Oxen and Palettes for the Feast of Saint Luke


We didn't hear much about St. Luke at Mass today because it's a Sunday but today is his feast day!  

(Today Pope Francis also canonized the first married couple, Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin, parents of St. Therese!  Isn't that awesome?  What a cool thing to do during this much discussed and hotly debated synod on the family.  Such a testimony to the importance and integrity of the vocation of Marriage.  They were pretty awesome and you can read a little about them here.  Nine children, four of whom died in infancy or childhood and five daughters who entered religious life.  Buuut I digress…back to St. Luke.)

In addition to writing one of the Gospels, St. Luke was a physician and according to tradition, an artist.  His symbol amongst the four evangelists is the ox.  For our little Luke's feast day today, I ended up making some St. Luke themed sugar cookies.  Oxen and artist palettes, both of which seem appropriate for our Luke.  If you're impressed, please remember that last year we stuck crescent rolls on our heads and pretended it was a thing.   


We were fresh out of oxen cookies cutters at this house but I do happen to have a cow cookie cutter.  They're related, right?  I was able to use a big heart cutter for the palette.


Curving the bottom of the heart by hand with a knife turned into a palette-esque (or kidney bean) shape.  I was kinda proud of that revelation.  I used several pokes with a drinking straw to add the palette finger hole.

This also works for a swollen Pac-Man cookie.  You know, in case you ever need that.

It was kinda picky to do all the colors.  I used India Tree natural dyes and since their blue is NEVER blue (all three bottles I've had have come out an army green) I also used some of their blue crystals (Wegman's sells them individually!) and mixed them into some frosting.  I first tried to go the easy route and find some more natural M&M type candies to use as the paint but with no success.  If you're not picky crunchy like me, you could use M&Ms or Skittles rather than frosting.

So each color is just a dollop of color (India Tree red for the red and orange, India Tree yellow for the yellow, spirulina powder for the green, and the India Tree blue sprinkles for the blue.)  The paintbrush is melted chocolate with a sliver of almond for the tip.

Aren't they cute?  
Two of the boys decided to paint today while the feast day boy himself took a much needed nap.  


And here's my oxen.  My poor, humble oxen.

I used carob powder added to the frosting to get it brown. (Cocoa is better but I've had this can of carob powder that I've been trying to get rid of and I swear it's bottomless.)  Almond sliver horns and tiny pieces of raisin for the eyes finish it.  I feel like they could definitely benefit from a tail and nose but whatever.  The boys will love them and eat them in a hot second with or without such embellishments.

See?

 Happy feast day to our sweet and wild little ox.

Saints Luke, Louis, and Zelie, pray for us!

7 comments

  1. Those palettes look amazing! I'm super impressed.

    Saint Henry is the patron saint of the childless and of those rejected by religious orders and he is married to Saint Cunegundes. So there's another married couple worth checking out. (I only know this because I have a son named Henry. The things you discover when you fall in love with a name first and then google it after.) They were not canonized together though, so Saints Louis and Zelie Martin are the first to hold that honor.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's nice how you're willing to put a lot of work into something nice just for your family and to honor the Saint of the day.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for visiting and reading! I love hearing from readers so if a comment box on a post is turned off, it's because Blogger is terrible about filtering spam. If you'd like to send me a message, please use my contact page. Thank you!

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.