You've been Boo-ed!

I've heard of a great Halloween tradition of Boo-ing your neighbors. I think it's such a great idea and a wonderful way of bringing the neighborhood together. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe what you do, is leave a treat at your neighbor's door and they do the same for another neighbor and round and round it goes.

I think a cute tray of Halloween sugar cookies would be the perfect way to Boo your neighbor. Lets face it, we all get enough of the mini candy bars in our kid's trick or treating loot. This would be a nice, delicious change, don't you think?

Happy Halloween!

Quick Update

Just a quick update to share what I've been up to. 

Autumn cookies

Shower Place Card Cookies

For the Bride

For the Guests

Homemade Whoopie Pies 

These were REALLY delicious. They turned out perfect! 

Let me know if you'd like me to pass on the recipe!

Deluxe Cookie Bouquet

A corporate order for a leasing office to send to a 

prospective tenant, a broadcasting company.

'Sweet Tooth' - and art exhibit at Gallery Z

Once upon a time I had what we like to refer to as 'free time'. When I could, I would take a painting class from renowned french artist  David Gista. David owns a gallery in Glencoe and had mentioned to me the idea of doing a show based on food. He was familiar with my cookies and asked if I wanted to participate in the opening. Well, the show opened last night and, what a blast! The show featured artists Aviva Ginsberg and Ron Pollack.

Aviva Ginsburg and Ron Pollack with their work 

The show went great. I made a lot of new contacts and I LOVED making what I wanted to make. This was a little more creative than I've been able to get for a little while and I loved it. I made 5 showcase cookies, samples for the crowd and then of course some other sweets for everyone to enjoy, a delicious candied nut mix and chocolate drizzled cereal treats. Please enjoy the show and feel free to leave any comments!

A view of the display

Andy Warhol's 'Campbel's Soup Can'

Henri Matisse's 'Dance'

Joan Miro's 'Femme Assise'

Pablo Picasso's 'Blue Nude'

Mark Rothko's 'Yellow and Orange'

Samples of cookie artwork from Keith Haring and Pablo Picasso

Henri Matisse

I hope you enjoy looking, as I sure enjoyed making!

A long, necessary break...

So, you might have noticed that I've been missing for quite a while. There's a good reason for that. We found out that we're expecting our third child and while we're thrilled, cooking, baking, or even looking through the food coupons was just not in the stars for me for a while. Now that I'm into my second trimester, and feeling a bit more like myself, I think I'm able to take on a bit more food involved activities.

So here's my first order all summer long. I was a bit worried that it would be harder to get back into them, and it was at first, but I love the way they turned out. For a Yo Gabba Gabba loving 5 year old on his birthday.

Here's a few extras I did for my girls. They're always so wonderful watching me make cookies. Imagine how hard it must be for a 2 and a 5 year old to always be watching Mommy making cookies for other people. I don't like for them to have too many sweets so I obviously don't make them for them all the time. These were a special treat.

It's a boy!

For some strange reason, most of the orders I get are for girls. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE doing girly cookies. Pink and hearts and flowers and princesses, they're all so much fun. However, I get really excited when I get an order for a boy. I guess it's just fun to try something different.

This order was for a little boy's 2nd birthday. They were having cupcakes instead of cakes so the mom wanted a tray of cookies for parents and other adults and then trains as cookie favors for all the kids. This was the same week as my daughter's birthday so needless to say, it was a busy week.

Happy 5th Birthday Big Girl!

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. We just got back from a fabulous, fun filled week at Disney World. Yep, you read that right, a whole week. I was a little hesitant as previously we had only spent a day or two at a time there, but it was great. It was our first time taking our 2 year old but, not surprisingly, she was a rock star.

So now that I'm back home I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I already have one order completed for this week so I figured I'd take some time and show you what I'm been up to. Before we went to Disney World it was my eldest daughter's fifth birthday. I'm always so anal about taking pictures of all the cookies and cakes I make and I completely forgot about taking a photo of, quite possible, the cutest cookie I've ever made. As requested by the birthday girl, I made birthday cake cookies. The only pics I have are from the party on the folded plastic table cloth already wrapped for the party. You'll see that we also gave out those rubber band bracelets with the cookies. They made for cute packaging and boy is someone making a fortune off those somewhere.

And of course I had to make her birthday cake. We bought the cake for the party, I just got too busy with her cookies and other orders that week to put any real effort into a cake. For her family party I made a princess castle cake for her. I've always wanted to try this so I went for it. As you can see, there's a reason why I don't do cakes professionally. They're fun and a challenge, and I think they turn out cute enough, but I wouldn't dream of trying to charge someone for these. Maybe in the future with tons of practice... At least it tasted delicious! It was a marble cake filled with homemade chocolate ganach. Yum!

So, my daughter is turning 5 next week and of course I'm making her birthday cake. She has all these grand plans of what I'm going to design for her, but in my head I was thinking of something a little different. Being a 5 year old girl, what could be cooler than a rainbow colored cake? Not the icing, but the actual cake??? I decided to try it out the other day so make sure it turned out good and I loved it! It tasted delicious too! It's just a quick graffiti design so don't hold that against me. I'll make up for it with her real birthday cake.

And here it is....

New and improved...

The newly designed Ironman series. So thrilled with the way these turned out!

May the Force be with you!

I've been dying to decorate a cake for a while. As you may know, I was so desperate to make one, I made my own birthday cake a few months back. My dear, dear friend was so kind to let me decorate her son's birthday cake. I got to do the best part too, just the decorating. As you can see, I do plenty of baking. The baking however, is a necessity. The decorating is what I love. So, here you have a Star Wars themed birthday cake for little Matthew, who will turn 5 in a few days. Happy Birthday Matthew!

3D Cookies

I am Ironman

After finishing a birthday order last weekend I got  a little restless. I have a bunch of orders for 2 weeks out but was looking for something new to challenge myself with. I've been wanting to try Ironman for a while so I decided to try something new. Here is a 5" tall 3-D Ironman cookie. The details drove me crazy but I love the possibilities that a 3D cookie brings. Check this out.


And here's the birthday order for a rainbow loving girl that I just finished.

Spring Cookie Bouquet

What I learned this week? Believe it or not, making 5 cookies takes just as long as making 20. Normally I ask people to let me know at least 2 weeks out when they're going to need cookies. If I'm not too busy, I can do it in a week. How long can making cookies really take? Well, I have kids, and carpool, and errands, and carpool, and meetings, and carpool. The life of a Stay at Home Mom. Sometimes I swear I would be so much less busy if I just went back to work. I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment.

So, my friend called and said she just needed a cookie bouquet, and oh yeah, she needed it tomorrow. There are very few people I would do this for. Maybe 2. One is my mom, but she would never ask. She's one of those weird people that don't like cookies. And her daughter is a cookie decorator. Go figure. I'm sure a shrink would have a field day with that.

Well, for those of you that aren't cookie decorators, the icing takes 24 hrs to dry before it can be packaged or stacked. So, I am very proud to say that this cookie bouquet was ready roughly 26 hours later.

 Oh, and I did get some sleep. 

First Referral Order

I've been busy filling cookie orders and I'm very appreciative to everyone for placing their orders. If you didn't know already, every cent that people pay for the cookies, I donate directly to Camp For All Kids. It's an organization that sends disadvantaged youth to summer camp. Pretty soon I'm going to have to start covering the costs of my materials but right now, it all goes right to them.

One of my dearest friends placed an order for her older daughter's 7th birthday party a few weeks ago. What else does a 7 year old girl want but peace signs? So here they are:

Sorry for the horrible picture, I forgot to snap them before I bagged them. Notice the note attached to the cookies... It was very important to this little girl that her friends know that these were no ordinary favors. She wanted her friends to know that by purchasing these cookies, she was performing a mitzvah, or a good deed. So all of the cookies had notes attached to them letting everyone know that all the money was going to Camp For All Kids and a brief blurb to let them know what that was. Sweet girl.

I'm very pleased to say that from this order I received my first referral order, from a complete stranger. Up until now its been friends and acquaintances ordering. A mom of one of the girls who got a Peace cookie told her sister-in-law about the cookie and then she placed an order for her son's 2nd birthday party. And if peace signs are for a 7 year old girls, what could be for a 2 year old boy? Sports balls!

What I've been up to...

I know, I've been horrible at posting what I've been up to so forgive me for writing a bazillion blogs at once this morning. My baby turned 2 last month so of course I had to do everything myself. Cookies for treats, cookies for favors, and cookies on cupcakes. Throw in some homemade marshmallows and call it a party!

Party Favors for the kiddies

Sweets tray for the adults. 

Sorry, by the time I took a pic a few parents already helped themselves!

And the yummy cupcakes for the kids. 

Homemade yellow cake with homemade buttercream and a sugar cookie topper.

Marshmallows!

Let me start off by saying that there's simply nothing better than marshmallows. Growing up my Aunt Cathy was probably the most influential person in my marshmallow loving life. She taught me how to make taffy out of store bought marshmallows. Yum! And totally something that my 6 year old self excelled at. The only problem was that I discovered that the tastiest part of this recipe was also the messiest. If you pull the marshmallow apart and stretch it over and over again it turns into a yummy, gooey mess. So this was how I ate marshmallows for a good portion of my life. My best friend in middle school (still my BF today) was thoroughly disgusted with this, as is my husband. My husband overlooks it though, as one of my very few flaws. So with my new baking obsession what was the next logical thing to try to make? Marshmallows! Vanilla marshmallows, sugar covered marshmallows, simply delicious. It was much easier than I thought it could be and they turned out just fabulous!

These were amazing! They were great to hand out as party favors to the kids at my daughter's b-day party who were allergic to dairy, soy, eggs and nuts. All the other kids got sugar cookies so I would have felt bad that they wouldn't get a yummy treat. They were very excited that they got something that they could eat. 

Pretty

And the latest party favors for the adorable soon to be 3 Brooke. Brooke is having a Valentines Day birthday party tomorrow and hopefully she and her friends will love their pretty party favors. Happy Birthday Brooke!

Birthday Cake

As promised, I made myself a birthday cake. I've been wanting to try my hand at it for a while now and with no friends or family with a birthday in the near future, I am left to make my own. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It was a three layer cake (2 chocolate, 1 yellow cake) with vanilla buttercream frosting. The yellow cake was my first ever attempt at completely from scratch cake and it was fabulous. I used half of the yellow cake to make my cake pops so I rummaged through my pantry and made the two chocolate layers with a box mix. They both were delicious but the hands down winner was the yellow cake. Here's some before and after pics to make you salivate. I must add that this cake was so enormous that on the evening of my birthday I was driving around my neighborhood with packages of cake for friends and family and still had enough for next-day leftovers for the girls.

And just delicious!

Mmmmm....

Okay. Is it time to take a breather yet? I don't think so. So, since I've started with the cookies I've become completely obsessed with trying to make new things to see what I can do. If you've read previous posts then you know that I, never in a million year, thought I would be baking anything at all. So, my latest projects were to attempt the fabulous Bakerella's Cake Pops. Let me tell you, they're delicious and adorable. I can't wait to get more creative with them next time. I just need some volunteer eaters!

Well, my birthday is Wednesday. My next project is going to be a birthday cake for myself. I don't have anyone else to make a cake for and I just can't wait any longer. I simply just HAVE to try my hand at cake making/ decorating. I will post the results regardless how it turns out, just a warning. Wish me luck!

Do I need sleep?

So, how necessary is sleep anyway? In truth, the best time to decorate cookies is very late at night when the house is quiet, I can turn on my own music, and not have to worry about my two year old yelling, "I want cookie!" So here I was, last night, let's say maybe 11:00 (not too bad), trying out some new designs. I have some royal icing leftover from some cookies I made for a friend so I just threw some cookies in the oven and I was off. Now let me tell you, I have tried probably 5 different sugar cookie recipes and I really believe the one I have decided on is the best sugar cookie ever. Not too hard, not too soft. Not too sugary (leave that to the icing) with a rich, buttery taste. Yum! I also happen to love the recipe I got for the royal icing. It doesn't dry rock solid so when you bite into it there's still a delicious creamy taste that I believe all frostings should have. It does, however, firm up perfectly for wrapping and stacking, an essential when it comes to sugar cookies! So here are the yummy cookies I stayed up decorating last night, the reason why I used my arm to prop my head up today at Disney On Ice with the family...