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

on following

now that my kiddo is going to bed at a normal time, i might have more than 20 minute spurts to actually read up on what other bakers and sugar artists are doing. so far i either post to this blog, check the message boards on Cookiers R Us, blab about a few things on facebook, maybe tweet, then i hear something falling over upstairs and computer time is over.
but with a little more downtime, it's high time i got my blogs and peeps and tweets and lists and likes all together. so i'm on a follow-back-quest. problem is, not all of my followers have their own blog listed under their links. sometimes they follow themselves and it's under blogs they've joined. while i'm doing my best, please don't hesitate to comment with a link to what you're doing. and suggest a few more icing-related sites while you're there. :)
otherwise, keep your eyes peeled for dinosaurs, army men, ice cream, horses...

summer school

next month i'll be taking the course to get my Illinois food service sanitation certification. i'll be legally permitted to participate in a baking job. a possible sticking point might be that my exposure to large mixers, ovens, scales, sacks of powder, and dough-rollers were all in ceramics studios, but it was 10 semesters of ceramics, from high school to post-college. upon my graduation from high school, i was planning to make alien foreheads for Star Trek-- i mentioned a few months ago, once i got to know fondant, i found it's really just another modeling clay. honestly, all i learned in sculpture and pottery taught me enough to make a passable wedding cake. except a crumb coat. still working on those.

but i'm not the only one getting smarter--Brenda's 5 daughters concluded another school year and their many teachers all got some cookies for a year well-taught. they are:

chicks--the only chick cookie cutter i had was the single bird, so i flipped him over, cut a space in the foreground, and added a buddy.








shoes and purses-- these are ok, but i'm still in the prototype-area for how i like to make sexy girly accessory cookies. but i'm a little weak on sexy-girly lately. i only started carrying a purse again, and my husband still calls it a diaper bag. and my favorite shoes are some ancient Birkenstocks. ...no one ever orders old sandal cookies. mine would be awesome...

"something with the Wizard of Oz" the house was a bit dark, and needed some white windy swirls to show that it was moving 'over the rainbow' not parked there, or falling on the Emerald City below. i'd happily do this scene again, but i'd make some adjustments. a good first run.



lambs and shepherd's hooks--the chicks shoes and rainbows were for 3 individuals. the rest were for groups, and these were for the Sunday school teachers. same sugared-icing-dot technique as the Easter sheep and clouds, and i even found a great photo of a lamb and copied it's eye shape.

these were for music teachers. now that i have food-writing pens, i can do sheet music.











and when i got to the last of my icing, i made some strange shades of purples and browns and greens and iced some moons and stars with earth tones, then dusted them with different colors of pearl dust.

this was a challenging order. believe it or not, it's actually kind of easier to do 200 of one kind, than 30, 6 different ways. with the former, it's assembly line. repetition. you get in a zen kind of groove. with many kinds, you have to plan what gets iced what color and when. you have to spread your work out even farther so you don't get green sugar on the pink cookies. you count a lot. but i know that in this dream job of mine, there will be scary orders. i'll have some mother-in-law micromanaging a baby shower, i'll have a bridezilla or two. but that's why i do these friends-and-family orders. i like the challenge. i keep at it so it starts becoming automatic--like how i'm getting to where i can measure out the amount of icing i need just by eyeballing it. i'm looking at these home projects like a kind of self-imposed one-person internship. and like how Columbia taught fiction writing by making you write a little more "out there" than most American audiences would require (making "just right" a piece of cake), i look at all the weird wonderful kinds of complicated effects i can find or invent, even if it's totally unlikely that i'll make any money off of a cookie that takes 23 steps to decorate. (but i'll know how!)

thanks Brenda, for your educational order! coming soon, Taylor's final 'tween' birthday, Grace and Andrew's summer co-birthday, and what to bake for Dad's birthday--a stumper...