ice cream, u scream.

i use a royal icing recipe that's a little less awesome in humid weather. for comparison, and probably a better looking cookie when shipped, i tried meringue powder again and misread "tsp" as "tbs" and then i didnt fix it correctly, so i had to start over. finally, i made my neice Taylor her birthday cookies.
she turned 12. i don't remember being 12 with any sort of fondness, and 13 was worse. and in thinking about jr high, and its suckiness, i tried to think of some delightful childhood image for Tay's last hurrah before being a (gulp... i'm old...) teenager. we have pictures somewhere of her 2nd birthday, with ice cream from the ice cream man all over her Blues Clues pajamas. that i do remember fondly, so i grabbed my truck cookie cutter.
you may notice that if these were real trucks, driving on American streets, the window is on the street side. oops. the tinier piped details got a little blobbish, my new food writing markers were so-so... but i like the little "popsicle" pictures.

then Dad's birthday is 6 days after, so he got ice cream too. things i like: the "cherry" on top and the color of the "chocolate" ice cream. things i don't: the "cherry" is cinnamon flavored, the humidity still effected how neat my lines were, and i wish i used a different sprinkle to accentuate the contours of the "whipped cream" on top. i piped it in in sections, letting them dry in between for a piled-up look, but the patriotic jimmies kind of hid that. next time, nonpareils.

in either case, i hear they didn't last long. now, does that mean they were too delicious not to eat, or not too pretty to eat? (grin, doesn't matter.) happy birthday Taylor and Dad!

coming soon, an army convoy, a my-little-phonies unicorn edition, some better results with markers, dinos, and a luau.