Playing catch up..............again. :)

 So apparently I'm not so good at this whole blog thing...I am awful about keeping it up to date! So here I am playing catch up again. Since my last post the cookies I've made are all very different! I made butterflies for Sydney's 2nd birthday party, some fireman cookies for a friend's boyfriend, and some rockin' purple guitars and stars for Yasmin's birthday. I have been having a blast coming up with all sorts of new designs and am really starting to figure out the best way to accomplish some of the more difficult techniques.

Here are some pictures of my latest creations...

 Sydney's 2nd Birthday Butterflies

Fireman Cookies

Rockin' Cookies for Yasmin's Birthday

My "A-HA!" Moment....

So I was looking through some of my favorite blogs today and came across a posting that Gail made over at One Tough Cookie. She is absolutely hilarious and SO brilliant with her cookie designs. So take a look and find out what my "a-ha" moment was (and yes the name of the post sounds provocative, but it's really about cookies! Promise!)...

One Tough Cookie - Between the Sheets

Who knew, right?? This is definitely how I'll be handling all of my dough from now on!

Happy Baking!

Caillou Cookies

I had never heard of Caillou before, so when my friend from work asked me to make her son some cookies for her son's 2nd birthday featuring Caillou and his cat Gilbert I was super nervous! I think they turned out pretty great! I freehanded Gilbert from a picture Jen had given me and I think he's my favorite! I used a Gingerbread Boy cookie cutter for Caillou so it gave me a form to work from. The balloons needed a little "pizzaz" so I covered them in sanding sugar to give them a little sparkle.

 

 

 

Packaged and ready to go!

 

3 dozen goodies wrapped and ready to be devoured! :) Although it is a little sad thinking about those cute little faces getting all chomped up...

I had a great time making these and loved taking on a challenge! Next week, apples and beer! Happy baking everyone!

Playing Catch-Up!

WOW! I've been awful about keeping up with this blog lately - so I am going to do a catching-up post. I've had a few orders since the last post and I'm still having a blast! Things have really taken off which is great!

Dora Cookies
These cookies were so fun to make. They were for the granddaughter of a lady I work with, it was her 2nd birthday! I was pretty pleased with how these turned out, though I didn't realize what a challenge Dora was going to be! For the "sparkly" palm trees and stars I used meringue powder mixed with water as the glue and sprinkled sanding sugar around the edges. I thought it gave them a very fun effect!

Bridal Shower Cookies
A friend of mine had a coworker that was getting married and they were having a little office party for her and she asked if I would make some cute Bridal Shower cookies for this special event! She just wanted simplicity, so what's more simple than pretty white wedding dresses? I think they turned out beautiful!

Cookies for Mom
I had extra dough after making the wedding dresses and decided to make some special cookies for my Mom. She's a super special lady and only deserves super special cookies! These just might be some of my favorite cookies I've done so far, the different colors and patterns were so pretty together and the simplicity of the square kept them looking uniform. I will definitely make these again sometime!

Okay, so that's the little update for now. This week I'm working on some cookies for a 2 year old birthday - Caillou and Gilbert cookies! Can't wait to see what they turn out like! Stay tuned...

2 Glam 4 School Event

Thanks to some kind words & a referral from a friend of mine at work, I had the opportunity to be part of a super-fun day for little girls this past weekend. It was an event called "2 Glam 4 School" and it was a day for girls to come get their toenails painted with pretty flowers, their hair braided, pictures taken and to enjoy some yummy treats! Luckily some of those yummy treats were my princess cookies! I wanted to be sure to showcase both of my popular sugar cookie flavors - lemon and regular. I also wanted to make the cookies super cute and girly so all of the little girls would be excited when they saw them.

The pink icing turned out super cute, I loved how bright it was! Since I was having to make so many I tried to keep the design of both the ring and crown pretty simple. Curious what the favorite was? The Pink Crowns :) ... they went fast!

The entire room was full of pink, black, feathers and sparkles...including my table. Don't you just love it? I had the 2 wine bottles with feathers & silver spray decorations leftover from our New Years bash last year. They worked perfectly!

My other favorite part in the room was the Candy Bar...

I had an absolute blast getting to spend some time with the sweetest little girls while showing off my newborn business venture. I was lucky enough to have some of the Mom's take my card and insist that they would be calling me ASAP to get something set up! Woohoo!

Although I was super happy with how my crowns and rings turned out, I was THRILLED with the cupcake cookies I made for my friend Jen (it was her birthday the day before)...

I will definitely be making a bunch of these very soon! I can't wait to use all kinds of fun colors & make all sorts of different cupcakes!

Well that's all for now...Dora Cookies up this week - pictures to come!

Happy baking everyone!

New Logo...

Since I have started getting more and more orders for my sugar cookies (SO exciting!!), I decided that I should probably create some sort of a brand name and logo. I like to consider myself a decently creative person - I mean I'm a dancer, I decorate cookies & love taking photographs (maybe another blog idea??...hmm...) - so why did I have such a hard time thinking of a fun and catchy name for my cookie business? Let me know when you think of an answer....because I don't have one.

Anyways, after trial and error with name after name I decided to use a portion of my blog name. My thought was that it would be more recognizable and easy to remember. Funny enough it also brings back a little 90's nostalgia by using a popular phrase of approval...I landed on "Sweet! Cookie Creations by Kelsey". You like? If not, too bad - it took way too long to think of! Here's a picture of the logo...

Black and white with dots...could it be more Kelsey? I'll get my first chance to try it out this weekend when I sell some of my cookies at the "2 Glam 4 School" event at the Shawnee Civic Center. I get to make girlie princess cookies! I'll post pictures, don't worry! Until then....

Happy Baking!

Weekend of Cookies!

This past weekend was filled with birthdays and cookies. Nathan's cousin was turning 2 and deserved some very cute cookies. My brother & Mom's birthday celebration was also on Saturday so of course they deserve some special cookies! I don't have much to say for these cookies, so I will just let them speak for themselves!....

These cookies were delicious and quite the hit at both birthday parties! I was very proud to show them off!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame...

Last weekend we were going to a Royal's game and tailgating beforehand, so what better to have around than some baseball-themed cookies? I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe, German Cut-Out Cookies, for the dough and my royal icing for the decorations. I am slowly but surely figuring out this whole royal icing thing. Every time I do cookies I get better and better at it!

First I started by icing the first layer on each cookie - white circles for the baseballs and green squares for the baseball diamond. I was sure to leave a hole in the center of the green icing for a "pitcher's mound".

Once that icing dried I put the details on...red stitches on the baseballs and bases on the diamond. Voila!

When I initially decided I wanted to do baseball cookies for the game, I didn't have much faith in myself that I could do a Royal's logo. I was just going to do a plain blue cookie with a white KC in the middle. Then I thought, "Why not just go for it? What's the worst that could happen?" So I did! Apart from a few crooked ones and some color bleeding on the KC's, I have to say I was pretty happy with the turnout.

 

The best part of all was seeing everyone's faces when I took the lid off of the container at the tailgate. Everyone loved them! They were soft, delicious and if I do say so myself...pretty darn cute :)

Happy Baking!

It's a Jungle Out There...

I was so excited when a friend from work asked if I would make cookies for her daughter's baby shower. Her theme was going to be jungle animals, so of course I had to go out and buy a TON of animal cookie cutters. (The Wilton 50+ Animals package in fact...I know, I go a little overboard sometimes!)

This will be her first grandchild so I was honored to be given this opportunity, and also VERY nervous! It was my first official sugar cookie order! I jumped right in with the ideas and researched online. I decided I wanted to do elephants, alligators, giraffes, and lions. I also wanted to do something that had her grandsons name on it. Here is what they ended up looking like!

I was so proud of how they turned out and I think Robbin was too! To achieve the texture on the alligator and elephant I made sure the first layer of royal icing was completely dry before piping out the details. I think the alligator is my favorite! Although the elephant is pretty cute too....but then look at that nose on the lion....and those spots on the giraffe! Okay, so I can't choose. :)

Oh, and in case you're wondering...I used my beloved squeeze bottles for all of the decorating except for the details on the alligator and elephant. For their textures I used a piping bag and a #1 tip. OH! By the way, I found the BEST website online called Karen's Cookies. She sells a bazillion cookie cutters and....wait for it....SQUEEZE BOTTLES! These are not your ordinary squeeze bottles either, these babies come with couplers and allow you to switch out the tip so you can use all of your favorites! I am SO getting one.

Okay, that's enough of my babbling for now...happy baking everyone!

4th of July Cookies

Okay, so I'm a little behind. I haven't posted anything in awhile, so it's time to post 2 of my latest projects! I made these 4th of July cookies for a party we were going to with some friends. This was my first time using squeeze bottles to flood the cookies and I was very happy with how they turned out. I'm fairly certain I'm a little obsessed with the squeeze bottles now! They make clean-up SO easy and the tip on them is about the same size as a #3 decorating tip. In case you're wondering where you find such squeeze bottles, just go to your local craft store! I got mine at Michaels :).

Anyways, I used my traditional sugar cookie recipe (it uses lemon extract) for these cookies and made sure to roll them out a little thicker than usual. This helps them stay soft! My only disappointment with these was the color of "red" I was able to achieve. I desperately need to get some new food coloring paste - preferably the Americolor brand. The Wilton brand just can't quite ever get the right shade of red or black. Luckily with the group I was taking these cookies to that didn't matter! They just needed to taste delicious, and they did!

Happy Flower Cookies for a Rainy Day!

Since it was raining all weekend last week I decided to make some yummy sugar cookies to brighten our day! Plus, I wanted to try out a royal icing technique I had found online. The cookies were DELICIOUS! I usually roll them out to about 1/8 inch. However I tried making them a little thicker this time and rolled them to about 1/4 inch. They were so moist they almost fell apart and the flavor was just sweet enough! I used almond extract for the flavoring and it was perfect. Here they are just out of the oven:

 After they had cooled I started outlining the cookies with royal icing. This is the technique I had read online. When you outline the cookies and allow the outline to dry before flooding the cookie, it will give a more crisp appearance to the decoration.

I noticed as I was outlining the cookies that the icing was a much different consistency than I expected. It wasn't shiny at all and was actually pretty thick. I had a difficult time squeezing it out of the icing tip (I used a #2 Wilton tip).You can probably tell by my not-so-pretty outlines! :)

After the outlines were completed and dried, it was time to flood the icing and fill in the cookies! The only problem was I had all of the icing for both colors in the bags. Since I didn't want to go through the mess of scooping it out of the bags, mixing some water in and putting it back into the bags, I decided I'd just use this as an opportunity to try out some of my icing tips! I used a small star tip to make the centers of the flowers a little more textured and used a #3 tip to swirl and fill in the petals.

With Royal Icing you have to give it plenty of time to dry before trying to stack the cookies or wrap them. I allowed them to stay out all night and dry. By the morning they were ready to be packed up! I was pretty happy with the end result as far as flavor and consistency were concerned. However, I will try to be sure to not put all of the frosting in the icing bags next time so I can actually use the flooding technique and end up with a much more uniform batch of cookies!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Creamy Chocolate Frosting

These cupcakes are just plain and simple, chocolatey goodness! I used my own version of Devil's Food mix (with a little vanilla pudding mix) and made creamy chocolate frosting using evaporated milk, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, butter and vanilla. I was super excited with the consistency and color, it was perfect for decorative frosting! The flavor was a bit of a disappointment though. I prefer a rich chocolate frosting and it had a little bit of a "fake" sweet taste to me. Next time I think I'll use my other recipe for rich chocolate frosting! 

Rich Chocolate Frosting

2 C. butter (softened)
9 C. confectioner's sugar
2 1/2 C. cocoa powder
1 t. vanilla extract
1 C. milk


In a large bowl, cream butter. Gradually beat in confectioner's sugar, cocoa, and vanilla. Slowly add milk until it reaches your preferred consistency.

I was also super excited about the new icing tip I purchased in order to make the cupcakes pretty. I felt like one of the only bakers out there who didn't own one yet, so I had to get it! I highly recommend it if you don't already own the 1M Wilton Icing tip. Your cupcakes will look much more professional! 

Overall, I was pretty happy with these cupcakes. They were a big hit at my Scentsy Party and everyone ate them up! So I guess I'll take that as a compliment... :)