Baseballs and Princess Tiaras

It has been forever since I have gotten a cookie order and I am excited all over again about my little business! Plus, I have good news - I now have a professional looking piece of equipment to help me out. All this time before I have used my handy hand mixer for making my cookies and that thing wore me out! It was a pain to stand over that thing and mix all that dough and all that icing a little bit at a time. When I asked my hubby if I could get a new stand mixer he said that I should re-invest in my work and buy a new one with the money I earn. Blah - Not what I wanted to hear but I thought ok, good lesson and I was going to purchase a cheaper one from Wal-Mart when I then remembered that my Grandma Popp owns a $300+ dollar Kitchen Aide Mixer and she doesn't use it anymore. (She now lives in a retirement facility.) So I asked her if I could "borrow" her mixer and being a huge supporter of my cookie making skills she said YES! Maybe she will forget I have it. LOL. Anyway, this thing changed my life! I absolutely love it! Turn it on, add your ingredients, and it mixes all by itself. Now I am so excited to make more cookies and I hope the orders start to roll in! In fact, I have another big order in March where I am making UT Longhorn Football themed cookies and they will be so super cute, so please watch for pic of those! My order this week was for my dear friend Michelle who lives in College Station. She ordered a dozen baseballs for her little boy and a dozen Princess Tiaras for two of her daughters birthdays. They will party favors for the guests. Instead of shipping them, the kids and I will make a little road trip to deliver and we are in for a bonus of visiting Chuck E Cheese for the first time!

These pics are horrible!  I absolutely hate my camera.  These cookies are absolutely adorable in person and these shiny, out-of-focus pictures just do not do them justice!  Also, they are light pink and purple in color.  I apologize.

Elmo, Cookie Monster and Soccer Balls!

This week I had two cookie orders. One was a cookie bouquet for a Soccer Teams end of year party. And the other was a dozen Elmo and a dozen Cookie Monster's for 2 year old twin boys Birthday Party.

Baby Shower Cookies

Well, I have good news... My cookies have improved 100%! They have always tasted great, but I have always had problems with my icing. It would never get hard enough and when packaged, the icing would flake off very easily. I did a lot of researching for icing recipes that hold up better in high humidity climates like Texas and also I did some things to improve my techniques. I can now say my icing in amazing - and hard like it should be!

Check out these cookies I did for a baby shower - they turned out great!

I am Monster Trucked out!

I finally finished the monster trucks. I was supposed to have them done last night, but by 12:30 I was pooped out and had to finish this morning. Now I hope they are dried enough by this evening. Here they are before I started adding the detailed decorating.

Here is the finished product! And below is the actual Grave Digger!

Cookie Overload... Please pray for me!

Boy, this is going to be one busy week! I have two very large cookie orders. The first is Gravedigger Monster Trucks for a special little Birthday Boy - at first the Mommy was thinking 18 cookies but she just emailed me that it would be more like 31! So she just ordered 3 dozen of these awesome trucks! The next order is for my cousins baby shower and that order is for 4 dozen. I am stressing a bit, but this "business" is very much welcome to me... especially after the news we got from my husbands employer this last week. For the next few months, every little bit is going to help.
Also, just to let everyone know how much goes in to actually making my cookies, I want to try to journal my work this week. The "Gravediggers" are going to be picked up on Wednesday evening and the "Baby Girl" cookies will go with me to the shower on Saturday afternoon. Yesterday I made 4 batches of cookie dough so it could freeze overnight. Since my truck order increased, all of this dough will be used for them alone and I will need to make 4 more batches of dough tonight for the baby cookies. For the truck order I ordered a regular 'ol monster truck cookie cutter, but we all know that the "Gravedigger" is special so I had to get creative and add the shell to the bed of the truck.

Today is Monday and my goal for today (to get these cookies done in time) is to have them baked and glazed by tonight. Tuesday will be used for decorating and then they need to dry overnight Tues. and Wednesday during the day. I glaze all the cookies I make for various reasons. The glaze seals the cookie, and fills in any inperfections (like where I added the shell to the bed of the truck). The glaze also insures that the colored icing does not bleed into the cookie. Also sealing the cookie guarantees freashness for up to two weeks. The cookies have to be completely cooled before glazing. Then the tops are glazed, dried and then the bottoms are glazed and dried.

Here they are all baked and in the glazing process. This order was for 3 dozen but I always make a few extra just in case.... so there are 38 of these cute trucks.

Halloween Cookies!!!

I had two orders for a dozen Halloween cookies and also some individual cookie treat bags. These are really cute and my favs are the spider webs with the spider on it.

2nd Birthday Pirate Theme Cookies

Will and Luke are turning 2 and their Mommy asked me to make cookies to go along with their pirate theme. They turned out really cute but I forgot to take my pictures before I bagged them up, so my pictures are really poor quality. They were so much cuter in person. I made 6 personalized pirate ships and 6 skull and crossbones. Happy Birthday Boys!