Cookie Round-Up

July 19, 2012

I’ve got a really fun post waiting in the wings but first I wanted to catch up my non-flickrers and anti-facebookians up on what’s been coming out of the Sweet Hope Cookie oven. And what’s been coming out hasn’t been much in the way of orders because I’ve been doing a LOT of cookie play. But more on that later. Here are my four most recent cookie sets.

Cookies Under the Influence

A few weeks ago I made an assortment of cookies for a garden-themed birthday party hosted by my next door neighbor, Elaine. There was platter of mini cookies for dessert arranged on a flower pot base that was covered in ground chocolate cookie dirt and gummy worms. According to my world view gummy worms are a food staple. For the guest of honor I put together a bouquet of flower cookie pops and for each guest there was a standing three-dimensional cookie flower pot (each was personalized with their name in the style shown on the bouquet.)

And so why, you ask in stunned horror, is there a photo of me in a hospital gown laying in a hospital bed among the cookie photos? Funny story.  I had surgery scheduled a few weeks prior to this order and the plan was that I would go to the hospital in the morning and be home in time for dinner. I’d recover in record speed and be back in the kitchen to make Elaine’s cookies with time to spare. Great plan. All systems good to go.

What I hadn’t factored into my plan was that annoying little caveat that sometimes our plans and reality don’t join hands and happily skip down the path of life together. My surgery went smoothly enough but an unexpected complication required that I spend two  additional days in the hospital which delayed my recovery time and wrecked general havoc with my game plan and so on the day I had to return to the kitchen to begin Elaine’s cookies I was still on some fairly potent techni-color, we all live in a yellow submarine, rainbows shooting out of your finger tips medication.

Now let’s stop in our story and look back up at the photos of the cookies. Party favors. Dessert plate. Flower bouquet. See them? So do I. Only here’s the thing. I haven’t even the vaguest memory of actually making them. I kid you not. That I baked, outlined, flooded, detailed, and airbrushed those cookies is a total blank to me, lost forever in the whirl of purple haze from some wicked pain medication.

So the lesson we can take from this story is that while you should never drive or operate heavy machinery while taking certain medications, apparently making cookies is no problem, but then I suppose if it was, it would say so on the prescription bottle.

Flying High
.

I love making cookies, especially when I can actually remember making them (refer to story above), and making these hot air balloons have been among my favorites. A woman in my local area (no shipping again!) ordered them for her 80th birthday celebration. She was taking her entire family on a hot air balloon ride in Napa Valley for her big day and she wanted cookies for the occasion. And really, what goes together more perfectly with dangling 3,000 feet over solid ground than a cookie? For me, I prefer enjoying a cookie with my feet firmly planted on terra firma but different strokes…

Most hot air balloons cookies I looked out before making my own, used the same balloon cutter only drawing in the basket at the bottom of the balloon shape. I wanted to do something more because, after all, it was a special occasion and given the nature of the event it could have been everyone’s last cookie so I wanted it to be amazing. Ignore my lack of enthusiasm over hot air ballooning. I tend to be a little anxious of heights. Foot stool, good. Eight foot ladder, bad.

Anyway, to make the ropes attaching the balloon and the basket, I took the red striped drinking straws and cut them into small sections that I then slid onto regular white cardboard cookie pop sticks. I then pushed one end of each stick into the unbaked balloon cookie and the other into the unbaked basket cookie. I did all the assembly directly on the cookie sheet to avoid moving the cookie prior to baking.

I was a little concerned that the cookie was going to end up being fragile but it turned out to be incredibly stable without so much as one cookie breaking or cracking in the process.

While the design is simple, they took several days to decorate due to the slow drying time of the glaze but taking my time paid off because there was only minimal color bleeding at the top of some of the white areas and those I was easily able to mask with the black edible marker outline. And have I mentioned how much I love using my new airbrush to add a little shine of pearl mist. At least I love it as much as anyone can love a machine, but then in the world of cookie decorating that’s not such an odd thing….kopykake projector, heat gun, food dehydrator, convection oven, large capacity standing mixer, airbrush machine….that’s a whole lot of love.

Thank You Doctor
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These cookies were ordered as a thank you gift for someone’s plastic surgeon. The cookies on either end are the symbols for the two medical associations he belongs to as a surgeon. I also did a number of thank you plaques, some in English and some in Hebrew which I loved being able to do given that I know just enough Hebrew to ask where the stop is for the number four bus and to tell my mom I’ll get the doorbell. Both vital questions to be able to ask according to Learning Hebrew 101.

GO San Francisco Giants
.

Everything I know about sports I know through cookies, and what I most recently learned is the the SF Giants play baseball and not football. Who knew? Not me, that’s for sure.
Well, I might not love sports but I love Braxton and Braxton LOVES the Giants, hence I loved making these cookies to celebrate his massively big and important 6 year old birthday.

Of course, I also loved making these cookies because what’s not to love about a cookie order that requires no more than four colors! Just four. :::Insert happy and ever-so lazy sigh here:::

Braxton, formerly known as Braxy when he was a mere 5 years old, is the grandson of Randy’s wife DeeAnn. Now in some other parallel universe that would have made Randy Braxy’s grandpa, but Randy and Braxy put their heads together and decided that Randy would be known as Bopa and so Bopa it was and shall remain.

Randy was an awesome Bopa.

But you could have guessed that.

Posted in Cookie Creations, Cookie Stories, Randy