I first learned about dreamcatchers in middle school. Dreamcatchers originated with the Ojibwe people, a community of Native Americans located around the Great Lakes and in Canada. When my family would travel to northern Minnesota in the summer, there were plenty of Native American made goods to purchase.
I remember the first two dreamcathers I purchased when I was young. One was red and the other was black. They had feathers and beads and I thought they were magical. I brought them home and hung them right over my bed. Native Americans believe that the night air is filled with dreams, both good and bad. When hung over your bed, they catch the dreams as they flow by. The good dreams know how to pass through by slipping through and sliding down to the sleeper. The bad dreams get tangled in the dream catcher and perish with the first light of the new day. At some point I let those dreamcathers go but I wish I still had them. Last summer while vising Pipestone National Monument, I was able to get a new dreamcatcher, which I love. I do believe they work. (I have magical dreams about unicorns every night)
The inspiration for these cookies came from here. Yes, there are actually unicorn dreamcathers. I thought it was something I came up with until I Googled it. I used this cutter again. Just like I did with the geometric unicorns, I started out by drawing on random triangular shapes with a food coloring marker. I piped over the drawing with light brown icing. In some spots, my piping was not perfect and you can see the lines I drew. I like how it adds dimension to the strings. I piped around the edge of the cookie with dark brown icing. I added a few pink and purple dots for beads. I felt that the cookie needed a feather, like traditional dreamcathers. I piped on a blob of yellow icing and spread it out with my scribe into a feather shape. For a final touch I drew some lines on the feather with a black food coloring marker.
Stay tuned next week I some more dreamcathers coming up!
Today is also National Ice Cream Day. I tried to come up with a way to combine ice cream cones and unicorns, but everything I came up with was just odd. So I just had to make a few cones for this awesome day. I ordered this cookie cutter last year. I made tons of ice cream cookies last year and was hoping to make twist cones too. The cookie cutter was coming from Russia and didn't make in time last year. This year I knew I would only be making one kind of ice cream cone and it would be this one.
I'm not really a big twist cone fan. I'm a purist, I either want all vanilla or all chocolate. I understand the whole thing of getting the best of both worlds with the twist. I like savoring the taste of each individual flavor.
I saw that Amber over at SweetAmbs just made ice cream cones and I loved how she put little faces on them. She also has a great tutorial on how to create the cone effect. I started out by sketching out the lines that would create the twist cone look. I have a photo below that hopefully shows it better that I could explain it in writing. I iced the vanilla (white) section followed by the chocolate (brown). Then I followed the cone tutorial I linked above. I used black icing to pipe on the little faces. I made one look more feminine with eyelashes and a pink bow.
Hope everyone has a happy National Ice Cream Day!
