For Real....

Taking a cue from Kimba and her take on showing what really goes on behind the scenes of carefully snapped photos, I thought I'd show you the photos of my perfect-Martha Stewart-inspired cookie-decorating moment. Remember I said I was going to try my hand at these?

You probably had your doubts, didn't you? Because, you know, I am not a baking/cooking blog am I? Sure, I throw out the odd recipe here and there. But known for my attention to culinary detail, I am not.

Who says I'm not?

After all, this is how mine turned out:

Can't tell the difference, can you?

I can explain:

Here are some behind the scenes photos of our cookie-decorating:

Baking them was the easy part...

Especially when your husband takes over once boredom (mine) sets in...

Sophie and a friend helped me decorate them. Of course, Royal icing and I are not friends, so it got too stiff too soon, and the complaints started...

Then I had the great idea of heating the bottles up for seven seconds to soften the icing. Sounds good in theory, except when you hit the three button along with the seven button...

That is what happens when the top of the bottle blows off and the icing starts spewing out of the bottle, decorating the inside of my micro-wave... (I promise I didn't swear, out loud, in front of the girls). Of course, the icing hardened immediately, and I had to chip it off the walls of the micro-wave. Charming...

Did I tell you how much I hate Royal icing? Now I know a few of you are clucking your tongues, thinking that hate is not a very nice word. No, it isn't, but surely it's okay to hate an inanimate object?

Anyway, I decorated six cookies in total. They looked like this:

If you squint, they look really nice!! Squint extra hard when looking at the angel!

**Someone needs to tell Martha Stewart that decorating four dozen cookies all fancy-like, is a really dumb idea. I should march right over to her blog and tell her myself. Only I won't, because it's Christmas after all...and I think leaving mean comments on people's blogs is really nasty!

So, for all of you with secrets to share, cough them up!!