A tisket, a tasket, a cookie in a basket

My sister keeps posting things on facebook about the fantasticness ( I'm pretty sure I just made that word up), of Sugarbelle and all of her royal icing cookies. There is nothing this woman can't do. I'm convinced she is the BEST cookie decorator ever. Check her out at The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle.

Anyways, my sister, also a fantastic decorator of cakes and cookies, has been playing with royal icing lately and has some pretty awesome cookies and cupcake decorations to show for it. Guess those few years she spent as a cake decorator at Baskin-Robbins during High School paid off! She made some cookie pops for our aunt's mother's birthday, and I thought they looked pretty neat, so I tried my hand at making a cookie basket for my co-worker's birthday this week.

Although I made a dozen cookies, I only needed 4 to spell her name, which turned out to be a good thing, since my royal icing techniques leave something to be desired. I had my piping consistency too thick at first, and it was a pain in the butt to squeeze it back into my mixing bowl to thin down a bit.. To make the letters, I piped out the letters onto waxed paper, sprinkled them with disco dust, and let them dry. Once the royal icing of the cookie and of the letters were dry, I "glued" the letters to the cookies with a dab of royal icing.

I bought a cute little tin at the Dollar Tree, along with a cellophane basket bag. I used floral foam that I already owned, and grabbed tissue paper from my gift wrap bin. I used my can-do-anything-you-dream-of Silhouette cutting machine to make a tag out of a print I got from eighteen25's blog during their recent birthday week.

I presented it to the birthday girl today along with one of Bucky and Boo's make-up brush rolls and I am pretty sure she liked it.