Bumblebees and Black-eyed Susans

Hello Everyone!

You know, my favorite time in summer is when the black-eyed susans start to bloom.  I love them because they just scream “It’s summer!” and they last forever, well into the fall at my house, adding some lovely orange accents to the season.  They feed the little birds and require next to no maintenance.  I especially like the ones that are growing next to the lavender.And of course, buzzing around my lavender are the bumblebees.  Bumblebees are the cute, noisy, black and yellow puffballs of the garden.  They don’t bother with me while I’m working, so I don’t bother them while they are working.  I actually had a run in with some rather mean bees this weekend.  I was trying to clear out the wild strawberry vines from around my barberry bush and somehow I didn’t notice the bald faced hornet nest in front of my face!  Well, of course I woke them up and they came after me.  Nope!  I dropped my tools and ran.  They still managed to get three stings in before I got away.  Here’s the nest.  Seriously, how did I miss this?!And that’s why they do not get to be on cookies.  I appreciate the passive little bumblebee even more now.  But back to cookies…

The black-eyed susans here were made a little differently than my usual flowers.  In my research on how to make different royal icing flowers I came across this interesting and super easy technique of using a leaf tip to make flower petals.  To do this, you want to start by finding the center of the flower cookie and drawing a circle with a candy marker.  The circle really helps to keep the flower from getting lopsided.  For the petals I used thicker piping icing because I wanted each petal to hold shape and have some lift to it.  The flowers are finished with black flood icing and brown sanding sugar in the middle.  I really like the two tones of brown sanding sugar over the black icing.  

And there we have it, happy fat little bumblebees and my take on black-eyed susans.  Until next time!

Love and cookies,

Sherry