A high-priority tradition
On Saturday, JG and I went to Homecoming festivities at the University of Delaware! It’s a tradition for us to tailgate with friends from my freshman dorm, and it’s always ridiculously fun. We organize it pot-luck-style via e-mail, and we always have way too much food. I brought cookies, of course.
I’m so proud of these! I mimicked the piping pattern in the new uniforms, and I even used the Blue Hens depth chart to pipe numbers on the jerseys for players who would start and most likely play for most of the game. I do wish the jerseys had been the right shade, but I used up all my blue food coloring on these. Ah, well. They turned out cute and festive anyway.
Perhaps the next most exciting (to me) food item in our tailgate spread was a box of mini fruit roll-ups. I was never allowed to eat fruit snacks as a child — when I complained, my mom would ask sincerely, with no trace of irony, “Why would you want that when you could have real fruit?” And I would stare at her, agog — so indulging as an adult always feels risky! And dangerous! I busted into the box with my friend Colin, who was similarly deprived.
Well. Neither of us had a clue as to how to extract the fruit roll-up from its wrapper, and we worked at it for quite a while.
The fruit roll-ups had been sitting in the sun, so they were nice and warm and therefore refusing to separate from the cellophane. Colin and I tore tiny shreds off and licked them off our fingers until somebody asked, “What are you doing?” Then Kerri showed us some real technique, and it looked so easy! I jumped in to learn from the master, but all I really took away from the experience was a reminder that my mouth splays open really wide when I’m laughing. (JG calls it my “hinge jaw.”)
Yeah, uh, apparently I find complete ineptitude at childhood lunchroom skills the height of comedy. I don’t even know.
Anyway! Cookies and fruit snacks aside, the best part was getting to hang out with my super awesome friends. Now that we are all within several hours’ drive of each other, we’ve been trying to get together more often. Not everyone can make it to every occasion, and we were still missing some folks this time around. I just love that Homecoming is a high-priority tradition for this whole gang.
Oh, and bonus — we won the game!
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That fruit snacks thing is so something my mother would have said! Our house was very low on junk food as well. She would never buy anything “cool” (like those frozen, pre-packaged sandwiches) under the guise of “you can make that yourself!”. But of course, IT WASN’T THE SAME.
Can we talk about your top for a minute? That “fancy T” is fabulous!!
Also, I have yet to tackle sugar cookies…hoping to attempt something this fall. For kids. Who don’t care if they look funny.
xox
Do you use gel food coloring? And what kind of icing do you use? How do you get it on there? Those are some really smooth, nicely decorated cookies.
Yes, I use gel food coloring, and I make standard royal icing. A couple of years ago, I decided to learn how to do this, and you can see my conclusions and recipes on this post. Most of the cookies I’ve made ended up in this photo set, too.
As for method, I pipe an outline of thicker royal icing using a ziptop bag and a piping tip, and I then fill the inside (flood) using a thinner consistency in a squeeze bottle.
Is that helpful? I can give more detail if you want to try sometime, but there are a lot more talented decorators out there with actual pro tips to share. The beauty of decorated cookies is that they can look pretty mediocre, but everyone is like, OOOOH COOKIES!
You can do it, I promise.
Too funny. And those cookies look amazing!