To be honest, cookie making is not my forte. I made some in the past, and were never satisfied.  Tried my hand at decorating cookies a few years back, but didn’t have the patience (nor read proper instructions/tips to make royal icing properly) and really haven’t tried it again since.

Queue 2016 Christmas.  As I’m on maternity leave, it has completely kicked start my drive for baking (in between baby napping and such).  After weeks of reading online recipes, tips and tricks from cookie experts and royal icing decorating ideas, I was pumped!

Made a basic sugar cookie recipe I found (googled “Easy Sugar Cookies”) and found this one. It tasted terrific! and super easy to make.  I didn’t follow the icing recipe on the site as I didn’t want to put fresh milk in a recipe..didn’t seem…good to keep not refrigerated after?  So back to google and found a recipe that uses Meringue Powder – don’t recall the source..but here is the recipe:

• 5 T. meringue powder
• 3/4 C. very warm water
• 1 t. cream of tartar
• 2 1/4 pounds powdered sugar (I weigh it—2 lb. 4 oz. or 36 oz.)
• 2 tsp. almond (or vanilla) extract (oil free/alcohol free)

I added a bit of lemon juice (for flavouring) and gel food colouring.

I chose a few shapes (mittens, snowflake, circles) and got to mixing the colours and decorating!

Ta da!  Packaged these up as gifts.

My baby girl is about to be 1 month – already?! Where does the time go…(rhetorical answer: feedings, changing diapers, admiring, taking photos).

Chinese tradition calls for a “full moon” celebration – basically the baby has now passed the “everything is ok” mark and everyone can come and see the baby and celebrate her birth.  I think in the olden days, they may not even name the baby until after it has pass the full moon.  This celebration can be as small or as large as you want. Some people go all out.  (note, many chinese households now also adopted the 100 days celebration instead to celebrate).

We have 40 people coming for Abigail’s full moon – a mixture of family and In laws’ friends – to be held at a chinese restaurant banquet.  Though I wasn’t exhilarated at the thought of having to “make” something so early into my new mommyhood…I also didn’t want to not contribute to the celebration.  I obliged and allow my husband to “outsource” the cake.  But I wanted to make the favours for the guests.  I decided on macarons for them.  In hindsight, it was a lot of work and time when the baby is only 3 weeks old leading up to the dinner. Definitely not recommended for anyone thinking of doing this for their baby’s party.  but everything worked out, as they often do, so here I am sharing the pictures!

I wanted to do 3-4 macarons in a gift bag of different colours and flavours.  I had to balance finding fillings that has the ability to keep frozen and stored for the week (which most macaron fillings can handle), but also it be ok once they are sitting at the restaurant and not in the fridge.  Here’s what I ended up making (approx 35 each):

• White Chocolate ganache with pink coloured shell
• Lemon filling with yellow coloured shell
• Vanilla buttercream with soft pink coloured shell
• White Chocolate ganache with purple coloured shell