S'mores a go-go

Danny's birthday was a camp theme. his party was also 2 days after thanksgiving, so I did nowhere near as much for him as I have done for rhena in the past.

in fact... I ordered the cake.

I know, I know. but the favors were a home-made treat.

Thanks to Susie for the inspiration; she said something along the lines of s'mores for favors, so I ran with it.

dipping the marshmallow in the chocolate provided a little distortion, and I noticed that the graham sticks were inclined to pop out during the heat/cool process.... but overall they came out cute.

they were small enough that even I enjoyed them as a treat; I'm not one for s'mores, so that has to be saying something.

I bagged them up in sets of 2, and tied with a coordinating ribbon.

overall.... they were easy enough to make, and certainly easy enough for mass-production. I would definitely do these again. maybe when rhena does girl scouts or something.

Luau Birthday

For Rhena's birthday, I made a beach-themed cake to go with her Luau-themed birthday party. to compliment the cake (and to make serving easier) I made several cupcakes, covered in 'sand' (cookie crumbs) that each had a decorated surfboard stuck in it.

I was proud of the concept and how the theme flowed into every aspect of the party. the cake? tasted great, but I have a feeling I'll look back at it and be artisticly embarrassed. like maybe next week?

oh well. Rhena loved it, and it held up the label of 'cute' well enough.

And the band played on!

My friend's little boy had a guitar-themed birthday party, so I sent a bunch of guitars and music notes to him as a gift.

The biggest key for producing a large quantity of cookies is to keep the number of DIFFERENT designs to a minimum. one.. to come up with 36 different looking whatevers is exhausting. 2.. having an assembly line of some sorts helps me crank them out much faster.

as a result, I stuck with only 2 shapes for the cookie gift; music notes and guitars. second.. I kept the colors to black, red, blue and green. (oh, and I needed tan for part of the guitar. and white. always need some white)

every 'color' I do requires a loose and a thick batch of royal icing. one for outlining, one for flooding. so definitely keeping the number of colors that I use down helps.

I also had a trial run of shipping them. obviously, I did them overnight. I had them in ziplock bags AND in bubble-wrap. not sure how the final product arrived, but I was very concerned about the 'necks' of the guitars. definitely a breaking point.

oh well.. here are some of the final cookies.

Using Sticks

Tried using sticks in the cookies this time.

The idea was to make the cookies look like flowers blooming out of a ceramic flower pot. I bought a decorative pot then used icing that would compliment the pot.

I think the CONCEPT behind this birthday gift was with merit.. but the final product? meh. not exactly Martha, if you get my drift. The 'grass' made of green construction paper really takes away from the overall look of the gift... but hey. hindsight is always 20/20.

Next time I will NOT just use kosher salt to fill the pot to stick my stems into. I will use a combo of planter's foam AND the rock salt. and maybe a colored sugar on top to look like grass or dirt. no more construction paper, though.

cookie 'bouquet' for Maria's birthday:

detailed look at cookies:

Lemon Cookies

I practiced using flavoring in the icing, as well as decorative techniques in this batch. The cookies themselves were a bit hard... a result of too much flour, I think. you can see 'layers' in the cookie from a side view.

I tried to do a more appealing plating/different camera angles for this batch as well... as seen from the complimenting colors and props. I feel the fancier background makes the cookies look that much more 'lemony'.

attempted to create the pulpy -slash- textured look. Used a paintbrush for that effect.

overall.. I would re-attempt these again. think with more experience and a better cookie base, these could be very nice as summer gifts.

SO sparkley!

not sure if that's even spelled right.. but for this batch I experimented with dusting powder.

funny thing about that stuff... a little goes a lonnnnnng way. They say to mix powder with vodka and 'paint' on. I think for this group I used too much vodka, or applied the glitter too soon, as I lost some of the icing's shape, or the colors bled a little. next time, need to wait for the icing to be harder. or not be a Neanderthal with the paint brush.

here were some butterflies and flowers I made:

May Flowers and showing love

trying to back-date here, to not only get a history, but to also (hopefully) show some progress.

One of my earlier attempts at royal icing... piping and flooding.

more from that batch:

as you can tell from the hearts, my icing wasn't thick enough, OR my tip was too big. either way, these earlier attempts good practice.