Star of the week at school again – this time for the older sister of the butterfly cookies. Pink was a must, and daisies were the shape of choice.
I love my daisy cutter! (Found at an antique fair.)
I planned on doing centers like the purple daisies I did awhile back, but after just one cookie my hand was killing me and it didn’t look as cute. The swirl lets you see all the sprinkles anyway! (Kids love sprinkles!)
All bagged up and ready to go!
Filed under Cookies
Okay bravo if you can follow along with this: the daughter of a coworker of a family friend was getting married, and wanted some cookie wedding favors.
Lots of baking…
Color = Purple. Dark purple is hard to make! It took me like 45 minutes to get it dark enough. It was worth it, it came out great!
I tied little tags onto each bag with the bride and groom’s names and the wedding date. Love that it’s 9/10/11!
I had a couple blank cookies leftover, so I did roses out of the purple buttercream to pair with the extra Monogram cookies. These are extra, so they are just something extra and special for the bride!
I received a special request for some Caillou cookies for a themed birthday party. I had never heard of Caillou, so I had to do some research!
This is what I learned:
1. Caillou is pronounced [ky-you].
2. The show, which airs on PBS is based on a book series.
3. The author created Caillou without hair or distinguishing features (besides the fact that he’s white) so that all kids can more easily identify with him.
I used my circle cookie cutter, and the top of my onesie cookie cutter. I chopped off the arms so that I basically just had the shoulder section. Stuck it to the circle, and they were ready to bake!
The basic outline is pretty easy. Since I was outlining the whole thing in black, I used a pretty small tip.
This was the first time I made “fleshtone” icing. I had to look up what colors to mix. In the end I kind of played it by ear, and it worked out easier than I thought.
I felt confident going into these cookies, but I got nervous when it came time to put the face on Caillou. So I took it in parts.
It ended up being easier to do than I thought. Every picture of Caillou his facial expressions are slightly different. So if the eyebrow or mouth was a little crooked, it still looked great!
The mom sent me some of these cards to attach, since the cookies are favors. Aren’t they adorable!?
I received an email from the mom last night after the party was over:
OMG I just want to say thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! You are truly amazing, I couldn’t believe it when I saw the cookies. They look just like the picture. My daughter along with all her friends were so excited. All my friends were impressed as well. I’m sure you will be gaining some more customers. I will be ordering cookies from you for every birthday of my son and daughters… Your cookies made this party. You rock and you’ll be hearing from [us] again and again!
I guess she liked them! 🙂
Filed under Cookies
It was a friend’s birthday today and her mom wanted me to make her some special cookies. We were trying to think of the cookie to make for her, and it hit me what would be perfect. Last time we went camping, she stomped all the boys at beer pong! How awesome would beer pong cookies be?!
Well obviously there is no “beer pong cup” cookie cutter. I went through everything I had and nothing would work.. I was planning on making a stencil and cutting them out by hand, until I visited a couple bakery stores in my area and found a flip-flop cookie cutter:
Same basic shape as a cup, I just had to bend the left side out a bit and square up the top and bottom and I was ready to go…
I decided to outline the ball in black so that it would stand out well against the white of the inside of the cup.
I outlined the ridges…
I filled the red sections separately so that they would each “heap” separately and really show off the ridges that make it the “red cup.”
I filled in the balls white. The inside of the cups I added the tiniest amount of black possible, just to make it a slightly different color from the white of the ball.
Cookies were bagged and tied with ribbon…
…after I arranged a red cup beer pong set-up!
So the birthday girl lives in Chicago. Yeah, I’m in California… first attempt at shipping. We used LOTS of bubble wrap, and chose overnight FedEx.
…and….. not a single cookie broke! Every single one made it safely. And the birthday girl loved them!
Filed under Cookies
It was “star of the week” at school for a 3 year old girl. Star cookies? Nope, she wanted butterflies!
Pink and purple are the only colors acceptable. Fine with me!
All bagged and ready to go!
Have I ever mentioned how much I love to use pink? But now I have a craving to make stars…
Filed under Cookies
Made these cookies last week for a coworker’s 50th birthday party. Black icing is a little intimidating so I stuck with just black details…
Recently bought some sprinkles (my serious addiction), and my purchase included a sample pack of sprinkles… while I was getting ready to decorate these I realized there might be black sprinkles in that pack.. so I did a few like this. I love these!
I searched for over the hill cookie ideas and came across a lot of tombstone cookies. Well that’s easy enough, and I already had a tombstone cookie cutter.
Didn’t want to do them all the same, so I had to come up with another saying. I knew they would be appropriate for the birthday dude, because his wife was asking for “old man” or something like it. I think this is fun and “funny” to go along with the over the hill theme!
Hope the birthday dude loved them!
Filed under Cookies
This year’s theme for my annual company picnic is “Hot August Days.” Whilst perusing cookie cutters online, my coworker came across this 57 Chevy Cookie Cutter.
I was “hired” to bake 300 cookie favors for the picnic. The biggest feat for me to date, and it was a huge success!
All cars were to be identical red chevys. I baked the week before, and froze them until it was time to decorate. I knew 300 cookies was a lot, but until they were taking over my freezer I didn’t really realize how crazy this was going to be.
Assembly-line was the way to go. I started with the tires…
Then added windows and the side panel…
photo by Lizz Cleaver - http://www.flickr.com/photos/holdencleaver
Then outlined the cars…
photo by Lizz Cleaver - http://www.flickr.com/photos/holdencleaver
photo by Lizz Cleaver - http://www.flickr.com/photos/holdencleaver
Filled in the tires, then the cars, then the windows and side panels…
Then finished them off with the side-line and “hubcaps.” I had originally planned on leaving the tires black, but my husband INSISTED that it looked dumb without the white on them. I thought it was the white-walled tires, but my husband corrected me, they are the hubcaps. OKAY.
Then each cookie was bagged and tied with ribbon. Here is the finished product!
Did I mention I have a full-time 8-5 job? This was all done after work hours and on my weekend… thank GOODNESS I had the help of my husband, my mom, and my best friend. There is no way this would have been done without them!
Here is my friend Chelsea (who helped so much with the decorating!!) enjoying a cookie. Or as my mom says, the car is “zooming” into her mouth. Haha…
Filed under Cookies
My mom bought me this cookie cutter from an antique fair:
Super cute little tulip! I had some leftover dough from a batch of cookies yesterday so I made a few…
Whenever I’m not restrained by specific colors I always seem to do pink… maybe because everyone I know that’s having babies is having boys!
I also did a cookie for my neighbor’s 2 year old daughter. I brought her some cupcakes a couple months ago and her mom said she now points towards my house and tells her mom in a very serious tone “Mommy, I need cupcakes.” Haha…
How cute would these be next to the purple daisies I did a couple weeks ago… Garden party anyone?
Filed under Cookies
I’m not crazy. There is a reason I have been randomly making tons of different cookies. I also have a confession.
The cookies I have been doing in the past, and up to just a week ago, have been made from this:
Seeing as I am trying to sell my cookies, I thought it was wrong to be making them from a bag. I have not had time to just “play” and find a good recipe because I had been making cookies for people and I didn’t want to experiment until they were for no reason at all.
I started in a safe place – my mom’s recipe box. My mom hasn’t made sugar cookies since I was probably in middle school, maybe even before that. She doesn’t have the patience for rolling out dough and dealing with stickiness. The recipe she had was her mom’s from when she used to make cookies. The result? It was okay. Held up its shape well, and was easy to roll once it warmed a bit (it was seriously a rock when it came out of the fridge). The cookie wasn’t as sweet as the Betty stuff, which can be a good thing since I use so much icing… but it was actually too flour-y I think. It tasted more like a shortbread or biscuit.
A few days later I decided I needed to try again. I have a HUGE cookie order coming up and I need to start baking and freezing ASAP. The next recipe was a complete success. Like, best sugar cookie I’ve ever had. I might tweak it a bit to make it my own, but it’s so good the way it is. You can find it here. That woman is a genius I tell you!
Anyway – to the cookies!
These I made for a very special reason… our offer just got accepted on a house! We have a busy and hard couple months in front of us, but I can’t wait! My house cutter is NOT cute. It is from a Halloween set so it’s technically a haunted house. I did the best I could…
These cuties are for a special mom who just gave birth on Friday night. Her shower cookies can be found here. I used my circle cookie cutter and then chopped the heads off of little gingerbread men for the ears.
The rest are just for fun!
my attempt at a flip-flop cookie. I don’t have a cutter so I used my easter egg and fit a couple pieces together.
The color is better in the first flower picture above, but the dots look better in this one. I will definitely be making more of these they’re easy and so cute!
These are sort of a fail.. I tried to do this, but they didn’t come out as cute as hers. Maybe it would have helped if I would have looked at the picture and done it right!
Filed under Cookies
I tried a new cookie recipe this weekend. I have been wanting to try a new one for a while now, but every time I make cookie I am making them for someone so I haven’t been able to experiment. I figured while I am making cookies for no reason I might as well try new cutters, techniques, and other ideas I have been bottling up for a while! So forgive the jumping-around of my designs and ideas…
Oh another thing I did different this time was not make my buttercream for the outline and decorating… basically because I was too lazy. So everything is just the icing, and for the most part I just did the same consistency rather than thicken or thin it out to outline or flood. Okay here we go…
The larger cutter came in a set I just received as a gift from some friends. The smaller ones I made myself with my circle cutter and a small crinkle edged circle to take the “bite marks” out of it.  Just like shown toward the end of this post by Sweet Sugar Belle. She is brilliant.
These are also inspired by Sweet Sugar Belle. (See this post.) I thought they were soo gorgeous and I just had to try it. While it turned out nice, it took forever.. and without my precious buttercream I had a hard time keeping my lines straight and my curls curly. The dots were easy so I did a lot of those. 🙂
Next is something I have been wanting to do for MONTHS. My original idea didn’t really come through on these, but there will definitely be more lemons to come! The design was easy and looks fabulous. I totally meant to do limes too, but I forgot and just kept piping in yellow.. Oh well, next time.
A little but of fun…
I don’t know how many people know, and I’m sure I haven’t ever mentioned it here, but I LOVE dinosaurs. I want them in my life more. I haven’t stopped talking about wanting dino cookie cutters ever since my cookie craziness started. While my parents were on vacation, my mom found a few dinos and brought them home for me. So excited! These are just a few trials.. now I just need a brontosaurus and a triceratops and a stegosaurus and I will be set!
These little bite-sized cookies were just leftover colors. Simple.
The recipe turned out okay. It was too flour-y I think. I have another recipe in mind to try next time. Hope that can be soon… I have a HUGE order in less than a month! So excited…
Filed under Cookies
Cookie Carrie 