Kentucky Basketball Cookies

Some months ago a friend from my hometown was raising money for genetic testing for her granddaughters for a condition known as Dravet Syndrome and I offered up two dozen cookies for auction as my donation. She posted the auction in two places, so I ended up agreeing to honor both auction winners, because there was no way for those in each place to see the other bids. My friend, Amy, who I have done a number of cookies for in the past, ended up winning her auction and asked if she could wait to redeem her winning bid for her husband's birthday in June, although she immediately made her donation. (BTW: Between both auctions, we raised $110.00 for the cause!) I told her that was fine. She had no idea what she wanted to do, but then it hit me that her husband was a University of Kentucky fan, or at least I thought so. I sent her daughter a message to confirm because I wanted Amy to be as surprised as Mark would be. Her daughter said he would LOVE them. When I delivered them on Sunday, Amy's face and reaction of pure excitement and surprise said it all! :) (Also of note, genetic testing came back and they do NOT have the syndrome!)

I ordered this UK cutter from JB Cookie Cutters, who do 3D printing to make cookie cutters. When it arrived, I was a little disappointed with the size as it seemed awfully small, but it ended up working just fine. They also sent the component parts of the cutter, I guess in case I was doing fondant. Because they were a bit on the small side, they were a bit tedious to do. I ended up doing the white outline first and then filling in, which makes the blue a little lumpy looking, but I was too scared to try it otherwise. Now that I have a point of reference for them with these finished cookies, I think next time (she posted them on FB last night and I already have a request for some for a birthday in September) that I'll do a completely blue flood and fill first and then come back when that is dry and do the white outlines.

Kentucky Basketball Cookies

Kentucky Basketball Cookies

Trains and Teddy Bear Cookies

Did these trains and teddy bears for the child/grandchild of some long time friends. I decided to try my first go at a 3D/stand-up cookie with one of the trains. Just made a couple of long rectangles to bridge them together and attached them inside with really stiff royal icing. I LOVE that they ended up using it on the cake! I recently bought the Betty Crocker 101 set of cutters because there were a couple in there that I wanted, so of course, I just got all 101! ha! Anyway, I used the train cutter from that set instead of the only other one I had which was from the Wilton 101 set, because I liked the design of this one better.

Train Cookies, Teddy Bear Cookies

Train Cookies, Teddy Bear Cookies

Train and Teddy Bear Cookies

Swirl Rose Cookies using Royal Icing.

Sometimes things work out just as they were in my head. I am in love with these rose cookies. And my, oh my, they were so super simple.

I was asked by a friend's mom to do angels and roses for a luncheon she was giving for a wives group at a VFW gathering during D-Day weekend. The luncheon was to honor the outgoing president of their group, who had used the symbols of angels and roses during her term. Her daughter did lovely stemmed beverage glasses with a rose embossed on the base of each. I had done some roses before, but didn't really like them, so I wanted a different idea. I noticed when I did a google image search that a few people had done simple swirl roses using a 1M tip. I'd always assumed they were buttercream cookies and couldn't be done with royal icing, because I've done tons of buttercream swirl roses on cupcakes and swirl rose cakes. Upon further investigation, I discovered that I could do them with very stiff royal icing. My decision was made - that was what I would be doing for the roses! I used a round cutter and added a couple of small leaves to it. These things were so easy and so quick AND they look amazing. When I say quick, I mean super, super quick! I did about 2dz. each of the angels and roses. The angels took me just a little over an hour to complete. The roses were done within 10 minutes. The biggest delay was refilling my icing bag, because they do use quite a bit of icing, but they are so totally worth it.

Rose and Angel Cookies

Swirl Rose Cookie

Spa Party Cookies

Did these for a friend's daughter's birthday party. These have become a favorite, as it is the third time I have done ones like these. Loved the addition of mascara and eyelashes to the mix.

Spa Party Cookies

Tree Stump Cookies

Did these for the retirement party of a co-worker of my husband who has a side business doing stump grinding. I could not find an actual tree stump cutter anywhere, so I got a huge circle on from Sur la Table, broke it open and my husband and I shaped it into the stump. Since I had no idea what I was doing, I just jumped in and tried. Notice the few along the back that have the larger "cut area" showing, those were my first ones and I totally wasn't feeling them. I adjusted doing the same portion in a smaller surface area and ended up liking them much better.

Tree Stump Cookies

Watermelon Cookies

Did these for our local bar association's annual picnic. I don't like the shade of bright green I used - I ended up mixing electric yellow and avocado, which looks like a neon yellow/green shade. Next time I'll either do plain old electric green or a mix of lemon yellow with avocado to get a less glow in the dark shade. ha! I also just did random black RI transfers for the seeds. Can't locate black candy covered sunflower seeds without ordering online, which I hate doing, so next time I am going to try using Wilton spray color in black on a bunch of colored candy covered sunflower seeds I already have for a more uniform look.

Watermelon Cookies

Baby Rattle Cookies for a Baby Tea

I did these for my husband's little cousin's baby tea. I'd told her that I would be glad to do some and really had a platter of 3-4 dozen in mind when I made the offer, but didn't specify that. So when they let me know what they wanted to do, the cookies were going to be used as favors for 80ish guests. Of course doing cookie favors is different than simply doing a mixed platter with quick and easy coordinating fill-ins, so I had to figure out what I was going to do. For favors they need to be either all uniform or at least similar in size, so I initially settled for doing a mix of bottles, rattles and onesies, but I had a lot of other cookies going on for the same delivery day and didn't get started even baking them until after 9:00pm the night before I was to deliver them at 8:00 am. Since the number was over double what I'd initially planned for, all needed to be detailed and because I was running super short on time, I opted to do all rattles because they had the smallest surface area of decorating and for drying time. The colors were yellow and blue so I did a mix of all of the colors and did about 6 variations on the overall look of them.

Also, note my fantastic piping on the words, "Oh boy!" Yep, that is the result of the most magical tip ever that I received as a birthday gift from my long time friend Kim, remember, she's the one who gave me the mixer for my birthday a couple of years ago. Ya know, every year for my birthday, she does things that I can never top or even come close to matching in return for her. She's awesome! Anyhow, I digress. That piping is the result of my new PME Supatube 1.5 writing tip. I'd read so many people talk about how awesome it was, but was still like, "Seriously, how can it possibly be THAT much better?" But it so is!! It is like there's this magical little elf inside the elongated portion of the tip making everything you pipe come out beautifully. Looks like super-cheapo me, will be investing in some more of these awesome tips!!

I didn't get a pic of these cookies before I delivered them, but my aunt snapped a cell phone pic of a few that remained near the end of the tea. This is that pic.

Baby Shower Cookies

Girly Cookies for a Bachelorette Party - High Heel Shoes, Diamond Rings, etc.

These are pretty much exactly what the title of this post says, not much more on which I can elaborate. I will say this was my first time using Americolor Deep Pink instead of Soft Pink and I think I really like it a lot better. I had planned to use both, but just ended up using the same batch of colored icing and just diluted the color with additional uncolored icing to achieve the lighter shade of pink.

Engagement Ring Cookies

High Heel Shoe Cookies

 

Girly Cookies

Birthday Cookies

These are a couple of sets of birthday cookies I did for a friend and for a friend's daughter. For the candle, I used a cutter like this one and just cut off the bottom section. Works well, but I really want to get a chubby candle cutter a long these lines or like this, but until then, this works fine. I also did some birthday cupcakes for Kelly, which were just plain yellow cake with vanilla buttercream icing.

The writing on both of these is horrible! Even though I'd received my AWESOME PME Supatube 1.5 writing tip by then, I'd been too lazy to mix a separate batch of piping consistency icing and didn't thicken these enough to keep the letters from running together. Other than that, I was good with them. 

The turquoise color for Hallie's cookies was made using a suggestion from Jill of Funky Cookie Studio. Everything I'd tried kept coming out too green and then one day I saw something she posted and inquired how she achieved the shade. She used electric blue and a smidge of avocado green. I was thinking I followed her suggestion to get my color, but when I looked it up just now, I am certain that I do not own electric blue, so I may have used royal blue and avocado green, which is why mine isn't quite as bright as hers were - makes sense now. Pay attention, Beth! haha!

Birthday Cookie Platter

Cupcakes

I did Kelly's a few weeks before doing these for Hallie's and decided to do the candles differently  and love the results.

Birthday Cookie Set

Tool and Gadget Shower Cookies

Did these last weekend for a friend who was giving a tool and gadget shower for a young couple.

Tool Cookies

Tool Cookies