six feet underground, or 20,000 leagues under the sea... cookies!

Thank you to Jef for his order of Dia de los Muertos skulls and mermaids!
The mermaid shape is actually a Disney Pocahontas in a kind of heroine stance with her hair blowing, I just bent her a little so she'd have a dolphin-like swoop.  and of course the Ariel palette, but with Ginger Grant make-up, and some pearl bling.  (are we still saying "bling"?) stay tuned, I have Halloween/baby/barista cuteness on the way.

Baking Dead

cookie-superfan Wendy asked for cookies for her kiddo Mike who's turning 14 and is a fan of zombies.  who isn't?  i'm glued to The Walking Dead every week, then watch each episode on demand a few more times.  hubby even got me a t-shirt.  and after making dozens of undead hands reaching out of the grave, it was time for some full-corpse, brain-eating action.  i used the same dryer-icing dead flesh technique, drew the exposed skull with edible marker, and painted blood drool with watered down red gel food coloring.  they're cute in a way.  and gross.  :)
happy birthday Mike!  and thanks to Wendy for the challenge.  on the way, lil' birdies...

*boneless recipe

happy Halloween early!  this week at the Meet Market, pick up some spooky skulls and chocolate chip cookies with your soup'n'sammiches.  and stay tuned for some fat lil' pumpkins.

boo!

"shiver me cookies!"

it's talk like a pirate day and i actually have pirate cookies to show you! Karina works with the Hubs and was attending 2 birthday parties, and one was pirate themed.  the parrot is actually an eagle with the beak nudged down a little before baking.  across the top is a crown with the 2 inner points pinched together.  that leaves a mini-bell shaped space right where his ear goes.  and when they all bake together, it makes a little boy with a bird on his shoulder.  the skull and crossbones were prepiped so i could draw the little boney details in edible marker.  awesome.  i mean, "yar, they be awesome."     (high 5!)

the other party was Mickey Mouse themed, and since i don't prefer to do licensed characters, and don't have a Mickey cookie cutter anyway, i offered Mousketeer hats made easily with a large circle cut in half, then 2 smaller circles perched on top.  tada! 

i've always liked doing something besides the character him/herself.  like, if ever i do a Snow White party, i'll bring red apples.  Harry Potter would get white owls.  the cake is usually the showpiece, i bring the little birds and flowers for the background.  it's like... accessorizing!
much thanks to Karina! and happy birthdays to my new little cookie fans.  more on the way, and i just finished more baptism crosses and new-baby birdies. making neat stuff for kids is seriously activating my polar elf genes.  are my freckles sparkling?

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...