In Seattle, nothing really changes as we slide from November to December. The rain keeps pouring, our cars keep freezing over and… well… the rain keeps pouring. With the world cold, dark and wet, we decided it was time to make some of our own holiday cheer to warm up the office. Last Friday, our whole team sat down to do a holiday decoration project. It came with the added bonus of being able to photograph a brand-new tutorial for cakecentral.com (find it here) and, of course, it was a great excuse to listen to festive music.

Jackie whipped up a batch of royal icing and we busted out the green food coloring and metallic dragees. With cheery tunes floating through the office, we piped the icing onto ice cream cones to make little Christmas trees in all different shades of green. Each of our trees came out so differently, but they were all festive and sparkling, adorned with gold and silver dragees for ornaments. (Confession: We may have gone a little crazy with the decorations. After pressing them all over our trees, we even ate some dragees plain. What can I say? It was Friday afternoon.)

It was a nice change of pace to get out from behind our computers and get our hands dirty. It always feels good to step into our cake-maker shoes for a few hours (and it’s a great reminder of how talented our readers are– let me tell you, I don’t know how you do it! Our hands were aching after just ten minutes of piping. I had better stick to editing….)

This was our first official baking project in the new office, and we inaugurated the space by spilling plenty of sugar on the desks and arranging our ice cream cone forest on top of one of the bookshelves. If you’re looking for something quick and fun to do with the kids or to bring holiday cheer to your kitchen, these trees are a great pick. Happy December!

The Cake Central forest