Arkane Studios

Arkane Studios is a local gaming company here in Austin, TX. They are a small company (so far) so one of their wives, who work with my husband, asked if I could make some cookies in their company colors to take with them to the party. The only thing she asked for was a large rectangle that had the company name and logo on it, the rest was up to me as long as there were at least 2 dozen cookies.  These made me really want a kopykake :) I was told that they all really loved them so it was worth all the hand drawing. The flavors were simple but it looked really cool with the vanilla and chocolate cookies all laid out on a platter with such a graphic style cookies.

DJ Birthday Cookies

This was just a quick order for one of my coworkers who requested a small set of cookies for a friend that is a DJ. He and his wife are on a diet so she didn't want anything big but gave me liberty to make them fun. This is what I came up with... The records are dark chocolate and the stars and "turn table" are vanilla bean. I love the way the black food marker showed up on the coco icing. Hopefully her friend will enjoy them and not worry about the diet for a few bites at least.

(sorry for the color on the photo, it was taken at night)

UMHB Graduation Cookies... Congrats! (Gluten Free)

These were made for a friend's daughter that is graduating from the University of Mary Hardin Baylor as a Nurse. Her mom, Nancy from R.O.C.K., is ecstatic and is throwing her a party with friends and family to celebrate. Nancy was my very first customer for her younger daughter who graduated from Texas Tech earlier this year (texas-tech-graduation-first-order). The twist on this order was that the graduate has gluten allergies and she wanted at least a few to be gluten free so she could enjoy them. Her mom threw down the challenge when she thought I could only do simple ones as gluten free and it was okay to make the cute ones with the normal flour... Well that just doesn't work. The guest of honor should be able to eat the best ones, right? I took a few tries but I got it. These were great, by the time they were decorated you could hardly tell the gluten free from the normal recipe. I was so excited when I got these done I rushed to box them up and almost forgot to take a picture... if you were curious at all the graduate girls and the hearts were gluten free while the chapel tower and the nurse scrubs were standard vanilla bean.

R.O.C.K. Cookies #2

Nancy had me working hard this week... first these wonderful horse themed cookies to thank her workers and volunteers that help make R.O.C.K. the wonder place it is... next week I'm making graduation cookies for her daughter that is graduating as a nurse from UMHB. If you recall my first attempt at making horses (going-in-solo), these are far beyond the first set. I did research this time and tried to make each horse represent a real horse they had on property (their names are written on each cookie). Nancy wanted to have their brand new logo represented as well so what better place to put it than in a big heart :) The colors were simple, since I wasn't sure the theme to the party I thought the cowboy boots would be fun and easier to make than I thought.

I soooo wanted to keep the horse heads after I got done with them. My wonderful husband picked out the horse head cookie cutter, and to be honest it scared me to death the first time I tried to use it. These I tried to take my time with and that made all the difference... new lesson learned, them more you plan the more you love the end result.

B-U-N-C-O.... and bunco was his name-o

Wait, is that the wrong song? Oh well, it still fits :)

My mother is part of a bunco group that gets together at different houses the first Monday of every month to drink and gossip and just have an excuse to get together for some girl time. One of her cohorts called and wanted to surprise them with some cookies when it came her time to host. I forgot to get picks so these are her photos from the party. To be honest, I have no clue about bunco. I had to do a bunch of research to figure out what I was making and finally called to try and get some details that would make theirs fun.

I found out that my hostess loves red and anything that sparkles, so I put sanding sugar on everything. They also have  a single large pink fuzzy dice that they use for tie-breakers. I think these came out pretty fun and I was told that they disappeared pretty quickly so either they all had the munchies or they tasted pretty good ;)

Oooooooooooooh

The claw chooses who will go and who will stay... and who's head gets eaten first.

What little boy doesn't love Toy Story? I haven't found one yet that has seen the movie and didn't connect with at least one character. That being said, I wasn't surprised when I was asked to make some of these iconic characters for a 3 year old boy's birthday party. Her son was in love with Buzz Lightyear but she didn't want a bunch of Buzz cookies, so instead we focused on making the birthday boy one big Buzz cookie and the rest were going to be the ever funny three-eyed aliens. 

I had these monster cookies cutters from halloween that I never even got to take out of the package, one was the perfect alien head shape... the only problem was that it didn't have an antennae... what was I going to do? 

To be honest, these weren't supposed to be party hats. I customized the cookie by adding the triangle on top, thinking that I would just draw on the antennae since I could find no reference anywhere of them ever wearing anything on their heads. Once they came out of the oven and I started decorating I determined that my triangle was way too big and left too much open space to just draw on a little antennae so I thought, what the heck... I will make the first aliens in party hats :) I don't know why but I was very excited to do these, I almost gave them names but that would of made them harder to eat. I had made two Buzz cookies (you know, in case you stick your finger in one moving it to the cookie sheet to dry) and both came out great (so mom got one too). This buzz cookies was one of my most complicated ot date, each color had to be laid in and allowed to partially dry before I could do another one. 

I'm sure I will be making more of these in the future, especially the aliens... maybe the next ones can have cowboy hats :)

Cookie's Cookies

Jerry's Birthday Cookies

My friend and coworker, who I have done many cookies for in the past, told her mom about my new hobby and she decided to put me to the test. I apologize in advance for the really bad pics. I wish I had a good excuse but it was really early in the morning when I started boxing them up and I'm just glad I remembered to use the camera at all.

This set was for a friend that was turning 60. I was told his pride and joys are a '57 Corvette and a sailboat named Synchrony. His hobbies were crabbing, fishing, and duck hunting. This one was kind of fun because I could be really creative with what I wanted to do. We decided on a corvette and a sail boat of course, then a duck decoy, a fish, and a Maryland blue crab, since that's what he fishes for. I love the net behind the crab :) She said the birthday boy enjoyed them a lot... onto the next order....

ECU Tailgating Cookies... go Pirates!

The next order for Cookie was going to attend an ECU tailgating party. I'd done a few college things before but ECU had very stylized everything so this was a little bit of a challenge. We decided to use a little bit of liberty and try to embrace the spirit of ECU rather than be a photo copy of their logos and mascot. I went out a bought the skull and cross bone cutter and I found a really cute little pirate hat that we bought as well and I used on top of my skull and cross bones :)

A plate of party cookies...

This is the result of friends "helping" me make cookies. They are not exactly how I normally do them, but it was our annual Halloween party with all our friends and they weren't going to judge them by anything but taste... so I let them help, and it was actually quite fun and a little free-ing. I didn't get very many pics, but it is one pretty fun looking plate of cookies.

See if you can find all our spooky friends: witches, vampires, frankenstein (he's a little hidden) and his wife, black bats, purple bats, witch brooms and cauldrons, gravestones, eerie eyes, spider webs, ghosts, jack-o-lanterns, coffins, and various random halloween bites.

I want — Cooooookkkiiiieeesss

Okay so Karl had this get together tonight with some co-workers to watch the premier of Season 2 Walking Dead. Not many people know this about me but I officially have an issue with zombies... but only on screen. I can read about them, look at pictures, make cookies... but put them in motion on a tv or movie screen and I'm out.

Karl wanted to make something fun for the guys so we came up with this. He is actually going to serve them coming out of a dirt cake (pics to come soon). I had so much fun with these. They are custom cut from a paper stencil I made and then flipped so we could have left and right hands. I was so inspired by these that I wanted to take them on a photo shoot in our front yard :) Don't worry... they are safely resting on paper towels, the bark is just piled in front to look like the are coming out of the ground. I think I'm going to do another set of these for my office bake sale... I can picture it now... rice crispy treats, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, cupcakes, and bright green zombie hands! Too fun not to try.

More pics here.

Update: Here is the pic of what my husband did for the party. I was told the guys used their cookies like spoons and scooped out their cake with the fingers and they just took a big bite :)

I ended up making about 25 of these by the time Halloween came around. I think next year this may turn into my first custom cutter... these things take a surprisingly long time to make but they come out really cool so it's all worth it.

Warner Brothers... meet Disney.

My newest order was for an old college friend that contacted me for a quick last minute favor. Her mom is celebrating her 60th birthday on Thursday and the family is having a surprise party for her in Kentucky. As if the party wasn't enough, they are also surprising her with a trip to Orlando so she can visit the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios and visit Disney World... thus the Mickey meets Harry cookies :) I wanted to try and tie them all together so I carried the same colors thru most of the cookies. I love the way Harry came out. Harry and the Mickey with the buttons are the only un-altered cookies... all the other ones were custom made. The cupcakes came out super cute and my husband decided to help me and picked out yellow and red sprinkles out of my rainbow bottle for me, very patient and very awesome of him.

Seeds of Strength... the cookies that almost didn't happen

So this was the order of miscommunication :) I had a client request these cookies back in August but said he needed them for the end of September. About mid September I contacted him and he'd changed his mind and now wanted them in October. We touched base with him again last week and he said they were for a meeting on the 8th of this month... not a big deal so I started baking the cookies and set them aside until they were ready to decorate. Well last night my mother-in-law goes out where the client and her volunteer on Tuesdays and he asks her where the cookies were.

"What? I thought you didn't need them until the 8th?"
"Yeah, well I think the meeting is tomorrow, so I needed them tonight."
"Oh... I'll get back to you."

So she gets home and tells me the problem... "Eh, who needs sleep? I'll get them done tonight." This was at about 9:00pm and I still had another batch of cookies that needed to be baked for an order that has to go out on Saturday. So my dear husband rolled up his sleeves and helped me out with the baking and left me to the decorating. I had no clue what I was going to do going into this. I had a logo, a color, and that they liked scallops and details... that's it. Considering they were done very last minute, I thought they were a very good balance of simple and earthy. I think the 2 tone vine cookie was my favorite :)

More pics here.

Wedding favor ideas for a fall wedding

I've been working on my photo taking, what do you think? So my sister-in-law has a friend that is getting married in November. Her save the date cards were of the couple sitting in a movie theater watching a movie with the caption, "the best show is yet to come." Although she asked for fall leaves because of the season of the wedding, we thought we'd give them an alternate option that reflected their fun personalities and relate to their early announcements. So the above is option #1 for them to consider. The image below is closer to what they asked for, something clean and slightly modern that represents fall. I posted pictures of the fall leaves that I did for the Austin Bakes for Bastrop sale... this is why those were included for the bake sale. I really wanted to do a sample of these to send and to try out the new recipe for Brown Sugar Spice with Maple icing. The feedback from the sale was great so I feel like this could be an awesome addition to my fall line-up of flavors. This is also a preview of my new labels :)

Austin Bakes for Bastrop... the final tallys

I was absolutely humbled today by the amount of love that was baked into sugary treats this weekend to help the victims of the Bastrop wildfires. The event had set a goal of $10,000... that's a lot of money for bake sale but we were determined to reach it. At last count we were at $12,561.79!! Wow is all I can say. I started looking around at the fellow bakers from my sale and then going online to see what everyone else brought to the party. All I can say is it's a good thing we spread out or I would of bought one of everything I saw :) My final tally at the end of 4 very long days were: 18 Texas Flags, 12 Double layer Sunflowers, approximately 36 fall leaves, 6 pumpkins, 6 acorns, 18 red, white, & blue star "bites," and 36 texas "bites" with hearts. I am trying not to fall asleep as I type this because I really wanted to get a post in today. So much work but soooo worth every minute. I met a lot of very nice people today and got to try a new recipe, Brown Sugar Spice with Maple frosting, and they were delicious!

(Sorry about the pictures, it was really early in the morning so I had zero light to work with other than my flash and an incandescent overhead light)

Bake sale preview... round 1

Last night I finished 18 Texas flags, 12 stacked sunflowers, and about 4 dozen Texas cookie "bites." Tonight is going to be fall leaves, something new :) I'm getting excited about dropping these off on Saturday, I hope it turns out to be a great sale. If you're interested in attending the sale, check out http://austinbakes.wordpress.com/ or their twitter page @austinbakes.

I'm baking for Bastrop :)

Austin Bakes for Bastrop is a group that is organizing a SEVEN location bake sale this Saturday all around Austin. Everything is donated and all proceeds to go benefit the victims of the recent wildfires here in Bastrop. I was very excited to get an email from Kathryn this evening inviting me to participate with bunch of very talented bakers that are all doing something to try and help. If you are out and about this Saturday please check out the website and find a sale near you. I will be updating with pics, so far I plan to make a dozen and a half Texas flags, some fall leaves in a new brown sugar spice flavor cookie I just found, some two flavor sunflowers and a bunch of texas theme "bites." Wish me luck, should be fun :)

I want a purple hedgehog...

Whew! It's been a very busy week and these were so much fun to make, and so girly too. Happy Birthday to Ms. Finn, who turned one on Tuesday and is having a petting zoo themed party this weekend. Her mom's favorite color is purple so since Finley can't talk yet, purple it is. I can't express how happy I am in the way these came out. I just bought a few new fancy icing tips and I can really tell a difference. I can't wait to see how the kids like them... maybe we'll give the hedgehogs one to share ;)

You can see a few more pics here.

UnderToe is under way...

I have a friend of a friend that is starting a business down in Mexico called UnderToe (UnderToeInMexico.com). She is going to be selling toe rings and renting Stand Up Paddle Boards along with floats for cruise ship tourists that visit the small town where she's setting up shop. I helped her create her logo which lead to business cards, post cards, beach flags, banners, koozies, temporary tattoos... you name it, there's a flamingo on it. Carolyn, my friend, wanted hot pink on everything, it was fun project. So when I came across a flamingo cookie cutter in the store the other day, I knew I had to make a handful for my hot pink loving friend. I forgot to take pictures before I gave them away so I was lucky she didn't eat them all in the car on the way home :) These were a blast to do as a just for fun cookie.

Anna and Drew are turning 4!

I got an email from my cousin asking if I could do some semi last minute cookies for her twin's 4th birthday party this week. I my first question was, "what are the kids into right now?" I wasn't quite prepared for the answer... Buzz Lightyear and Princesses... how was I supposed to combine those two things into one cookie? After many, many sketches... I gave up and decided each would get their own cookie instead. So Anna (who's favorite colors are pink and red), got an "A" with a sparkly red crown, Drew (who's favorite color is blue), got a sparkly "D" with Buzz Lightyear wings coming off of it. Then each bag got a big gift cookie as well because it was a birthday party after all and gifts are just part of the fun. This was my first time trying to play with edible glitters... I learned a lot and made a big mess in the process. These are in transit right now, I cannot wait to see how the family likes them :)

Update: Jenny (the mom) totally made my night with a comment on my facebook page when they got their box yesterday..."We just received the cookies and they are amazing!!! Anna and Drew are so excited! Thank you for making their birthday so special!! Everything right down to the packaging is just perfect!! I can't believe you got three in each bag!!!!"

Happy Birthday Wizard 101... 3 years and growing!

We have a small company out here called KingsIsle Entertainment that puts out an amazing game called Wizard 101. It's a massive multiplayer online game for kids (and adults) of all ages, kinda like World of Warcraft meets Harry Potter. If you aren't already one of 20+ million players then you should check it out (Wizard101.com), you can play for free but it's only available on the PC :(.  Okay, enough sales pitch for one day, back to the story. So the game is 3 years old today which is awesome and I'm very proud of my Austin guys for coming up with something special that everyone seems to love so much. I wanted to do something extra special so I decided to make a large arrangement of cookies with all new flavors that would correspond to their 7 schools of magic (Life, Death, Fire, Ice, Myth, Storm, and Balance). I've never done this many cookies at once and I can say it was way more work than I was expecting but so worth it in the end. They ate it up, literally, and loved the new flavors.

On a side note, Texas passed a law that became effective yesterday which legalized home based baking businesses... so I'm now official and legal :) Look for way more news and changes to come, I can't wait to start seeing where this all takes me.

This is what 181 cookies look like, and this was only half!

Garnet and Gold all the way...

So my sister-in-law has passed around pics of her "surprise" cookies to all her fellow alumni friends. I received an email from a friend of a friend that wanted some cookies to send her daughter that was starting FSU with 2 friends. Since not everyone is into football I wanted to expand the sports theme and asked what other sports they enjoyed. We decided on a football helmet, softball, and soccer ball. I tried a lot of new techniques on these and I am soooo happy with the way they came out, just look at that soccer ball, not an outline in the whole thing. They went in the mail today so hopefully all the girls enjoy their FSU gift box.

More pics here.

I'm ready for fall

The weather here has been a tad on the warm side lately and it makes me long for fall. I wanted to add something personal to the FSU cookies I was sending my sister-in-law and one of her favorite things are sunflowers. These started as simple flowers and as I was using a small chocolate cookies as a guide for my center circle, I decided to just drop it down and see what happend. These ended up being double layered using chocolate royal icing as glue and just a few little dots to set off the center. I could see making a whole tray of these in a few months... I may even try doing this in the cookie dough stage by cutting a hole in the bottom cookie and putting the chocolate cookie dough in the hole before it bakes so they are flush. In my head it sounds cool, we'll see what happens :)

Here you can see both cookies stacked using the icing as glue. I had to stack them first and then decorate so I didn't ice over my flower petals.