and then...

after the wine auction in September, i got an email from 3 Vines Cafe in Sleepy Hollow (visit here). they saw my cookies at the auction, and could i do the same cookie for their dinner party, and once again, i turned cookie dough into wine. ok, pictures of wine.
since their logo features red grapes, i stuck to the red/purple shades, and kept the "glass" gold. after getting a feel for it once, round 2, to me, looks quite improved. it was October, and i was getting a little 5-year-oldish about Halloween coming (death! candy! blood! glitter!), and i feared a repeat (and large) order would get monotonous, and i would get frustrated, and then i'd slop it all up. of course i was wrong. i reminisced about my October wedding, and made them all elegant and sparkly, and pouted when i ran out of cookies.
you know i actually used to fear that if i did what i loved, every day, i'd eventually hate it? i have a kind of ADD when it comes to arts and crafts--i crochet, paint, bead, sew, repurpose, wield a camera, (write long droning blog posts) and can make pottery on a wheel, but eventually i put it away and months go by. cookies i could do. every. day. i get that arrived-at-my-happy-place feeling, like a toddler with a blanky, or a stressed college kid with a cigarette.
but now that sounds like i'm addicted, a word which to me speaks to a more self-conscious and anxious frame of mind. and that happy-place is the opposite. i rarely make a cookie design that's an expression of Me. you're not meant to understand me, human, katie, artist, when i make a cookie that looks like a football helmet. it's either a request from someone else, or an attempt to convey something more archetypal to an audience, which by definition is also "someone else." there is a story to be told about [a change, a milestone, an event] and it needs at least one visual. one picture, for the first thousand words. when i'm decorating cookies, i'm part of the illustrative process. in a way, i created nothing especially new. foodwise, it's the same cookie. but in decorating it, i also convey, translate, reveal, represent... i enjoy how it is to be a conduit between "that concept" and "this cookie."
hubby Jeff loves the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but i love the 'making-of' bonus features. (remember, i used to strive for a special effects/make up career, and LOTR spared nuh-thing.) the crew devises a way to mold PVC into metal-looking rings (plastic is lighter) and 2 gents got to work essentially making the chain mail for every actor in every battle in all 3 movies. every day, linking little rings. every work day. for 4 years. !! then the camera was pointed at one and he said, "i wouldn't trade a minute of it for anything, it was the most amazing thing i've done in my life." i toast my wine cookie to that dude.
and also to 3 Vines, for enabling my happy little compulsion, and letting me translate their concepts. owner Flicka emailed that they were stunning. (i bow.) my pleasure.
coming up, i lend a hand to another fundraiser, i mix crazy colors for a bake sale, i make Vanessa some nude cookies (it's only sorta what you think), a lone shoe, lavender snow, poinsettias, choir bells, (award winning!) Bill-Cosby-sweateresque ornaments, Santa Frog, and more ornaments from an evening of (omg!) teaching!

best lamp ever

Jeff's coworker Rita also has a horse stable, and she and her husband have a boarding business. she suggested we bring the kiddo by some time, and when she held a garage sale, Jeff figured hey, what's keeping us. so we went, Rowan rode a pony named Caramel (i think?), and we saw all the big horses too; Ro kept saying yee-haw. [you bet he was a cowboy for Halloween.]
then back at the garage, and amongst the sale items, i spied her sister's lamp. a spherical iridescent thing of beauty straight out of Rainbow Brite's condo. i have a slight lamp-rescuing-complex. and i had no cash on me. crestfallen, i asked Rita if her sister would take cookies for it. she replied, "tell ya what, i'll buy it for you and you can make me the cookies." then she threw in a 3-piece cowboy cookie cutter set, with a horse, hat and boot. [i thought, "SCORE!"]
and after the afore-blogged white pumpkins and the to-be-blogged wine-glass-encore, i made Rita some cowgirl cookies. there was a also hat cookie, but it was cosmetically damaged, but that's ok because the rest of them were [rootin' tootin' ding-dang!] awesome. my other horse cookie cutter is more toy-like; this one turned out more like the animal. but i still gave it a gold mane and something eye-catching on the butt. [i couldn't help it, there had to be some nod to My Little Pony. i think i had my niece Grace in mind--horse lover, Nancy Sinatra sing-alonger--through this whole project.]
the boot's gold pattern was done by laying a stencil over the dried icing, lightly sketching where the spaces fell with an edible marker, then piping with gold. when just dry, i dusted with gold pearl dust.
and i had been dying to try a wet-on-wet technique and combine it with the black marker to make bandannas. white icing was piped right after the pastel so it flattened together. then when dry, i added the black details. it's more the imitation of a motif, than actual bandanna patterns, but i adore them.
the colors themselves are a result of just finishing with some experimental colors for the church bake sale (chartreuse acorns, and brick-red leaves with blue veins) and while they were drying, i added the previous colors to the new icing plus different ratios of red teal and yellow, resulting in these fabulous kitchen-of-tomorrow, 57-Chevy colors. i wanted to sing "stand by your man."
Rita pointed out the cookies' only flaw: "they all got eaten." i'll have to ponder about a Christmas platter for Jeff to take to work. but coming up, after wine, shoes, hands, acorns, leaves, and tattoos, i'll have fabric patters, bells, poinsettias, ornaments, maybe some frogs? stick around...

white pumpkins, black friday

i mentioned i'm employed now--not at a bakery, but they're good folk, i'll help 'em out.. (i've worked/baked for them before, have a read from winter of '09-'10) and it's temporary, so i have to keep my mad skillz sharp. or maybe they'll realize they should keep me and i'll bring them snacks. either way, i'm baking, might as well take more pictures and share. :) so that's what these are for, but i was supposed to bring them on Halloween. i got all 3 of us in the car that morning, and all our junk and forgot the plate. so the following Tuesday i wished my colleagues a happy November. it's brown, it works.
pumpkins lately have been so freaky-genetic-experiment colored and textured that i just couldn't do orange. i've seen drippy dark green, lumpy grey, and even salmon pink, but one of my favorites is the smooth ivory variety. they're like the ghosts of pumpkins. the cookies are pretty basic--piped in sections, some edible marker lines on the stem--but my nifty moment with these was realizing the perspective a little better; notice you can see the "top" of the pumpkin "behind" the stem?
then the circles were supposed to be lace, as well-sprayed and defined as the black and purple/orange/green witch dresses last month. the trick is to use a cotton lace. cotton absorbs what doesn't directly land on the cookie. with a polyester lace, like i used here, it doesn't soak into the fibers, so as soon as it's wet, it bleeds right through anyway, right out the other side onto the cookie. so i didn't get my lacy look, but then i got the brown marker out again and outlined the blobs, and it ended up looking kind of like burled wood. then i brushed the circles with bronze dust, and the pumpkins with gold, and they all looked like an elegant day in the forest.
i was going to scheme about another plate-of-the-month project when i learned that mid-December our office is holding a cookie exchange. (aw naw they di'int) oh yes, and a contest too. part of me says "oh boy, sharing and participation and cookies and fun!" and the other part is bringing a cookie tin of whoop-ass. no, i will not roundhouse kick anyone's snickerdoodles, i was kidding. but the audience will be bigger, so i gotta rock'em. stay tuned.
also on the way, cowgirl cookies, tattoo experiments, stenciled logos, high heels, wine part 2, and strange colors at the bake sale.

wine and cookies.

when i bake for Brenda, i drop them off with her husband at the Elgin Y where he works. my last order caught the eye of Kay, their PR director, who asked me to provide some take-away cookie favors for guests at a wine auction fundraiser. at first they were to just be the glasses, which would have looked darling with some gilded filigrie stem design. but when i think of wine, i also think of toga'd Olympians with big piles of grapes. [tangent: i pick wild grapes and make jelly and grape juice. to DIE for, mmmm.]
so i used a simpler glass design, kept the gilded look by using pearl dust on all the surfaces, and baked a mini maple leaf and mini sideways Christmas tree against the stem for more stability and that little nod to Bacchus. the grapes were icing dots and pearl dragees. the "glass" was more like metal with bronze and silver pearl dust over brown and grey icing, respectively, but mom and dad have a totally 70s coaster set that's 'mercury glass,' with like, the profile of the god Mercury in the center. plus a set of tumblers from their (1969) wedding shower that i inherited that have old world maps on them, where North America is Terra Incognita, and they're all snazzed out with gold details. so i may have unconsciously nodded to Bacchus twice with these Me-Decade throw-back Mediterranean glassware effects. all that from being unable to make clear royal icing.
Kay used many exclamation points to tell me that they were awesome and very well received. i believe her; i got an order for an encore. thanks Kay!
...and coming soon, pumpkins, horseback riding, and a thank-you. and later, a bake sale, Thanksgiving/my birthday, and deer hunting. hmm...
and also this post will be seen by my 5000th visitor, unless 2 more people showed up while i typed this. thanks everyone for stopping by, i hope my silly little cookies made ya smile. :)

iCookie

who? yeah, it's an owl. everyone is doing owls, i'll do an owl. the twig is fondant. back to me.
on this machine that Steve Jobs invented, i too learned of his passing. on the ol' tube, i listened to Anderson Cooper talk to Steve Wozniak, and i learned that Jobs had the crazy ideas and hand-shaking skills, Woz was the builder. Jobs would say, "we need a way to carry around 17 days worth of music in a back pocket, can you program that?"
i've been blogging about looking for a job, but i think i might do well with a Jobs too. i know how to make the cookies, to bake them, ice them, render a skillful image; i'm missing that entity that can make my thing happen to everyone. someone to hammer out that railroad 'cause katie's driving our cookie train. Wozniak was described as the guy who would have built it all for fun. i know i'd bake for fun. [i'm sure my dad would grin a bit at the idea of a cookie operation that he owns and manages, while i'm the artist/laborer. i say "fine, you do the paperwork, stay out of the kitchen." :)]
but i could use someone to sell the idea to the world that cookies are it, cakes are so last millennium, and you want cookie art like s/he and i are gonna bring you. and the irony--thanks to the 2 inspirational Steves, i could click a few buttons on this computer thingy and show you thousands of talented cookie artists. may we all be so fortunate to know people that make it happen. someone who believes magic can and should be baked, and who can tell everyone how great it is to hold pictures in your hand.
"who" indeed.
(thanks Steve.)

los muertos!

my last post talked about my artistic origins. all that drawing i did as a kid looked nice on the refrigerator, and i made some really swell coffee mugs in ceramics class, but these little edible drawings are what people remember now. i get asked all the time, "how's the cookie business?" and it's frustrating to have to still be a hobbyist, not a business-ist, but people keep encouraging me, and i keep baking. and behind the scenes, i'm thinking a lot about the future too. i see myself aproned, flecked with stray luster dust, piping a billion dots on some bride-zilla's fairy-tale-wedding favors and humming happily to myself. i'm not necessarily famous in this scenario, but if the cookie world calls on me to be on TV, or be lauded in magazines i just may have to go along. and since i won't get there with boring cookies, i've been aspiring to new levels of awesomeness. i'd like to make cookies such that Martha Stewart would say "holy fondant, those are gorgeous." even if they're just cookies for a 6 year old's birthday, or Uncle Bob's retirement party. because really, if someone is special enough to get a cookie, the cookie should also be special, right?
now how do i segue into these Dia de los Muertos cookies? maybe since i'm talking about the future, i could point out that even if i'm rich and famous, there's still the great equalizer, death, which José Guadalupe Posada illustrated with "La Calavera Catrina" portraying a rich woman as a dressed-up skeleton, and inspiring Dia de los Muertos imagery for the last century. (yay, art history lesson!) i just have to say, if i die, and you feel some need to dig up my skull and have a "poor Yorick" moment, by all means, rinse it off and paint some flowers on it. (you knew her well, a woman of infinite jest...)
i googled a good skull image, resized it, glued it to a plastic yogurt lid, cut it out with an x-acto knife, and airbrushed over it onto a white-iced skull cookie. when dry, i drew with food writing markers. drawback: not enough colors in the pack of markers...
on the way, that one owl, a wine party, some horseback riding, and maybe some deer hunting. mmmm, woodsy...

shoot the moon

i was to color the object that began with a T (it was a tie) so i colored all over its general area with my blue crayon. i was 5, and my kindergarten teacher didn't like my coloring skills. i was taken aside and shown the proper way to stay in the lines and actually make the outline look like the object it represented. while "coloring outside the lines" became an individualist's badge of honor for my generation, it isn't a method that serves every artistic intent. Tolkien didn't write all over the walls, he put Lord of the Rings in a book. you don't toss apples and cinnamon in the oven and hope for the best, you follow the apple pie recipe.
after i was taught how to color in the lines, i loved drawing. i don't know how much paper and how many crayons i went through in my childhood. i got addicted to "making stuff" especially if that stuff made a space a little prettier, or a little more festive. other people spent Black Friday shopping, i spent it cutting out snowflakes to tape to the windows. by high school, i wanted to go into special effects make-up, or movie set designing. i wanted my "lines" to be a director's vision, and my "crayons" to be sculpting tools and paint. but i just couldn't get excited about moving to Hollywood, so i began to wonder if it was the story i was trying to express, rather than its illustrations. so i switched to a writing major.
i graduated from college the year that everyone started a blog and newspapers starting dropping like flies. nothing had happened to me yet, so i had nothing to write about. i took a desk job. i left art to my off time. after a few too many years, i wondered how some people got to be what they wanted, and poor saps like me had to "direct your call." by then i was nuts for cookies, but i had a portfolio to build.
so i built one. and i found that cookie decorating is just coloring in the lines, and making a moment a little more festive and pretty. it's expressing a vision, fooling the eye, telling a story, suspending disbelief, wowing an audience, and taking you back to age 5 for a little while.

in kindergarten i was a witch for Halloween, and i wanted to be an artist when i grew up...

Colts... and the Cosmos...

back when i started this blog, i had participated in my husband's church's silent auction. i offered a year of cookies, a dozen a month, so i had at least one picture to show you on a regular basis. after the year was up, i kept busy, a party here, a birthday there, my wedding, and when i had a job i brought a plate to the office every month. then last October i thought of how we only throw birthday parties for Andrew and Grace on Jeff's side, and my side of the family is all out of town, and that's just not enough birthday cookies. so with my brother's "over the hill" cookies, i got working on a year of birthdays. these 2 are the last in the series.
my niece and nephew, Jackie and Derek, are twins who just turned 24. Jackie, though confined to a wheelchair with cerebral palsy, can paint (with a paintbrush in her mouth!) and enjoys sci-fi (we're fellow Trekkers). Derek, though deaf, can play football. i haven't seen him play, but the hearing impaired have some technique by which they signal with lights. they're 2 pretty competent young people, so i made sure i did my best. :)
the rocket/planet combo was a composite with 2 cutters. both "Neptune" and the horseshoe were done with the airbrush. the planet was freehand before i surrounded it with black, and the Colts logo was a stencil, made from a plastic lid. they were received today--the Indy-fam gave them a thumbs-up. i had a moment's worry about using the football helmet and little rocket for the first time, but those little moments are getting smaller and smaller...
coming soon, a lonely owl, a dead but festive trio, a really cool witch, and it looks like some wine glasses too! stay tuned....

autumn montage!

which will the witch wear?

i did some more airbrush tests (which i can't show you because that picture's file is broken but whatever, they were tests, right?) and was pleased with how they turned out, so i put on my witch hat (no, i'm kidding) and got to work on some Halloween ideas. more magic is forthcoming; for now, i present: witch dresses!
these were a blast. (airbrush joke) i think every cookier has this dress cutter (Sur la Table) but i added the partial oval at the top to accommodate a hanger--i thought it gave it a little more context, after all a dress either has a person in it, or you hang it up, right?
i used to be annoyed at the inclusion of purple in the Halloween pallete. i think when it was a new trend, it seemed to be taking over orange's place. but lately, and with it's new friend poison green, Halloween's color scheme is kind of spooky-carnival-esque. like once upon a time these colors were painted brightly on Halloween decorations and eventually aged to a macabre patina, inspiring Tim Burton to revive them on the big screen. inspiring me to find a piece of lace to drape over the skirt portion of the cookie and spray with black. and i think they put the "boo" in "booya."
i used sanding sugar on the collar and cuffs, pearl dust on the hanger (silver on black icing) and waistband (bronze on orange) and silver dragees for buttons. this would be equally awesome as ivory on white wedding dresses with pearl dust. or bright colors, different necklines, different stencils... [*daydreaming*]
coming really soon, some Halloween cookies take flight! plus a football/sci-fi twin birthday, "los muertos!", and maybe some wine?
p.s., thanks for all the facebook and twitter love after the camels were posted! i felt kind of famous this week :)

ships of the desert

Jeff's Aunt Dahlas orders cookies each year for the choir as a thank you for the Christmas performance. for her birthday, i wanted to do a cookie that evoked something Bible-like, without doing all of Noah's Ark, or more angels. so i picked camels, and dressed them up to look like they were the king's caravan--something Caesar or the Pharaoh or the Magi would ride on. i thought gold and aquamarine were good desert colors, with gold dragees, and little red and white disc-shaped sprinkles shaken with copper and gold pearl dust that looked like little metallic medallions. the finishing touch was the eyelashes, drawn well this time because i finally found thinner food-writing pens (yay!)

with different colors, these would be really pretty for Christmas. or with a variety of animals, they'd look like a carousel. i just might dip into other ancient texts for inspiration--this was a fun start. happy birthday Aunt Dahlas!

meanwhile, stay tuned for another birthday, and Halloween! except my computer is having trouble reading one picture i wanted to show you. you'll just have to believe me, my latest airbrush test was pretty cool...

tiny dancers!

Simeren and i are friends from way back in grade school. the school district's boundaries and personal aspirations meant we weren't always in the same school doing the same thing, but now the whole world is on facebook, so it's like no one went anywhere. way back in 6th grade we were in a particularly strenuous reading class. i mean i was an honor student, and Simeren more so, but this guy liked giving us essay questions, huge vocabulary words, and involved projects. we spent one afternoon at her house making [pre-Disney] Beauty and the Beast stick-and-paper puppets so we could put on a show for a kindergarten class. this was an actual assignment--the kindergarten teacher actually had to sign off that we performed. but our teacher was the fun teacher too, and though i wasn't over-joyed to be on stage, i was pretty content to draw some characters and put them on a stick. we even made a rose with a bobby pin so one character could hand it to another. we were geniuses.
nowadays i'm still at it: Simeren emailed me asking if i could make gluten-free lemon-flavored luau cookies for daughter Ava's 3rd birthday, and can they be cookie pops? the art she sent me (the graphics on the invites etc) inspired hibiscus and hula dancers, so once again Simeren and i are entertaining kids with ladies and flowers on sticks.
i used the gingerbread girl shape, for the skirt or course, but the shape of the arms allowed for her different arm postures. her hair flower is a fondant cut out. i didn't bake the sticks into the pops, otherwise i'd only be able to bake like, 4 at a time, so i taped the stick to the inside of the bag, then slid the cookies in head first and tied them at the feet. then no one had to bite into a stick!
i get nervous when i have to do people shapes, but i always end up liking them. i think i may have to do some witches this fall. also 3 September birthdays are on the way--stay tuned...

maggot cookies!!

i took: The National Restaurant Association Servsafe(R) Sanitation Manager 15 Hour Certification Course, followed by: The Illinois Department of Public Health Food Service Sanitation Manager Certification Examination. i'm awaiting word from the state, but i'm sure i passed. when i hear from the state, i'll also be asked to mail back the fee for my copy of my certificate, which i'm eager to have for 2 reasons:

first, it's required of home bakers that will want to partake of the recently passed IL Cottage Food Law. it takes effect next year and allows unlicensed home bakers like me to sell their wares at farmer's markets, so long as they have the sanitation certificate, and the food is labeled as being homemade. the language of the bill says that it will allow potential small business owners, who haven't been able to start up yet, to test their product. amen, sister! this recession really stinks, and to have your own business, you either need a fat loan to open a shop, or enough money lying around to rent commercial kitchen space, pay for insurance, advertise... it's involved. but i know i can make a couple hundred cookies and sit in a booth on a Saturday. and if i sell out by 10am, i'll know i'm on to something, and if everyone turns their noses up and walks away, i know i'm not destined to sell in bulk. but i have a feeling that if my cookies were available to a wider audience, there would be enough demand to keep me busy.

which brings me to reason #2: it'll show a potential employer that i'm not kidding about wanting to work in a commercial kitchen. i technically don't need one just to work in a kitchen, but without the certificate, i'd need to be supervised and monitored because i might not know how to properly refrigerate eggs, etc. but now i do! plus i haven't taken any other classes. never took a Wilton cake or cookie class, never went to pastry school. my big claims to "experience" and "education" are years as a cookie hobbyist and ceramics class student, the latter actually involving bread mixers, dough rollers, dry ingredient scales, and large ovens. i'm an art student who ended up using food, not a food student who ended up using art. i need some kind of credentials.

the class was interesting, and fun, and it turns out i knew a lot already and kept sharing my own little anecdotes about my food-employment experiences. i even knew the answer when the instructor asked if we knew the color deemed least appetizing--it's blue. so when i knew it was ok to bring cookies for day 2 of the class, i decided that larvae in an unappetizing color was the way to go--everyone got the joke. i made them the night before and they were so fresh that when i laid one worm over the other to fit in the cellophane bag, the top one drooped and cracked. (but they got the idea) i used meringue powder for these too, and mixed 2 different consistencies so the light blue area was smooth, but the dark blue made little bumps on their backs. eeeeew. :)

on the way, hula pops, and three more birthdays...

extinct, mythological, delicious!

so i mentioned that Andrew and Grace have a co-party in July, but their birthdays are in June and August, respectively. and though i made a platter for the party, i also made a few to celebrate on the day.

i don't care for this series of dino cutters. they're a little too simplistic. they're nice if i'm making fuzzy pastel baby dinos, but the carnivorous wrath that i expect from a t-rex just isn't there. Jeff's aunt gave me a few orphan cutters, a few of which are really excellent dinosaurs--whipping tails, gnashing teeth--next time i'll use them. with these (shrug) hey, the colors are great...

and Grace got sea horses. get it, horses? she's crazy about horses... but i'm in a picky mood, so i have to point out that the seahorse cutter is correct for seahorses, but that head-bump on top probably should have been converted to a unicorn horn--it's a little off for an ear. not that anyone noticed, they were dispersed and eaten in 2 minutes. again, i love the colors. what would you call these--"Aquastrian"?
i'm also not completely down with meringue powder yet. i can make royal icing with egg whites in the dark and it turns out perfectly (and safe!). but every time i make royal icing with meringue powder, it's a little different, and a little unpredictable, each time. with the seahorses, it kept it's fluffiness and didn't flatten out much (notice how flat the dinosaurs are). but i need the practice--the IL Cottage Food Law passed this week (woooo!) so i'll be able to sell at farmer's markets next year (woooooo!), and i'm sure the public would appreciate not having to concern themselves with egg safety in the first place.

still on the way, gluten-free hula dancers, chubby grubs for my food safety class, and 2 more birthdays...

cookies that make you go hmmmm

if the Food Network ever did a Cookie Challenge (just a baking and art challenge, like the cake challenge used to be) i think i'd at least place. you might say "well you do nice work, but these are pretty unextreme." well yeah, but most of these are shapes that i'm doing for the first time. and if i've done the shape before, i'm designing them a whole new way the next time. so you're seeing a lot of prototypes. and i think even for prototypes, some are darn adorable.

and if you don't believe me, ask my mom.

no really, ask her. my mom marvels that i can design and produce hundreds of cookies, then with equal mental dexterity, turn around and explain the techniques, physics and chemistry involved in creating it. now, mental dexterity is kind of in the eye of the beholder, because i think i'm kind of a screwball who just knows a lot. but Mom would say i'm capable of handing people parts of their world in ways they didn't see before--which is the magic i attribute to cookies, or any art that accompanies a story, which is the bigger artistic umbrella i've always been working under. i'm an *illustrator*.

but when i was 9 i was feeling down, and had a moment of psychological clarity and maturity, and i said, "at home i'm a superkid. out there, i'm a nobody. or worse, they're just mean." and i think that sentiment explains how i can brag on my cookies in one paragraph, then in the next i'm apologizing for their errors. for all i know, these things look terrible to you; i mean, you're not my mom...

long story short, i made my mom a dozen birthday hummingbirds which i thought turned out exceptionally well, and she thought were just awesome. Jeff even felt compelled to walk them in to show his coworkers when we stopped for coffee for the drive downtown--he relayed that multiple jaws dropped. the kiddo even ate 5 of them. self-confidence restored.

back to the Food Network Cookie Challenge--i'd probably recruit Mom as my assistant. not only because she thinks highly of me :) or because we've been decorating cookies since i could see over the table, or because she's driven to see me succeed. those are the big ones. but the one that makes me grin is how we are in a kitchen. when i lived at home, and 6-10 people abandoned the Thanksgiving table for pie and TV, Mom and i could break down that kitchen in 15 minutes and not have to say more than "washcloth" to the other.

i'm suddenly reminded of things that are light, quick, graceful, and operate with a kind of hum... (chuckle) Happy Birthday Mom!

coming soon, dinosaurs, mer-mares, the great big luau, and blue larvae.

Rambo meets Rainbow

i'm doing family birthdays all year, and i did a couple dinosaurs for nephew Andrew (pics coming soon) and will do a couple [something] for niece Grace next month, but s-i-l Heather throws a co-birthday party every summer for both kids, and each year i make a platter for the party. i did ice cream cones in '09, candy in '10, and this year i did 2 kinds for twice the challenge.

these are the same shape as Taylor's ice cream trucks from last month. Andrew first requested army guys, but of my cookie cutters that qualify as "guys," none were really the right size and shape. the gingerbread man shape looks like they would all be doing jumping jacks, which is kind of ok, and the just-standing one i have is a mini. so i asked if i could do another army shape like grenades, and he was fine with changes. in the end it was a convoy with gold stars.

i lamented in my last post that food-writing markers aren't that spectacular, but they seemed to be alright for that tarp thingy on the back of the truck. i don't trust them yet for words and intricate details.

the other side of the plate was "My Little Phonies," the unicorn edition. i did blue and purple ponies 2 years ago, and ponies were requested again this year, but i had to change it up a little. i made the hair more flowing, the candy-butt-picture larger (that's a snowflake and 2 stars, can you tell?) and i went with pearl dust instead of sanding sugar. again, the markers were hit and miss, but once i find sharper ones, i'll be doodlin' all over the place.

both of my "clients" were very pleased with the results, and the party-goers polished them off in less than an hour. i think i'm really starting to like that fact--that i can spend hours decorating cookies, and if i did them right, all you'll have left is pictures and memories.

coming up, Grace's birthday, Mom's birthday, and Ava's non-allergenic luau.

this is *only* a test

i got some Wilton food-writing pens. i don't like them that much. when i make lines with a paintbrush, though they can be shaky, they're much thinner than what the pens can do. why? the tips of these markers are chubby like Crayola markers. i need teeny-tipped markers. also they're meant for fondant--after a few cookies, the tips were getting worn out and fuzzy from being dragged over a sugary surface. anyway, here are some tests. when i get done with decorating, i sometimes make royal icing puddles on wax paper and let them dry. then later when i need a practice surface i don't need to make extra cookies.

here's yellow on black, dusted with gold pearl dust.










i drew circles, then added a little line of a 2nd color, then blended them with a wet paintbrush. got a bunch of different colors--then brushed with white pearl dust and outlined in black.


this is the same technique, but with single colors.










same technique with the paintbrush, but no pearl dust. the Chinese characters were copied from a tea tin; i don't know what it says. :)




also a pen and paintbrush effect, but with a layer of brown sanding sugar, then regular piping/sugaring for the snow.













this is one reason why i don't do trademarks--yeah, you can tell it's the stooges, but really, unless i'm using edible paper and printing out the images, no trademark or logo is ever going to be totally precise. it's a cute attempt at best. and the way i see it, if you want trademarked cookies, call up the company that makes the product. i did this by piping onto wax paper, laid over the image. i think if i were really doing a 3 Stooges party, i'd create some pie-in-the-face image.

my next post is trucks and ponies, and i used the black marker for both, but when i got done i took a razor to the tips to see if i could taper them more. we'll see if that helps. or i'll find a different brand. or i just won't let my pony cookies have eyelashes anymore...

and coming next month: 6 dozen gluten-free, red-dye-free, luau cookie pops. no problem.

ice cream, u scream.

i use a royal icing recipe that's a little less awesome in humid weather. for comparison, and probably a better looking cookie when shipped, i tried meringue powder again and misread "tsp" as "tbs" and then i didnt fix it correctly, so i had to start over. finally, i made my neice Taylor her birthday cookies.
she turned 12. i don't remember being 12 with any sort of fondness, and 13 was worse. and in thinking about jr high, and its suckiness, i tried to think of some delightful childhood image for Tay's last hurrah before being a (gulp... i'm old...) teenager. we have pictures somewhere of her 2nd birthday, with ice cream from the ice cream man all over her Blues Clues pajamas. that i do remember fondly, so i grabbed my truck cookie cutter.
you may notice that if these were real trucks, driving on American streets, the window is on the street side. oops. the tinier piped details got a little blobbish, my new food writing markers were so-so... but i like the little "popsicle" pictures.

then Dad's birthday is 6 days after, so he got ice cream too. things i like: the "cherry" on top and the color of the "chocolate" ice cream. things i don't: the "cherry" is cinnamon flavored, the humidity still effected how neat my lines were, and i wish i used a different sprinkle to accentuate the contours of the "whipped cream" on top. i piped it in in sections, letting them dry in between for a piled-up look, but the patriotic jimmies kind of hid that. next time, nonpareils.

in either case, i hear they didn't last long. now, does that mean they were too delicious not to eat, or not too pretty to eat? (grin, doesn't matter.) happy birthday Taylor and Dad!

coming soon, an army convoy, a my-little-phonies unicorn edition, some better results with markers, dinos, and a luau.

summer montage