Meyer Lemons

I stumbled upon Meyer lemons at the store yesterday and was very excited as we live in northern Vermont and do not get many Meyer lemons up in these parts! I always see them in recipes from Ina Garten and always thought they were just pretentious little things!  BUT....I was wrong.  After I brought them home I dumped them into a bowl and the fragrance just hit me!  They are so floral with a hint of rosemary.  My daughter and I had to try one. We sliced one up and it is still a sour lemon but it almost has an orange flavor as well.  It is really the scent though that got me.  I keep picking them up and just smelling them.  My daughter thinks I am nuts (which I can be about scents sometimes, my husband can attest to that!).  

                                                   

 All of a sudden I can't move pictures to the middle, argh! We are getting a new computer this weekend!  I have been trying to do everything from the Poor little IPad and I think it is trying to tell me that it is tired!

I also made some birthday cookies. Happy Birthday Megan!  Luster dust is fun to play around with. This is Wilton bronze and I just mix it with a drop of vodka and use it just like paint.  It did eat away at the icing a little bit because I was short on time and didn't let it dry long enough. 

Valentine's Day Cookies

                                            

These little love birds were so fun and easy to make.  This is just a base of white royal icing and then I piped on stiff royal icing to make the branches.  I used the aster mauve color from the Wilton garden tone set.  I really wanted to stay away from the bright reds and pinks this year.  I love this color and only a small drop is needed to make it.  I just think the less food coloring the better.  Red tends to give me trouble, it seems like I have to use half a bottle to get a true red.  

I used the same color to make the tiny hearts on these quilted cookies.  I was cracking up when I was decorating them because when I would first pipe the little hearts they looked like tiny buts!  I had to do a little work with the toothpick to make them look like hearts.  I suppose a big heart with little buts all over it would be a cute cookie too! I don 't know if you can see this or not but for the cookie on the left I used a food coloring marker to draw my grid on the cookie and the cookie on the right I used a knife to scratch the surface of the cookie to make a grid.  I would definitely recommend the latter because the food coloring marker shows through the icing, I was not very excited about that!                        

                                                                 

 More aster mauve!  Maybe I need to mix it up a bit with the next batch!