Valentine's Day Penguins & More

Today I'm sharing more Valentine's Day designs with you. Next up is a cute penguin couple. You might be thinking that Valentine's penguins are not typical but the weather is still cold out so why not penguins? I had the idea to do this design ever since I saw this post by a new blogger The Bearfoot Baker. I was able to find the cutter she used at Michael's Craft Store. I got it on clearance for $.99. Can you say score? I will not go into detail about the design of this cookie because her tutorial is superb. I simply adapted it to be a Valentine's theme. You could use this cute cutter for so many different themes. I think penguins for a baby shower would be cute. The only thing about this cutter is that it is huge. You probably wouldn't want to do dozens of cookies with this cutter. I just love Mr. & Mrs. Penguin! I'm so picky about the cookies I create that after I pictured them I realized it would have been way cuter if I had put Mr. Penguin's heart on his other flipper so that their hearts were meeting. Oh well.

Next up is my take on the the famous Valentine's phrase "Be Mine". Since my name, Melissa, means honeybee in Greek I wanted to do a "Bee Mine" cookie. I took the letters M, I, N and E and put them close together on the cookie sheet so that they were touching. They baked into each other and created one large cookie. I added a bee by gluing it on with royal icing. I was going to decorate my bee with the traditional yellow, black and white colors but I forgot to mix yellow so I ended up with a pink, black and white bee. I'm glad I didn't mix the yellow because I like the way it came out. I also like the stitching on this cookie. I used a food color marker to add the stitches.

The heart in the middle of this platter was inspired by this great tutorial that Sweetopia has on piping lines with royal icing. My hands were a bit shaky so my lines were not as straight as I'd like but overall I love this cookie. I love the pink, white and black together.

The next set of cookies are Mr. & Mrs. Lovebug. Again I put my heart sprinkles to use as accents to keep with the Valentine's Day theme. They're such a cute couple looking into each other's eyes.

I like to call this next collection "Sealed with a Kiss". Most people don't write love letters anymore through snail mail so I guess these are a throw back to the old days. Did you notice that my stamp has the new postal rate on it? Lol! I used the imprint technique I discussed in my previous post to achieve the heart on the stamp.

Finally, I pictured all the hearts together so you could see them as a group. I really enjoyed piping lines on my cookies and look forward to doing it again. Hopefully with a more steady hand.

Thanks for stopping by. I'm not sure when my next post will be (I'll be vacationing) or what it will be about but I'll be thinking of ideas while I'm relaxing.

Whether you are a fan of Valentine's or not I hope that you are a fan of love.

Make every day a sweet day!!!

Valentine's Day Lovebirds & Owls

Today I want to share some Valentine's Day cookie designs with you. I've had friends ask me how I decorate my cookies so my plan was to do a tutorial to show you how I did one or two of the designs. Unfortunately, that plan went out the window when I opened up the pictures and realized they were all junk. My photography skills need some work. I'm a point & shoot gal. The pictures I've taken that have turned out well came out purely by luck. I always try to use natural light when taking photos but I was decorating in the evening. I tend to be very impatient & did not want to wait until the next day for better lighting. Lesson learned. Then today I was ready to photograph my cookies and it was cloudy outside. Sometimes you just can't win.

So here we go. The first set of cookies I made are lovebirds. Mr. & Mrs. Lovebird to be exact. I was fortunate enough to win a giveaway by Cristin of Cristin's Cookies. I received a fabulous lovebird cutter from Copper Gifts as well as some other great decorating supplies. I outlined and filled the cookies and then dropped in the eyes (one of the prizes from the giveaway) on the wet icing. After the icing dried for awhile I outlined the heart and filled it. When I decorate I like to outline the cookies first and allow the outline to dry a bit before flooding. This method gives you a defined outline. Then, I added a beak and feet. I thought it would be cute to use some heart sprinkles that I got at Michael's Craft Store as the beak and feet. I let the cookies dry completely overnight and then the next day I decided to outline the heart because I didn't get the definition I was going for. Make sure if you do this that you use the same number decorating tip for uniformity. I didn't realize my pink had a different size tip on it and the outline is too thick. For the wing I made a heart and then used a small paint brush to do a brush embroidery technique. I've tried doing brush embroidery before but was not pleased with how it came out. I think it had to do with the consistency of my icing. After seeing this most amazing video on brush embroidery by SweetAmbs I knew I had to attempt it again. Let's just say I need to work on it some more. I think my icing was still too thin to achieve the look I was going for.

The next set of cookies I made were love owls. Again, I did a Mr. & Mrs. using the SweetDaniB cutter from Copper Gifts. For these cookies I knew that I wanted to incorporate a heart into the design and decided it would be great on the body of the owl. I'm not the best artist and I do not freehand things very well. I needed a guide in order to achieve a perfect heart. I decided to use a technique that I learned from Sugarbelle. Using another cookie cutter to lightly imprint your cookie is a great way to leave a guide for decorating. Her techniques are shear genius. For this cookie I first outlined the heart with the body color and then outlined the outside of the cookies. I allowed the outline to dry for a bit and then came back and filled in. While the icing was still wet I dropped in hearts, that I cut from fondant, as the eyes. Normally, before filling in the heart, you should allow the icing to dry several hours or overnight to avoid bleeding but again my impatience came in. I waited about an hour and then flooded the heart. I let the cookies dry overnight and then added the eyes, beak and feet. In hindsight I should have dropped the beak into the wet icing for a cleaner look but since this did not occur to me at the time I added a small dot of royal icing and stuck them on. The eyes and feet were also attached with small dots of royal icing. After these dried for a bit I finished the cookies by outlining the hearts and adding a bowtie on Mr. Owl and a bow on Mrs. Owl. Isn't it cute how they are looking at each other? Hoo loves you? Lol!

I hope you enjoyed my Valentine's Day designs and you will get inspired to try them. I have a few other designs to share with you but to keep this post from being too long I will be posting them tomorrow.

Make every day a sweet day!!!

Precious Moments

I don't have any cookie pics to post today but I am going to start working on some Valentine's Day designs real soon. I may even post my first tutorial. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I wanted to share one of the wonderful gifts I received for Christmas this year.

Isn't this figurine so adorable? It is titled "Nothing's Sweeter Than Time Together". My husband could not have picked out a better present for me this year. He knows how obsessed I am with cookie decorating.

I just love the Mickey's that are waiting to be decorated and the decorated ones are just perfect. This would make a great gift for anyone you know that may be as obsessed with cookie decorating as I am.

Make every day a sweet day!!!

Cakes, Cakes & More Cakes

Before I took some time off from baking to enjoy the holidays I made some cupcakes for a Christmas potluck at work. Here they are. I just love cupcakes!

This week I got back in the kitchen and worked on three cakes. The first cake was for a friend's husband. I made my first giant cupcake using Wilton's giant cupcake pan. Unfortunately, I do not have any good photos to post but it came out okay.

The next two cakes I made were for a mother & daughter whose birthday's were just days apart. The first was a small single layer 6" cake. I decorated it using a leopard print technique that I learned from mycakeschool.com. It was decorated using strictly buttercream.

The final cake was supposed to be a cake with a wine bottle on it but unfortunately my gumpaste wine bottle broke and I had to improvise. I decided to do a tuscan wine vineyard look for the cake.

I have to say that I find making cakes to be very stressful. It's something that I do for only my closest friends and family. I'm finding that I'm more of a cookie gal. I'm looking forward to making more cookies soon and sharing them with you. Happy New Year!

Make every day a sweet day!!!