the bake sale

like i said, i'm behind, and these, dear reader, are from the pre-Christmas bake sale at Trinity Lutheran back in November. after this, i'm afraid, you'll be bored to death with months of the pictures of what i was doing over the Christmas season, all busy and stuff. there will be ornaments and poinsettia and snowflakes until Easter.
nah, you'll love it. it'll be like back before digital cameras and you didnt pick up your Christmas pictures from Walgreens until around Valentine's Day. "aw, remember those?" you'll say, and tilt your head and smile. you-> :)
so this is the batch of frosting that begat so many weird salmon pinks and deep yellows and dingey teals that i've been posting. i sometimes, like a song, get a color stuck in my head. i once brought home stacks of paint sample strips from hardware stores trying to find a purple for my hallway. [Gliddon, "smartypants"] and those couple of days i was thinking of a really tangy chartreuse, and a pale teal, and a terra cotta orange, and a chocolaty brown, and how they aren't the first 4 colors that you'd group together to say "Autumn!" but i've played around with odd colors before, like one fall had a bowl of mini leaves, and a third were purple. the audience's eye accepts electric yellow acorns, or purple leaves, because we subconsciously understand the nonsense aspect of it. it's magical enough that here are cookies that look like leaves; that some should be fantastical colors is perfectly acceptable too. so i made rusty orange leaves with ghostly blue veins, and the aforementioned electric yellow acorns, both in a junior size, like one bigger than mini, but still a kind of little cookie, and packaged them in pairs. Aunt Dahlas and Lois reported that they were quickly bought.
when i took this picture i was reminded of a documentary about the making of the movie Fantasia. this was back when artists sat at drafting tables and drew all day and brought a lunchbox to work. no boardrooms and focus groups. and this one guy had to come up with the forest that these little (it's been a while, cherubs? little centaurs?) were prancing through, but he wanted a really great color for the leaves. something really astoundingly not-treelike. then at lunch, one of his colleges was eating a slice of a jellyroll and he had a eureka moment over that berry-magenta of the jelly filling. so he went back and used that color to paint the trees. i paused for a moment and tried to imagine if such a tree were real, that these cookies were a just imitation, and i bet the bark would be blue, and roots all exposed and twisty. and i see 2 scenarios for such a palette: either it's a result of it being some crazy fantastic alien landscape, or some atmospheric event with moonlight shining on fall foliage during a frost, making those weird moonscape colors...
i totally over think it, but golly, it's just funner that way. and it's true, if something were paint by numbers, i never followed the directions. and later i'll rock your eyeballs with some purple snowflakes. :) and a bunch of other things. first i have to make purses and "plants" (yes, more Cheech-and-Chong fans) till then, high 5s!

temporary tattoos

Happy New Year! i'm way behind with posting, so let's get started...
the hubby works with Vanessa who was kind enough to watch the kiddo for a few hours one day. i said i'd pay her in cookies if she wanted, because she was usually the first to raid the bag of mistake/sub-par/experimental cookies that i sometimes send to work with Jeff to share. she agreed.
i made 2 designs: tattoos, and ----s. i didnt take pictures of the ----s because i didnt think it would be too cool to post ----s, seeing as kids probably like this blog--mine does anyway. but i'll describe them for ya! they were about 4 inches, skinny, bended every which way, had subtle 'circulatory' attributes (some big words to trip up the kids), chocolate jimmies for hair, or brown sanding sugar for stubble. i also made them in Caucasian and [let's-call-it-] Latino hues.
with the remaining "flesh tones," and yellow, blue and pink, i did a series of wet-on-wet designs that, when dry, i outlined with a food writing marker to mimic tattoos. little simple tattoo cliches, but mostly i wanted to practice with the marker, and make some mental notes about icing drying times. (the picture was taken inside, so forgive the greenish-orange.) and i cant make one cookie without thinking of 20 more, so i'll probably be using this technique all year...
i dont think i got a report back about the tattoos as Vanessa was so floored by the awesomeness of a dozen little ----s. i think Jeff even said she was eagerly showing customers. Jeff later joked with her that she went straight home and put them all in her mouth at once. i had him ask her which end she started with.
we're terrible!
after all the "coming up" listed in the previous post, there will also be silver stars, purses, and NYE clocks. i'm a busy gal. stay tuned....

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.)