Gingerbread man

Run, Run as fast as you can. You can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!

I recently started teaching 1st and 2nd grade Korean students English. It has been a real struggle, these kids are just learning how to write in Korean, and their mothers want me to teach them to read and write in English >.<

One poor boy in my class can spell better in English than Korean.

Anyhow, I am always trying to find fun activities for them to do, and what better than making gingerbread cookies after reading "The Gingerbread Man" The kids loved the book, but they loved the cookies even more. These are some that I made to show them what gingerbread men can look like. Then they all made their own.

At one point in time I had photos of the cookies the kids making the cookies, but the hubby reformatted my hard drive recently and may have forgotten to back up all my files :(

Brownies

It was spring in Korea.... I am slow with my updates. One of my co workers had helped me out big time. Helping me out means baked treats. In honor of spring I decorated some of the brownies in cherry blossoms. Yes I know the color is off. I am still learning exactly how to color my icing correctly.... I'll get there ^^

Parents Day

In Korea there is no mothers day or fathers day, instead there is parents day. Parents day falls right after children's day (May 5th) on May 8th. On parents day children give presents to their parents and they give them red carnations.
My father in law loves anything sweet, and he and my mother in law are avid gardeners. A carnation just didn't seem to cut it. Instead they got a nice potted plant with little red flowers, and these hand painted carnation cookies. I found the tutorial for painting flowers on cookies at university of cookie
Hope you enjoy ^^

Sparkling lemon cookies

These cookies are a bit like a lemon short bread with a lemon butter cream filling. The recipe is
from The Kitchen ( http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/cookie-recipe-glittering-lemon-sandwich-cookies-134849 )

Cakes

While I love making cookies I like to mix it up sometimes and make cakes. This first cake is a congratulations cake for my co-worker who was recently accepted into graduate school on a scholarship program (she was 1 out of 80 who applied, only 2 were accepted).
The cake is vanilla, cinnamon, apple, with a layer of caramel icing in the middle of the cake and a spiced butter cream on top. The cake is decorated with some chocolates from a mold and then piped with colored chocolate.
This cake was for a friends birthday. The cake is vanilla and the icing is caramel. It has some more of the poured chocolates and there are some snicker-doodle cookies in the back to support the chocolates. The gifts on top are actually little chocolates ^^ aren't they cute!

Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) Cookies

Hanbok Cookies

Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving is one of the few important holidays in Korea. It is celebrated with your family. Most of the day is spent honoring the dead and going to temples and tombs. At the end of the day a family will get together and have a big meal. It is tradition to give gifts to the grandparents in the family or the eldest members of a family. Around Chuseok you see huge gift boxes of canned food, toothpaste, win, soap, fruit, and many other things sold in the grocery store.

I never know what to give my husbands family for Chuseok (and he is no help thinking of gifts) This year I decided to do something special. I made them cookies. This was my first attempt at frosted cookies. I fell in love with the process!
The cookies at the top of the page are Hanbok (traditional Korean clothing). On Chuseok you will see older men and women and young children dressed in this style of clothing. They come in all colors, but the colors of the cookies are the traditional colors of Hanbok.
The rest of the cookies are just a hodgepodge of different experiments with the icing.

First Birthday Cookies

In Korea 1st birthdays are a big deal. It is the only time a birthday is really celebrated. It was recently my friends son's (Lee Tae-Gyum) birthday. I made him some cookies for the celebration. The cookies say the birthday boys name ^^