Couture Cookie Collection for Glam Gals

Earlier this Spring, I was challenged by a cookie customer to bake some "Couture Cookies" for her high-fashion friends as party favors for a shopping/beach trip.

As my normal uniform is a pair of jeans and an old sorority t-shirt, this was a both a cultural and cookie stretch for me! ;^)

Thanks to my good friend Google and some AMAZING cookie artists out there, this is what I came up with for her!

All packed up and ready to go to the beach!

The full extent of my "Couture" knowledge was summed up in this Christian Louboutin shoe cookie. Way back in my brain, I had stored an article from the Wall Street Journal about trademarking the color red.   

I also have a relative, my husband's father's cousin's daughter, Whitney, who lives in California, who had these fancy shoes for her AMAZING wedding... that you can read all about on this Every Last Detail post.  (She probably knows someone famous, since she and I are only four degrees of separation apart!)  

But they were to beautiful to try to cookie, so enough about shoes, and more about cookies...

These Chanel logo cookies were copied from Oh, Sugar!  Her amazing Chanel party should not be missed!  She was also smart enough to use royal icing transfers, but I kept breaking mine and just ended up using push pins to mark the ends and the joints of each C and then drawing each one.  (This trick would also work for your Olympic Rings!)  You do have to get it right the first time though, because you CANNOT scrape the black off the white quilting.

I also learned the quilting from two very helpful tutorials:

• Quilted Cookie Tutorial  from Haniela's
• Quilted Cookie Tutorial  from Amber at Sweet Ambs as a guest post on celebrations.com

Since I was covering with white, I didn't draw lines on my cookies.  Instead, I traced the circle on a piece of cardstock and marked my lines with a ruler that extended past the edge of the cookie.  That way, when I was icing, I could visually line up the diagonals to keep my lines straight.

The Louis Vuitton cookies were inspired by this amazing cookie artist: Kava Dolce, which I found on the Art of Cookie website.  (Her bags are AMAZING!  I have no idea how she does those, but with some help from this Luster Dust Tutorial by Hani at Haniela's I pulled these off.  I used a pearl luster dust on the base and a gold on the logo and the  accents.

My customer wanted "Little Black Dress" cookies.  I tried to warn her against the taste of black icing... but she definitely wanted the dresses, so I ventured into more unknown territory and tried my hand at glaze.  So I borrowed a tried and true glaze recipe from my dear friend Shari, and thanks to some encouragement from Cristin at Cristin's Cookies and this WONDERFUL tutorial on glaze with Cristin and Arty MaGoo, I gave it a whirl!






I ended up deciding that I preferred to let the glaze run off the sides and the bottom edge of the cookies so that it would wrap around and look more like a dress.  The best news... glaze only takes a tiny bit of food coloring to get dark black, so they tasted great!

I also gussied them up a bit by adding a tiny ribbon around the waist! ;^)  (That is Kansasan for "making them fancy.")






However, when it comes to beach wear, the big floppy hat and shades are more my style.  I created these as "special extra" cookies for my customer!

While I was at it, I made some flip flops too!  They were a perfect touch for two other projects: one for Teacher Appreciation Week, which I will blog about next time...

... and the other for these adorable "Mother-Daughter Flip Flops" for my flip-flop-loving, glaze-recipe provider, dear friend Shari, who had just finalized the adoption of her foster-daughter Willow!   They are based on my favorite flip flops of the summer from Charming Charlies!

(The big ones were a flip-flop cutter, but I made the little ones out of a jellybean cutter!) ;^)

Have a great day!
Cheers~
Sarah

A Spot of Tea and a Cookie...

I think that I have always been an Anglophile.  I love almost anything British.  I do not care for Mar-mite, "football," or stewed tomatoes with my breakfast, however, studying in Oxford, England as a college student, I developed a love for afternoon tea and biscuits. (Hobnobs are my favorite!)  I have long collected tea related paraphernalia...  I have teapots, tea cups, tea kettles, tea towels, tea strainers, etc. and I also have "several" teapot cookie cutters, SURPRISE!

In fact, I decided recently, if I were a tea pot or a cookie,
I would probably look like this... 

This one is my favorite cookie cutters because it makes dainty little cookies which are perfect when you are having a formal tea party with several types of treats!  I made these tea pots for the "Titus 2 Tea & Testimony" lunch at my church a couple of weeks ago.  

We had quiet a spread of scrumptious treats! 

It was a wonderful time of food, fellowship, and sharing God's work in our lives, especially encouraging one another to be godly wives, mothers, workers at home, and sisters-in-Christ.   

These are some "Delft" teapots I made a while back.  I decided to go with the more simple look for this tea party.   Primarily, because I had been up all night the previous night making Jayhawks and Easter cookies for my daughter's school auction. ;^)

This is my favorite teacup.  Actually, I am drinking out of it now...
I brought it (and 11 of it's sisters and brothers) from England in my backpack.
(Thanks Sister Shari for the photo of the tea cup and the spread!)

As a side note, now that I am a grown-up, I primarily drink coffee as my caffeine of choice (because chocolate for breakfast is less socially acceptable).  I started drinking coffee the summer I worked in New York City.  I lived on Staten Island with a cousin, and commuted, by train, ferry, subway and foot, 90 minutes, each way, every day.  (I know it sounds like a "walked both ways, uphill" story, but it is true.)  As a part of my daily commute, I almost always walked through the Duncan Donuts at the ferry terminal and picked up two donuts and a cup of coffee to enjoy during the ferry ride past Lady Liberty.

I do, however, still enjoy a nice spot of tea from time to time.

Cheers!
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