Family History Cookies - Mom's 80th Birthday

Last year my Mother turned 80 years old. For our family reunion we honored her and had her celebration that day. 

It was quite fun, my mother did not want a big party or anything but she just wanted a family cookbook made. In the past one of my sisters had made a family cookbook. I have used mine so much and it looks it.

Anyway for the birthday/reunion she wanted to update the family cookbook and add more recipes from our 80+ family clan. It was an event I waited for all year. My oldest sister was in charge and she came up with a great idea. To go along with the cookbook idea for our food at the party every one was assigned a dish from the cookbook that they were to bring! Such a great idea, that way you would know where to get all the recipes from the meal we enjoyed.

My assignment was the birthday cake and some cookies of course ;)

As a part of the party a part of my mothers personal history was read and I wanted to make cookies that would be memories from my mothers life. 

So those of you who are not my family who may be viewing this post not going to understand these cookies but I wanted to share them with you. I wanted them to be personal to my Mother and be something that she would cherish.

My Mothers favorite color is blue so I used that as my color theme and then did sketches with a black food color pen. And thanks goes to my husband who sketch out the memories I chose to use.

This is a picture of my Mothers father, my grandfather. I never met him , he passed away when my mother was 13. A tractor he was driving fell over on him while he was clearing land. In my Mothers history she always said she adored her father and said he was a hard working "real" cowboy.

These next cookies from left to right represent... 

• the cabin that was her childhood home in Wyoming
•  the "K-hill" to represent Kanab the town they have lived in for over 40 years
•  a sleigh that was used for transportation as a kid
• a empty box labeled Marriage which refers to a quote my mother loved which is something like this..."Marriage is an empty box. It remains empty unless you put in more than you take out."
• and the last cookie with all the numbers on represented different numbers that are no longer current...9 children, 39 great grandchildren, 15 great grandchildren (that one has increased to 17 I think and going), 80+ is all the family that descends from my mother and father.

From LtoR: 

• words of some of the many many events and things she has done through out her life
• the "cry room" as church where she spent many many hours since she raised 9 children
• SUN stands for Southern Utah News and was the name of the newspaper business that my father owned and ran for I think 30+ years
• the ones with the logs represents the many memories my mom has of playing on a tree that had fallen over on their land. 

Wouldn't it be nice if I kids would just play all day outside on a fallen tree!

And this is a picture of my Mom from the day she was married back in 1955.

And to finish of the set, the number 80 with some brush embroidery flowers. 

So it was not all about the cookies but cake as well. We did have to feed 70+ people. I was going to do a three tiered cake but decided to just do three separate ones to make it easier. I also prefer to do buttercream cakes than fondant style, not that I don't like fondant it's just much more time consuming and frustrating for me because I need way more practice with it. 

Credit for the cake is not all mine. My awesome niece Lacee helped me do the cakes. She did most of it! So here we are with my amazing Mom, me on the left and Lacee on the right.

Another shot of the best parents in the world!

I love my mother she truly is an amazing woman and am grateful that I was able to be her daughter, I feel so blessed and loved and will always look to up to my Mom for she is the best example I could have on how to be a good Mother!

Minecraft Cookies & Cake

Is your boy or girl obsessed with Minecraft?? My 7 year old is. If he was allowed to play it all day I just think he might. If you are not sure what Mine Craft is you can click here to find out. 

For his birthday he wanted Minecraft cookies so I did a couple different things. 

For his treat to take to his class I did some creeper and TNT cookies.

For his small party with friends I made some color canvas cookies that are just white flooded cookies with the coloring image outlined in black icing using the wet on wet method. 

Then the kids used edible ink markers to color them they way they wanted.

I had talked to my son and before all these events took place and asked if he wanted a cake for his birthday or cookies and he choose the cookies but on the actual morning of his birthday he said he was excited to have birthday cake that night. I was like "oh I thought the cookies were what you had decided to have." but he said "you have to have cake on your birthday".

Luckily I had some cake frozen in the freezer so I just quickly made a cube shape and the decorated with Melty Bead art!

18 hours = lots of blue frosting, tired hand and back.... oh and 3 pretty cakes!!

***Let me clarify, I do require more advanced notice on orders than I did on this one, but for a good friend, who was very generous... I made it fit into my schedule. :)***

A friend of mine called me last week and asked if I could make her three cakes by the next day. She needed them for a going away of the president of the college she works at.

She told me one of the ladies in her office was going to order a cake from Walmart and Michelle, my friend said oh no we need to have something more elegant than that. 

So I started the cakes at 2pm on Monday and they were picked up at 9:30 am the next day! It was a long day and night and my hand was TIRED! Those ribbon cakes are killer on the hand.

Thanks Michelle for the order and trusting in me that they would be fitting for you occasion!

Icing Smiles iPod Cookie Cake

I belong to a local ICES group which stands for International Cake Exploration Society. I joined the group to learn more about making cakes and making friends who love to play in sugar like me.

Cookies by far are the thing I enjoy doing and I dabble in cakes here and there. Well Icing Smiles contacted this group I belong to and asked for a volunteer to make a cake for a brother of a boy who is suffering from Leukemia. No one else said they were available so I said I would do it.

Icing Smiles is a nonprofit organization that provides custom celebration cakes and other treats to families impacted by the critical illness of a child.  This is actually a awesome opportunity and I was happy to be able to help out this family who is going through a very rough patch in their lives. 

The cake I was to make was for a 16 year old boy named Jonus. 

His mother told me he loved his iPod, headphones etc.. 

I originally was going to just do a rectangle cake in the shape of an iPod because I thought it would be simple. But I really want to put in some cookies so I took even a little bit of easier route and made a chocolate cake with chocolate butter-cream and topped it off with some iPod and a teenager listening to some tunes!

It was a little rough making the cake because the filling I had made failed and I had to completely start over on the bottom tier. Luckily I was able to recover and get it done on time.



The cookies up close.



Lately I don't really love covering cakes in fondant but I did make some ear buds out of it to be the border of the cake.





His whole family came by to pick up the cake so I go to meet his parents his younger sister and his little brother who has Lukemia. I really felt so good to be able to provide this service for their family and I hope that the chocolate cake brought a smile to their faces.



If you want to learn more about the Icing Smiles organization please click here. You don't have to be a business to volunteer to those who need these services. This is a country wide organization and they are always looking for some one to donate their time and talents to help those who are suffering from a critical illness.

Graduation Time

 My friend Tuija asked me to make a cake and cookies for her daughters graduation party.

In my head I have all these grand ideas, and in my head I think it is going to take 2 hours to complete and is going to be easy. When in reality it takes 8+ hours and nothing you plan works out. Ganache won't set up so you add more chocolate then it sets too quickly you finish the top of the cap and notice that you covered the board wrong so you have to chuck it and start again, you try making a tassel 3 or 4 times but it just keeps breaking apart so you just scrap the whole idea. Oh I could go on and on but I wont. I finally finished the cake and the cookies. Cake people say cookies are too time consuming but right now I feel the opposite. :)

Here are the cookies I did, much less stress here except for the airbrushing... I so need to work on my skills with that. But I've got plenty of time to do that.

Amanda is way prettier than these cookies, she is such a beautiful young woman. But this cookie version is cute too. Oh and this cookie version is copied from one of Sugarbelles creations.

Her mom told me that she likes Africa and I had these stencils with all these animal prints so I thought I would try them out. I figured out a better way to use them after I was done so hopefully next time they will be more sharp.

 Some diplomas and stars for such a super grad!!

We had a good time at the party yesterday. My husband got to speak Finnish to all the Finns that were there and I did a lot of smiling pretending I knew what they were talking about!! :)

Congrats Amanda and thanks Tuija!

Mermaid Birthday

My daughter turned 4 this Month and after getting home from Disneyland and doing other cookies orders. It was two days before her birthday party and I realized I had no plan for her cake. I asked her what she wanted and she was not specific about it. I gave her suggestions but she did not seem to be way excited about anything.

She does love her mermaid Barbie so I decided to get inspiration from Barbie Merliah and just make cookies because that would be simpler for me to do than a sculpted mermaid to sit on top of a cake.

So I made the plan and told my daughter the next morning, she said no she did not want it but wanted a Buzz Light Year cake. WHAT!! Where did that come from. Anyway after I drew out a picture of what the cake would look like she was finally on board.

Here are the cookies I did and used the colors found on the actual Merliah Barbie.

And here they are on the cake. Excuse my lighting I was at my in laws home and we were trying to find a background and hey lets face it I am not that great of a photographer.

One side had the number 4 and her name.

The bottom layer.

The front side a simplified mermaid.

And I saw this surprise cake idea on At the Picket Fence and thought it would be a fun idea to try. I forgot about it and started to stack the and fill the cakes. So I had to take apart the first two layers I had already filled and layered to cut the hole in them and then I was on the right track. My daughter loves chocolate and wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

Here is my cutie pie with her cake, she loved it. :)

Easter Bunny Cake

Oh dear I forgot to post my Easter cake!!

Saw Royal Bakeries chubby bunny and I had to do a chocolate version of him for our family Easter gathering.

I did a classic yellow cake with yummy chocolate buttercream frosting and decorated with modeling chocolate.

Birthdays & babies

A random post with some sweets I did last month. I only took one shot of each of these goodies so I thought I would just put them together.

First is some birthday cookies I did for a friend.

Then some North Carolina Tar Heel cookies for my good friends husbands birthday. He loves his Tar Heels.

Then just two small sets for two friends who recently had baby boys.
I also made cake pops but forgot to take a decent picture of them so all I have is this phone picture I quickly took.

The next two pictures are of small sets I made for two different friends who recently welcomed baby boys into their homes.

Clive and Javier Cake

My friend Michelle had a birthday last week and she has a little fascination with Clive Owen and Javier Bardem. So when Michelle's besty asked me to make her a cake I knew I needed to do something with these two men.

I had different thought rolling around in my head and thought I could just print out their pictures on sugar sheets but since had a little bit of plain sugar sheets on hand I thought I would see if I could do it my self. So I chose a couple of pics on the internet and then pulled them into Photoshop  I then used the stamped overlay and then projected the image on the sugar sheet and traced out the black outlines then I filled them in with and edible felt marker.

Please tell me that they kinda of resemble the real guys. :)



I sadly had to be out of town the night of the celebration but I hope the girls that were there celebrating had a great time and enjoyed the cake.



I made a red velvet cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting and decorated with modeling chocolate.

Cake #3- Bridal Shower

My sister in law threw a bridal shower for my niece Emily last saturday and I asked if I could help and I was told I could bring a salad or a treat. I chose to do a treat and since I was doing two other cakes last friday I figured I would make another.

I got my inspiration from the invitation.

To make it simple I just bought a sugar sheet with damask already on it then cut it in half and applied it to the buttercream, then just cut out a silohette of a bridge and groom in modeling chocolate and it was good to go.

I forgot to add the rose in the picture above, but you can see it in the one below with my beautiful niece posing with the food. I think the rose on the brides hair really made it cute.