Happy New Year!

I hope everyone's enjoying their New Year's Eve!!  We went to our friend's house for a little soiree...good food, good company and an early New Year's countdown for the kids.  Hopefully I'll make it to midnight.  I might be in bed reading a book, but I'm determined to see the ball drop. 

Here are some photos of the cookies I made for the party tonight...

Tomorrow I'll be off and running...The Hamilton Hangover 5 mile run, that is!  I am determined to start off the New Year on a positive note.  13 is my lucky number, so it's bound to be a good year...right?!

Christmas Cookies are D.O.N.E.

Yayyyyy!  I've finally completed a project.  ALL of the holiday cookies are finished!  My last order is done and ready to be delivered this weekend...

 

 

One of my holiday traditions are chocolate frogs.  If you know me, you know about my love for frogs (typically not real ones).  Awhile ago, I found some cute chocolate molds at Candyland Crafts...thus started my holiday chocolate frog tradition.  This year I decided to add holiday frog cookies to the mix...

 

 

Tonight I will be bagging about 50 of these cuties for friends and family.  Then it's back to the sewing machine to finish up a couple of orders (and a couple of small quilts for the Moms for their birthdays...I'll post that sometime next week).

 

Happy Holidays everyone!!

 



Holidaze

I definitely feel like I'm in a daze right now.  Well, I've been feeling this way since Thanksgiving...the holiday rush starts right after Thanksgiving for our family (it's probably the same for most people!).  All I dream about are cookies and fabric...and let me tell you, there are some weird things going on between those two items in my head.  Moving on...

I finished my first sets of holiday orders!  Yayyy!!  Here are the finished products...

Winter Penguins

 



Fuzzy Mittens

Snowmen

 

Gingerbreadmen

 

 

I'm in the process of bagging and tagging those cookies...I need to make sure they say "nut free" because they're being used as favors at an elementary school and day care center! 

 

Tonight I'm going to a holiday party...and, of course, I volunteered to make cookies.  And what's a cookie exchange without the cookies?  That event is tomorrow afternoon.  I was able to use a few leftovers from the above orders, as well as some other fun holiday shapes, to make up my party platters...

 

 

Now for a small cookie break!!  I have more to make, but they don't have to be ready until next weekend.  Time to work on our family sweets tradition, which I'll blog about over the weekend...



 

 

Monkey Madness

I can now breathe a sigh of relief because my monkey cookies will be delivered tomorrow!

I made these "Julius inspired" cookies for one of our family members for his birthday favors.  He loves Julius and I love a challenge, so we had a perfect combination!

I was really nervous about getting the shape of the face right, so I didn't want to ice the face directly onto the cookie.  I decided to print out the image and trace it directly onto parchment paper.  That worked great, UNTIL...

I realized that I couldn't see the lovely details of the face because I iced over them!  Crap.  Well, at least I got the outer shape iced out.  I let it dry and then started the tedious process of peeling them from the parchment paper (I made 6 extra, just in case).  There's an awesome video I came across from One Tough Cookie on youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8cwHFXWRvY
This helped me immensely...only one face broke! 

The other issue I had was that the underside of the faces didn't dry flat.  I guess the parchment paper rippled slightly while drying, so when I added the faces to the cookies, they didn't lay completely flat on the cookie.  And now insert me freaking out.  What if I add the face details and the whole thing cracks?  I can't possibly put this fragile cookie into a cellophane baggie...it will immediately break!  So I locked myself in the closet and ate chocolate calmed down and started thinking about alternate packaging ideas.  A.C. Moore is my reliable craft store...I found some small, white boxes with a window...perfect for individual cookies!

After settling the cookies in their boxes, I just used some scrapbooking paper I had in stock and dressed up the box a bit.  They're off to be delivered tomorrow to our cousin.

Happy Birthday Robert!! 

I. Love. Fabric.

I love fabric.  It makes me so happy.  On Black Friday, I receivedn an email from Fat Quarter Shop about their BF sales.  I went a little crazy...but it was SUCH a deal!  And when I received the package in the mail, it was like Christmas morning!  Everything was so pretty!  I've washed all the fabric and ironed most of it...

 My favorite is the argyle...and they had AWESOME Christmas colors!!!

I've also been thinking about different additions to my reversable headbands...hopefully I can introduce those in the New Year.  I would love to get to them sooner, but the Holiday cookies are calling!

Let's talk about butter...

Once again, I must warn you...I am by no means, a professional cookie decorator!  I'm learning as I go, and my newest lesson is about butter.  When I first started making and decorating cookies, I just went to the local grocery store and bought Breakstone's All Natural Unsalted Butter.

I soon started to realize that I was going through ridiculous amounts of butter.  So what's a girl to do?  Take a trip to BJ's!  It was perfect...I had a coupon for Land O' Lakes Unsalted Butter AND I could buy it in bulk!

Fast forward a couple of weeks...

I'm getting really annoyed at my cookies.  They're spreading and not holding their shape well, AND I'm seeing these unsightly dark spots on the icing after it's dried (it looks almost like grease stains).  The really annoying part was that the cookies looked great as they were drying, but the next morning, BAM! Dark spots appeared all over my cookies (it was really noticable with the darker icing).  What the?!

So, I'm going through my head, trying to figure out if I changed any ingredients.  Nope!  Well, after having three children, my mind isn't what it used to be, so I'm not sharp like a tack...more like sharp as children's scissors.  Anyway, I finally figured out that the ONLY thing I switched was the butter.  I immediately ran to Shop Rite and bought about 5 boxes of Breakstone's (never mind the 5 boxes of the Land O'Lakes I still have in my freezer!)...I did a trial run with a batch of cookies, and DAMN those cookies held their shape!  I also did a little research about the dark spots and found that it might be the butter seeping through into the icing.  Just to cover all my bases, I now add a layer of paper towel on top of my cooling racks, so it will absorb some of the excess butter grease...

 

Of course this all happened right before I had an order of 80 cookies for a surprise party to get done...and the icing was DARK!  I had those babies isolated on my lined cooling racks, under a fan all night.

 

 

 

And guess what?  No spots!!!

 



Gobble Gobble

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday!  I love getting together with family over the holidays, and our Turkey Day celebration always lasts until Sunday.  We take the trip over the river and through the woods...to Nanny and Pop Pop's house we go.  It's like a mini vacation for us...we have two extra sets of hands to help with the Peas (and the grandparents LOVE to have them visit)...it's a win-win situation! 

Surprisingly, I did not bring turkey cookies to the festivities (my job is the mashed potatoes), but I was happy to hear that the 8 1/2 dozen turkies that I made for customers were a big hit!

One of the problems I've run into is...space.  Space to cool the cookies, space to decorate, space to make meals, etc.  I never thought this would be a problem, since we recently upgraded from a townhome to a single family home, but it has.  Last week I found a solution to the problem.  Well, not a full solution, but this item definitely helps!  If you're short on space in the kitchen and love to bake, this might help you too!

 

 

Ahhhh....an adjustable folding baker's rack !!  This little beauty can be bought on Amazon.com and it fits on the countertop under the upper cabinets!  Head to the dollar store and purchase two 2-packs of wire racks and you're all set!  The racks sit beautifully on the shelves (as well as my "good" baking racks) and the rack can be folded up and put away after you're done!  Awesome.

Busy Little Crafter

I'm sorry I've been MIA for a bit...I've been quite the busy crafter!  My sewing machine and I are friends again.  All has been forgiven.  I took a short break from baking to build up some of my crafty inventory. 

More headbands...

New Boo Boo Bags...

 

Aaaand new children's scarves...

 

 

 

Oh, and I could only leave my precious baking supplies for a short time...

 

 



 

Why, might you ask, would I need to make 24 headbands, 7 boo boo bags, scarves and cookies in such a short period of time?  And I'm sure my husband would like to know why I looked and smelled like a homeless person, while sitting for hours and hours at my beloved sewing machine.  Well, I had an amazing opportunity that I needed to prepare for!

 

My friend Jen...awesome friend and awesome photographer...(did I mention she is awesome?) introduced me to the owner of the Bellies and Booties boutique in West Windsor.  Stephanie, the owner...also awesome...is now selling some of my items at her store!!!  If you're in the West Windsor area, Bellies and Booties is having a 40% off sale this week...very dangerous!

 

 

 

 



Post-Sandy Pumpkin Cookies

What a crazy week we've had!  The damage and devistation that Hurricane Sandy created was unbelieveable.  Our family was definitely lucky, only losing power for one day (and phone / internet / cable for about five days).  Our thoughts are with everyone that are still without power, or that have lost their homes.

As you can imagine, I wasn't baking much this week...but I did get one order done!  My friend, Kerry, had reminded me about a website we had pinned on Pinterest that had pumpkin flavored roll-out cookies:  Life's A Batch
Kerry had recently tried them and said the flavor was amazing...and since I trust her taste completely, I thought they would be perfect to try for my next order!

The cookies smelled delicious...and I guess they're a bit healthier, using whole wheat flour, brown sugar and organic turbinado sugar.  Aaaaand, the final product:

 

 

Now onto my knitting and sewing projects.  During the power outage, I was able to get some prepping done for my new headbands.  Hopefully this week I will have another post about my progress with them!

Halloween cookies

These Halloween cookies were so much fun to make!  A big thank you to the tutorial that Lila Loa provided!!  I hope Pea #2's preschool class enjoys eating them as much as I did making them. 

 

 

 

 

Which one's your favorite??

 

 

I had a little bid of dough left over at the end, so made some cute baby faces for Pea #1's dance teacher (she just had a baby boy).  Hopefully we will have dance class on Tuesday evening so we can give them to her...but with the way this storm's going to hit, chances are that I will just have to make more cookies for next week's class!!

 

 

I have to say...as much as I love the Pearl Dust, it gets EVERYWHERE.  It starts when you open the cardboard wrapping that the tube comes in, and just gets worse as you start to use it.  There are a couple of poor Frankenstein cookies that have a nice little sparkle to them, just because they're resting on the same tray.  Oh well.  They're still cute.

 

 



Weekend Projects

This weekend, I will be...

decorating these little squares for Halloween!  I was on Pinterest (big surprise there) and I came across these cute Halloween cookies by Lila Loa.  I can't wait to try them!  My middle "Pea" has a Halloween party at his Preschool on Wednesday, so I'm hoping these cuties will go over well with the kids. 

Q & A time...

A lot of people have been asking me how my cookies keep a uniform thickness...believe me, my first batches were NOT!  It was not a pretty sight.  I don't curse much, but I really sounded like Joe Pesci in Casino while making my uneven cookies.  Then, I came across my new baby at Karen's Cookies...

 

An adjustable rolling pin?!  Whaaaaat??  The rolling pin comes with 3 sets of rings (1/6", 1/4" and 3/8"), which you screw in at either end.  The 1/4" thickness works perfect for me.  Hope this helps anyone struggling with uneven dough!!

I'm hoping to divide my time with sewing...my machine feels neglected.  Etsy is also feeling neglected.  Hopefully my husband and children aren't feeling neglected...