A while back I made these butterflies for a special little girl.
With those as inspiration, I made these for another little girl who was turning 1!
They were left unwrapped so that they could be enjoyed by the party guests.
Sometimes simple and sprinkles is all you need!
A young lad in a family that we are very close to graduated high school (from my high school!) last week. He is the youngest son of my old swim coach. I offered to make cookies for his graduation party, and his mom gladly accepted.
I was discussing designs with my mom, and I knew I wanted to do something swimming related because the entire family was very immersed in the swimming world. My mom told me that he was “not that into swimming” and that it was mostly the older brother who had been interested in it. She said the younger only did it because his dad was the coach. I thought she was crazy, but I had kind of put off the idea anyway…
Then came the high school swim team’s awards night. My swim coach was retiring after 18 years of coaching high school, so a sort-of surprise party was arranged to bring in as many old swimmers as possible and flood the audience at the awards night. (I made and brought 6 batches of kettle corn for the event!) It was there that his youngest son, who’s “not that into swimming” won award after award, and it was obvious that he was one of (if not the) fastest/best guy on the team. I concluded that my mom was undoubtably wrong and that I was doing some sort of swimming cookies after all.
(When I told the graduate this story, he laughed and said he was more into swimming than his older brother!)
I ended up just doing one swimming themed cookie, because too many designs would have made me crazy. These are my high school colors, with a “splash” of “pool” blue.
I made graduation caps, stars, circles with our high school initials on them, and fancy plaques with the graduate’s name.
At my high school, the girls wear red robes and the boys wear black.
Here are the swimming cookies. For those not immersed in the swimming world, the red and black dots are lane lines that are strung the length of the pool to separate the lanes. At my high school, our swim team had a tight budget, so our school colors lane lines only came out for special occasions like a swim meet.
Here are all the cookies on the platter. I love how the blue gives it a pop!
Oh yeah and I did one 2012 cookie. I wanted to do more but I thought it would be too fragile.
Go Lancers!
My husband and I just got back from a week long vacation. We spent 8 days in Southern California, and 3 of those days were at Disneyland and California Adventure!
I saw so many fun, yummy and creative treats I thought I needed to share!
Above are mickey shaped chocolate dipped rice krispy treats…
these are mallow pops.. mickey on the left and minnie on the right!
Chocolate and M&M covered giant pretzel sticks.
Disney decorated cookies!
Princess decorated cookies!
Mickey body cookies.
Dipped ears decorated cookies.
Mickey face soft pretzels.
Mickey head sourdough bread. BTW those are about the size of my head!
Some more decorated cookies and krispies.
These are cake pops! Holy moly they were like 4″ across!
Mickey chocolate chip cookie dipped and swizzled.
Dipped ear cookies and baseballs.
SOOO in love with these caramel/candy apples. The ears are marshmallows!
A couple more apples… pooh’s hunny pots, and some nightmare before xmas jack heads.
These tigger tails are marshmallow pops! Super cool!
The ice creams above are actually cupcakes in cones. I’v made cupcakes like this before but never so cute!
My hubby and I also went to Universal Studios Hollywood and I spotted some cute treats there as well. (Are cute treats on the rise, or did I just never notice this kind of stuff before I immersed myself in it?)
Spongebob decorated cookies.
Cute animal apples…
I LOVE the pink piggie ones!
It’s hard to see from the angle but there are some animal mallow pops on the left up there…
Turtle apples, marshmallow apples, and I think the ones on the right are rocky road apples…
That’s all I have for now. Hopefully soon I will be able to share something cute that I made myself!
Filed under Cake Pops, Candy, Cookies, Marshmallows, Misc
I am currently at the happiest place on earth! That’s right, Disneyland!
Since cookies and treats are out of question for me while I am away, I have asked my friend Kendra of Royal Cookie Designs to guest post for me. I am so excited that she agreed to do so! Take it away, Kendra!
I’m excited to be writing my first guest post! This one is for my new friend Carrie from Carrie’s Creations. She’s so incredibly creative and talented. I didn’t know what to showcase because quite frankly…she’s done it all…and done it amazingly to boot! After days of brainstorming I decided to just do what I do best…cookies. I had a last minute cookie order and decided to take Carrie and her fellow bloggers along for the ride. Here we go!
A friend of mine called and wanted cookies for his mother’s 70th birthday. It was going to be a small, informal get together of mostly family and he wanted cookies for favors. I don’t know what it is lately, but it seems everyone is coming to me with an open invitation for designs. The conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi Mark! Heard you’re looking for some cookies for your Mom’s birthday. What were you thinking?
Friend: Oh I don’t know…you’re the expert, whatever you decide J (yes…I’m positive he was smiling at this point of our conversation even though I couldn’t see him)
Me: What does she like? Does she have any hobbies? For instance, does she like dogs or flowers or…
Friend: Yes! She likes dogs and flowers.
Me: HA OK then I’ll think up something to go with that.
Friend: Wait! Jules (amazing wife that he has!) has a suggestion. She says Mom really likes martinis. What about martini cookies?
Me: Oh how fun!! What does she like…vodka martinis or flavored martinis?
Friend: She’s really into the cosmo martinis right now.
Me: Perfect! That will be really really cute and fun to make!
And so we settled on a cosmo martini cookie. I couldn’t wait to get off the phone and think up what color pink to do and Google what garnish was served with a cosmopolitan! So excited that it didn’t register until a few hours later that I had NO MARTINI COOKIE CUTTER! DOH!
What to do? What to do? I shooed my hubby and two kids upstairs so I could compose an email (for anyone with a 2 year old you understand why this couldn’t be done with them around!). I sent out an APB for a martini cookie cutter to almost everyone I knew in the area. Can you believe no one had one?? I had one friend with a margarita cutter but it would have been more manipulation than I was ready for.
So…I decided to go it alone. Manually making my martini cookies. First…I drew out a circle about the size of cookie I wanted. Then I sketched the shape and outlined in marker the final shape lines.
My hubby then cut it out of the paper and traced it onto cardstock using a straight edge to get the lines nice and perfect. He’s an engineer…this is where he really shines J
Once the template was created I started rolling out the dough and cutting out the martini glasses using a knife. I thought this would take longer than it did but it seemed to go quickly. Happy it was only 2 dozen!
Baked ‘em up and then let them sit overnight to cool. Next stop…icing town!
Decided I’d outline the entire cookie to give the glass an “edge”. Then filled in the glass and pink “adult juice” hehe For the pink I used 2 parts tulip red, 2 parts fuchsia, and 1 part soft pink (all Americolor gels).
After drying I then went back and added some glass shine (light sky blue) and a green lime twist. At the last minute I decided to add a little sanding sugar to the rim…I mean why not more sugar right!?!
Packaged them up and sent them to work with my hubby for delivery. This was a super fun project despite the initial shock that I was attempting a shaped cookie without a cutter. Now I know it IS possible and I won’t be as nervous the next time I find myself caught up in the excitement without my level head 😉
Thanks for stopping by and hope you enjoyed my story…now I need a drink 😉
I absolutely love these!! I love the pink, I love the sugar rim, I love the blue glass shine, I love the lime twist! I honestly have never tried a Cosmo.. not sure why, I love all the ingredients. I think I shall try one very soon.. like maybe at dinner tonight…
If you haven’t seen Kendra’s work before, go check out her site and her blog. She is just so sweet and makes gorgeous cookies and cakes! Last month she made this cake for me for my bloggy birthday. Sweetest thing ever! Thanks again Kendra!
Filed under Cookies
I am so excited that these cookies finally had a reason to happen!
My hubby is a die-hard Giants fan and always has been. Naturally I had the choice to either get on board, or be forever miserable and bored and angry about the TV takeovers. Okay, so I still get that way, but only after so many days in a row.
I really enjoy going to the games, and I have gained quite the wardrobe of black and orange over the last couple years.
These cookies were super fun to make because I was given free range to make whatever I wanted. They are for my coworker’s dinner group, who were having a Giants baseball themed get-together.
I have all the necessary parts.
Balls & Bats…
Some of our boys…
Logos… I made these by printing and cutting out a logo, poking holes in the icing with a toothpick, then connecting the dots.
A couple “Fear the Beard” silhouettes… I made these by just eyeballing it.
… and a couple Pandas! Love these guys.
I’m sure I will be doing these again soon. I have so many more shapes I thought of after I had already finished baking.
Black & Orange!!!
Filed under Cookies
A couple days ago I posted another circus birthday, but for a boy. This time, the circus party was for a little girl.
I definitely wanted to do circus tents again, because I loved the way my last ones turned out.
I recently bought a big assorted set of Wilton cutters. (Actually didn’t get too many duplicates, which was awesome! What does everyone do with all those duplicates anyway? I have a bag started..) Anyway, in it was a balloon cutter, and after seeing the balloon cupcakes for my last circus party, I thought the balloon would be a good addition to this cookie party.
(If I weren’t doing these for 2 year olds, I would have stuck a sting to the back of each balloon with a dab of frosting. I figured 2 year olds wouldn’t know to pull it off so I just left it out.)
I came across these adorable circus cookies by Nicole of Life’s A Batch a while back, and the mama for these cookies just loved them when I sent her the link. From these cookies I drew inspiration for the pink elephants.
We also liked the idea for popcorn buckets. I had seen these by Bridget of Bake at 350 a while back, and I also loved the ones from Life’s a Batch, so I combined the ideas into something I could create with my style of frosting/icing.
For the actual popcorn kernels, I was having a hard time deciding what I wanted to do. First I tried using only icing, and planned on layering blobs to create “popcorn.” But because my icing is similar to glaze, it wasn’t holding it’s popcorn shape the way I wanted.
I scraped that idea (literally) and kind of “gave up” and turned to my trusty buttercream… just started creating my blobs. They were kind of bumping into each other and not really looking like kernels anymore.. They needed butter. Problem was, I didn’t have anymore buttercream to dye yellow for the butter. I definitely didn’t want to make a whole new batch just for a couple tablespoons needed. So I winged it and started using icing. Not something I’ve ever done before. I outline in buttercream, fill in icing, and use buttercream for details. Icing on top of blobs of buttercream? What the hell is that?
I’ll tell you. It’s butter. MELTED butter.
Perfection. Accidental perfection.
Filed under Cookies
What are the chances? Two back-to-back circus birthdays for 2 year olds? One is for a boy and one is for a girl. You will see the girl’s circus birthday later this week.
I want to start by saying I LOVE the circus. I went every year as a kid. Even when I got older and didn’t yet have kids to take with me, I still loved to go. Oddly though, I don’t like clown stuff much. I don’t mind the actual clowns at the circus, but I don’t like clown dolls, pictures, figurines, etc. And I’ve never even seen It or Chuckie or anything scary. I don’t know, they just weird me out. Sometimes when I do to Chevy’s, there’s this clown there who makes balloons for the kids. She kinda creeps me out too. Maybe I just prefer a safe clown distance when they’re real.
Anyway, I didn’t make clown cookies. I didn’t have a good cutter… and what I was envisioning was not translating to paper well and not really “findable” through a google search. For some reason people think clowns in cookie form need to be wearing pointy party hats, although I’ve never seen a real-life clown wearing a party hat. Ever.
So I made circus tents. I found a few images through google search that I liked, but they were made with royal icing, so I had to adapt to my own style. Here is what I came up with:
I am SO in love with how they turned out!
We also did some #2’s for the 2-year old birthday boy.
I bagged them up to be favors, and attached these cute little tags the mama found. It’s hard to read in this pic but it says “Thank you for coming to my party.”
I also made cupcakes for this circus party. There were red yellow and blue striped cupcakes with cute little toppers…
…as well as a few balloon decorated cupcakes for a special display.
and here is a picture of the whole treat table!
I love Easter colors!
The butterflies are a new cutter I bought recently. Much cuter than the round-winged Wilton butterflies I had before.
I wanted to make only eggs, but my friends (who I do a cookie decorating party with) wanted other shapes too…)
I love sprinkles. It’s like glitter. Makes everything better.
The rest were done with stencils and Wilton color spray.
I icing them solid white…
Then layed out the stencil on top (sorry no picture)…
Then went outside because the color spray flies everywhere… and kept spraying until it got a nice dark color. Waited a few minutes, then removed the stencil to find these beauties!
I bought my stencil on Amazon. This paticular one can be found here.
And this is why my husband does not help me decorate…
…and yes there is a “base coat” of sprinkles under the icing…
Filed under Cookies
Last week I got to make cookie favors for the bridal shower of my husband’s coworker. The bridal shower was cocktail themed and the wedding colors are teal green and bright purple. (With peacock feathers!) I was so excited to make these.
I chose martinis because nothing screams “cocktail party” like a martini. Here is what we came up with:
First I outlined just the glass and background, then I squeezed a bit of uncolored icing (so that it would dry somewhat clear) into the rim of the glass.
While that dried, I filled in the background. I think the color turned out a little lighter than the wedding color, but I got it as close as I could.
Then I filled the glass with the cocktail…
Lastly I re-oulined the glass and piped on a stem and base.
Tied them up with a ribbon and they were good to go!
Too bad they’re not real martinis, I bet they would taste delicous!!
**UPDATE**
Here are some pictures from the party these were for!
For a little guy’s 2nd birthday, the theme was Rio the movie. I’ve never seen it, but it’s about a blue parrot. Looks pretty cute, I need to add it to my Netflix queue.
I made Rio cookies, along with 2’s on little circles, and packaged them up similar to the bridges I did recently.
I also made parrot colored cupcakes… I used the same technique for these as the rainbow cupcakes I made here and here.
Cookie Carrie 