Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my mom's birthday. Even though she lives far away (all the way in California!) I made her birthday cookies. When I think of my mom I think of flowers, so I made pink and purple flowers. I don't have very many flower shaped cutters, so I made butterflies to match.

Since I'd just sent vanilla-almond cookies for my brother's birthday I decided to change things up and send lemon-poppyseed sugar cookies with lemon flavored icing for Mom. The cookies have lemon oil, lemon zest, and poppy seeds in the dough. I added strained lemon juice and extract to the icing.

Dear Mother, all flowers remind me of you

The cookies bake up just as sturdy, soft, and delicious as the vanilla-almond cookies. I'm excited to try different flavor combinations for different occasions!

Ombre Popsicles!

Summer is here! It has been for weeks, but we've settled into 90-95 highs (it's not that hot in my house anymore. YAY! for the new window AC unit!!) What I'm saying is that it's totally popsicle weather. I went to a church pool party tonight and decided to bring cookies! (cookies are appropriate for any occasion, right?) I was inspired by these towels from Crate & Barrel  (I got them last year, before everything I saw was mentally cookie-fied)

Cookie inspiration can come from anywhere!

Since 4th of July was more than a week ago I decided to go with bright tropical colors, but kept the ombre from the tea towel. I've recently been working on a quilt with shades of these colors (including the aqua dot in the background, so cute!)

The twin pop idea came from Sweet Sugar Belle, and was cut from a cowboy hat cutter. The single pop was a fire hydrant and the tri-color pops were cut with a mega-phone cutter. I bought mini popsicle sticks to put in them at the craft store. Next time I'll soak the sticks so they burn less (oops!)

They're not perfect, but I'm still learning (a lot!) as I go. I'm also building back the strength in my right hand, which was severely injured a few years ago. I still have problems with my handwriting if I pipe for too long, but it's getting better.

I've been loving pink and coral lipsticks this summer, and these look like great colors for makeup

These aren't my favorite colors, but they're sure fun for a summer platter

This is what happens when your piping tip isn't completely dry.
Learn something new every day!

I Mustache You a Question.... Do You Want a Cookie?

For a treat at a family reunion I made mustache cookies on a stick. I thought they would be fun for kids and adults, and they were! I iced the base with 15 second icing and used slightly thicker icing to add the texture on top in layers.  I don't own any mustache cutters so I had to get creative. Do you recognize any of the shapes?

They are, clockwise from the top right: butterfly, letter Y, a hand cut mustache (too much work, so I only did one!) a small scallop shell, Tinkerbell wings, and a trimmed moon

These are some of the cutters I used for mustaches. You don't need a specific cutter
for everything, make your cutters do double (or triple!) duty

The cookies were a hit, and I would definitely do them again!

Lawnmower Cookies

Those aren't words that are seen together often. In fact, when I was looking online for ideas I found exactly TWO pictures of lawnmower cookies, and neither was really what I was looking for. So I went looking for coloring pages. Yep. If you ever need a line drawing of anything, search for coloring pages.  
These cookies were done with 15 second icing (for an explanation, look here) apart from the black. After finishing the base of the cookie, I wish I would have done a pipe and flood with wet-on-wet grass for a smoother look, but these were better that I was expecting. 

Beepoo Cookies

I've started a tradition of making cookies for my niece's birthday. Last year she wasn't old enough to have real specific interests, so she got generic tropical cookies for her first birthday in Hawaii. Since then, she has become very attached to her penguin, Beepoo. Beepoo is a fuzzy chinstrap penguin toy that looks kind of like this:

Turns out it was easier to do the eyes first, opposite of what I expected.

Not all of the cookies got sprinkles. The first cookie of any design (much like the first pancake) is often an experiment, or a test of icing consistency and the design, which doesn't always look like I planned. Beepoo looked cute, so I added sprinkles to the others once I was sure I had the design down.

He was surprisingly easy to make in cookie form. I thought he looked especially cute with his crystal sugar "fur"! The cutter for the penguin cookie was a beehive, which I have never used as intended, but is great for other cookies! To go with I made a few jungle animal cookies because she seems to really like animals, from the chickens outside to chatting with Grandma's "doggy" on skype. 

Since her new brother was due just after her birthday I included some baby cookies for Mom and Dad.

The onesie cutter I have is HUGE, so I used a tombstone cutter and trimmed to make a reasonably sized onesie. 

Next year I'll have TWO sets of birthday cookies to send!