Cookies for a Cause - Mitochondrial Disease

Every 30 minutes, a child will be born who will develop mitochondrial disease by the age of 10. 

Mitochondrial disease occurs when there is a defect in the body’s ‘powerhouses’. The mitochondria fail to produce enough energy. That results in organ systems failing. Imagine a major city with half of its power plants shut down. The same thing happens in the affected person’s body. The brain may be impaired.  They may lose vision or hearing. The heart may be weakened, and they may have eating and digestive issues. The symptoms range from mild to severe for each affected person. (UMDF.org)

Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week is September 16-23.  Between now and then I will be sharing information about Mitochondrial Disease.  Please take a few minutes to read it... 

So far, my cookies have raised more than $100 for the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation! Thank you!

This past week, I baked cookies to raise money support the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, but I really baked cookies to show my love for an amazing young lady, named Tricia, and her mother, Wendy.

Over the next few posts, I will be sharing her story, telling you about Mitochondrial Disease, giving you an opportunity to help, and maybe even sneaking in a give-away! ;^) Oh yeah, and talking about cookies too!

I will be featuring each of these cookies and a few fun extras over the next few weeks on my blog.

Tricia and her younger brother Andrew
 with my oldest two, Reader R and Curious K,
after a performance of the Wizard of OZ.

My friend Tricia is a freshman in high school, and she has Mitochondrial Disease.  If you don't read any of my other posts, please take a few minutes to watch this video that she made about her journey.

Tricia looks like a happy, healthy teenager.  Yet, she suffers from autonomic neuropathy, chronic nerve pain, chronic fatigue, breathing difficulties, delayed gastric emptying, GI motility issues, acid reflux, hypercalciuria, visual impairments, and kidney stones, and oh yeah, and she hasn't eaten by mouth in  years.

Please consider helping to support the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation by sponsoring me for the upcoming "Energy for Life" Walk-a-thon.  Every gift helps.

Thank you!
Sarah

www.umdf.org

Congratulations Graduates!

This spring, I had the privilege to bake cookies for a couple of different graduation celebrations...

The first was a gift basket for a young lady who is heading to K-State this fall.

The second were party cookies for a young lady who will be headed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel-Hill and will be playing for their tennis team!

Until recently, my graduation philosophy is simple - AVOID the BLACK mortarboard at all costs!  In fact, when I made these cookies for my best friend to celebrate her time in college, I told her to just toss the all black mortarboard because the food coloring needed to saturate the royal icing makes it taste so terrible and colors your mouth for hours.

HOWEVER, since I have discovered the beauty of glaze... I now know that there is a yummy alternative.  For some reason, it only takes a drop of food coloring to blacken glaze, and as a result, it doesn't have any impact on the flavor of the icing!  ;^) So, now, the mortarboard is back into the cookie rotation!  And it looks so rich and shinny too! 

Congratulations ladies!

Cheers and Best Wishes!

Sarah

Happy Easter!

Wishing you all an amazing Easter!

These are the Easter cookies that I made for my daughter's school auction last week!

Sweet little lambs - Thank you, to Marian from Sweetopia for the tutorial and Georgeane from LilaLoa for tutorial on the "dotty" ones!

Brush Embroidery Eggs - I love the look of these...  Although, I need to learn that "less is more" in the decoration department.

My curious K. loves butterflies... so I made these in honor of her. ;^)

"Rejoice"  "Hallelujah" "He is Risen"

Fun Easter basket filled with Eggs - Thanks for the tutorial Callye!

I love this cherry blossom cookie too!
Thanks for the tutorial from Montreal Confections!
I really wanted to try this technique on some tea pot cookies (that I will share next week), so this was my practice cookie.

This was my first attempt at a "lace work" cookie.  It is WAY hard.  I will have to practice this more...Recently, Callye at Sugarbelle's had a great tutorial on piping lace on cookies, so I thought I would give it a try.  It probably would have gone more smoothly if I had actually followed her wonderful instructions.  Oh well, the colors are pretty...

Some of my favorite creators of this kind of cookie are:

• Nadia at My Little Bakery
• Alison at Ali Bee's Bake Shop
• Hani at Haniela's 

I loved these crosses!   Thanks for the idea and tutorial, which I copied completely for these practice cookies, Melissa!

One of my favorite Easter decoration is the sugar egg that we bought my oldest daughter several years ago.  It was too pretty to eat, so we have saved it!  I remember having similar eggs as a child.  A great little candy shop in Kansas City sells them and will even personalize them for you.  I also saw some at the World Market this Easter season.  There's all had bunnies and chicks in them, which were super cute, but I LOVE the ones with a cross or an empty tomb in them.

I did make one effort at an empty tomb cookie with some leftover frosting... It didn't turn out the way it looked in my head.  This one goes back on the list to try again next year.  What I did like about the cookie was the fun technique of making the stone speckled by using colored sugar (I didn't have any black, so I made my own following this tutorial from Callye at Sugarbelle) and sprinkled it on like Georganne suggested for her "Easy Speckled Eggs."

This cookie had two lives.  It was a turquoise Easter Egg that got over flooded.  Then, I realized that I was out of egg cookies, so I scraped it "clean" and created this cookie.  I love how the flood left a "washed" look for the sky.  I might even try it on purpose next time.

At Easter time, we talk about how eggs symbolize "New Life" specifically, the new life that we have in Christ.  This year, we have a momma robin who has built her next on one of the support beams under our  deck.  She has three little eggs in her nest.  I love the nest symbolism of home, comfort, warmth, too, and have often thought of our home as a nest, especially after a wonderful discussion about it with to Mary Catherine Newman a few years ago! (Thanks, MC!) We can actually peep through the cracks in the floor boards and check on the eggs.  If you stop by my home and happen to see one or more of my girls laying face down on the deck, now you know why.  

Wishing you and your nest a Blessed Easter!

Sarah

St. Patrick's Day Musings...

A Trinity Cross

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

Actually, we don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day in a big way at our house.  We will wear green shirts.  We will eat green shamrock pancakes, because it is fun.  On a good year, we might even go to a parade, if it doesn't make mommy tired just thinking about it.  We won't really talk about Leprechauns (except to remind our girls that they are just fun imaginary characters) or chase after their pot of gold...  We don't believe in luck... so there isn't much to say about that.

Before I mixed up my green icing...
I just used white and covered it with green sprinkles.

One thing, that we will definitely do though, is talk about who the real St. Patrick was and why we celebrate his day.  He was a real person.  He did not believe in God.  He was captured by bandits and taken to Ireland.  He was a slave and a sheep herder.  He was alone and afraid, and he prayed to God to save him.  God did!  Then, Patrick studied the Bible and soon he wanted to go back to Ireland to tell the people there about Jesus.  He was the first missionary to Ireland.

We will talk about the symbol of the Trinity on the crosses (above) and how there is no beginning and no end to their design, just like God, who is infinite,  and has been from eternity past and will be for into eternity future.  (Thank you to Anne at the Flour Box Bakery for the inspiration for these crosses.  You really should go see it... Her cross is AMAZING!)

We will talk about the shamrock and how it is also a symbol of the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit).

We will talk about the daffodil and how flowers are a symbol of death (when you plant the dead looking old bulb in the Fall) and new life (when it blooms as a beautiful new creation in the Spring).




 We will talk about how we are all like sheep and are prone to go our own way, but Jesus, the Good Shepherd, watches over us and takes care of us.  (Thank you to Callye at Sugarbelle and Marian from Sweetopia for sharing the guest post on how to make these cuties!  I guess if I had actually read the whole post, I wouldn't have ended up with the great big pile of icing in the middle... oh well!  They still tasted good and looked cute.)  

We will talk about rainbows and the beautiful symbol of God's covenant love that they represent.

We will have lots of fun things to talk about...
We might even eat a cookie that looks like a funny green hat. ;^)


Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Cheers!
Sarah

Reader R's cookies - She is becoming quite the decorator!

P.S. - I did have fun decorating cookies with my oldest daughter,  Reader R.!  She says "I love FLOOD!"  Too cute!  Her cookies turned out great too!

Here are our pancakes too!  Reader R. and Lil' L. were so excited.  Curious K. was not too excited about the green breakfast that looked strangely like broccoli.

Painting the Daffs Yellow...

It is Spring Break at the Rose Residence... and with a toilet training toddler, we aren't going anywhere farther than the Chic-Fil-A, which means that we are indulging in quiet a few more movies than usual.

So, this week, my oldest daughter, Reader R, and I watched, "Alice in Wonderland", not the creepy recent one... but this one, that I still remember from when I was a little girl.  Ok, well, it does have some "scary" parts for a 1980's audience, but their "special effects" just made my first-grader laugh.  (It is a LOT more like watching a play than a 2010's movie...).  

So, one of my favorite parts of that movie is the scene where the cards at the Queen of Hearts' castle are painting the roses red, because the accidentally planted white ones.  (As a matter of the record, I totally intended to make, and even cut a White Rabbit cookie and make a Mad Hatter's hat, but being the "good" mommy that I am, I gave that up when Reader R. wanted to decorate with me and gave her my extra hat and ate the rabbit.  If you want to see what I was daydreaming about, but my cookies would never look like, check out these beautiful and inspiring cookies by Alison at Ali Bee's Bakeshop and Callye at the Adventures of Sweet Sugarbelle.)

Well, little did I know that this week I would have the opportunity to do something similar at my home...  You see, I meant to make daffodils for St. Patrick's Day... but when decorating with my daughter, I got struck by a fit of laziness and time constraints of a quickly-ending nap time, and decided to make a daisy instead.  Well.  It was a beautiful daisy.  But daisies don't work for St. Patrick's Day, and when it came time to lay out and take a photo of my cookie platter.  I had a hole, that could only be filled by a daffodil. Grr.  So, due to the inspiration of Arty McGoo and the encouragement of Alison at Ali Bee's, (and the fact that I practiced yesterday on a backpack, so now I think I can do anything... I decided to PAINT my daisy into a daffodil.  AND TADDA!  Here she is... 


(OK, I know she is not a work of art, and I will have to practice, practice, practice, before I could make them for anyone else, but for a former Daisy, I think that she turned out great!)

The Daffodil formerly known as Daisy.

So, you will have to wait, until my St. Patrick's Day post, to see her with her cookie friends...

Cheers!

Sarah

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice. Practice. Practice!

Today's cookie adventure was just that... practice.  For a couple of years now, I have been wanting to try a new icing recipe.  I had not tried it for a number of reasons... primarily because I am a firm believer in "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  I really love my standard cookie recipe, why would I want to try anything different.  Nevertheless, this cookie company adventure, along with the dreams of my imagination, and the encouragement of my friends, has compelled me to set aside my reservations and dive in. 

So, with the help of a tutorial from one of my cookie heroes, Sweet Sugarbelle, I tried my hand at Royal Icing.  (What's Royal Icing? It is a smooth icing that flows and then hardens.  As much as I love my fluffy frosting, it doesn't allow you do to as much detail as Royal Icing does... Also, there are a few things, that just look so much better smooth...)

Tada!

 

Candy Corns!

(Shiny, not fluffy...
just like candy corns should be.)

 And LEGO Mini-Figure Heads! Thank you again, Sweet Sugarbelle, for your inspiration and tutorial, and to Kristin Woolridge for encouraging me to try!  (Kristin is planning a Lego birthday party and had seen this idea online and asked if I could do it.  I said, I didn't know, but I would try...)

This LEGO head is made with Royal Icing.

This one is made with my Fluffy Frosting.

And my first Royal Icing Flower... I would call it "Candy Corn Hibiscus."  ;^)

So, honestly, I clearly need some more practice... I need to do some more research... I need a better recipe (because this icing was pretty, but, frankly, not so yummy), but I see so many possibilities with it.  I will still probably always prefer my fluffy frosting, but it is always fun to try something new. 

And so, the moral of the story is... If you have an idea, or you want me to copy something you already have, like an invitation or a napkin, don't hesitate to ask.  I will tell you "Yes," if I know I can do it.  I will tell you "I'll try," if I am not sure, and then we can decide if we can create your cookie or if we need to develop something else wonderful.

Sweet cookie dreams!
Sarah