wilder black icing with silver balls. These are perfect for both a fancy dressy event and a casual night-in chilling with friends.

P.S. Did any of you make any interesting New Years Resolutions? Share :)!