This week’s obsession: Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

I hope all of you have some excellent plans for your day off to celebrate and honor those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom! I know there are a few people who get upset about the celebratory nature that some of us have when observing Memorial Day because they think it’s disrespectful, but I have a very different opinion. When I’m grateful to someone for something that they’ve done, I never show it by being somber and sullen.

When I’m grateful, I celebrate.

A simple red, white, and blue fruit cup with fresh made vanilla whipped cream and dusted with cinnamon!

I get excited, and show my enthusiasm, and will probably show up on your doorstep with a plateful of baked goods because I am just so happy and thankful for you and what you’ve done. That’s how I feel we should celebrate Memorial Day, too. With exuberance and joy, and words of thanks to our heroes. There are some of us who personally knew those who sacrificed their lives, and it’s absolutely right to hold them close in your hearts for this celebration, but don’t let that dampen your gratitude. Use their memories as a reminder to live every moment of the rest of your life with thanks and happiness.

Celebrate them.

For our celebration this weekend, I made some patriotic cookies to show my gratitude. If you’ve been following my blog, you know how I feel about cinnamon, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I decided to try out a new cinnamon sugar cookie recipe. It came out rather tasty, but next time I make these, I fully intend to double the amount of cinnamon because in order to confidently call these cinnamon cookies, they need to have more than just a subtle cinnamon taste - IMHO they need to be closer to a slap on the tongue with a cinnamon stick!

Also I tried out a non-egg white type of Royal icing replacement to decorate these cookies with. While I think the taste of the icing is fine, the consistency is not. It’s a little lumpy and doesn’t dry quite as nicely (as you can see from the photo). My advice and tip of the week is to use a thicker icing like buttercream for décor if you can’t stand the taste of Royal icing. and want a nice, clean decoration on your cookies. (Just like I did for my spicy butterfly cookies.)

Buttercream to me, is the best way to get flavor and definition with design. I did it a few years ago with my favorite buttercream recipe and it was so much fun! I bought a terra cotta flowerpot, super glued a styrofoam sphere into the pot, attached my cupcakes, and decorated them like flowers for Memorial Day.

However you're celebrating today, friends, I truly hope it's tasty and happy!