Well, it’s finally here. Cyber Monday.

Of course we’ve been running our FREE SHIPPING or SHIPING, whatever they’re calling it these days, promo since last Wednesday.  If you miss the FREE SHIPPING you’ll have to PAY FOR SHIPPING!.  Time is running out, FREE SHIPPING ends on Tuesday at 5pm, so get over to the website and order your cookies already!

We have all of our collections and favors over on the site, but there’s also a new collection going up tomorrow. I’ll give you a sneak peek right now of our new gingerbread collection. Granted it’s a picture from my iPod, but still, you’ll get to see them.
*I just realized it’s 2:44am, so technically the new gingerbread collection will be available for purchase later today.

Here they are, Ice Skating Gingerbread People:

I was inspired by this plate at Crate and Barrel.

We made some changes of course,  and Dave came up with 4 different skating poses for the Gingerbread people.

Super cute right?

Well, order your cookies before FREE SHIPPING disappears!!

Or before we sell out of your favorite collection!

My Black Friday began by noticing this typo in an email, sent by me (A Dozen Eggs) to ALL THE CUSTOMERS ON OUR EMAIL LIST:

Initially, I thought about switching all references to “shipping” from here till the end of the year to “shiping” in hopes that our customers would think it was some sort of strange way we Vermonters talk…

Then I thought it best just to move on… and say the only thing you can in these situations:

On a positive note, our good buddy Forrest just turned four and he love dinosaurs.

He’s obviously not seen Jurassic Park!

Anyway, it was up to Laura to create a dessert table fitting for a dinosaur loving four year old.

First up, a triple layer maple cake with maple filling and maple buttercream. Decorated with hand iced sugar cookie dinosaurs.

Next were Vanilla and Chocolate Cupcakes with coordinating Dinosaur Toppers from Green Apple Paperie.

Dinosaur Cookie Platter.

Dinosaur Cookie Favors.

Laura finished the table with some grass skirts and the three, that’s right three, banners.

All in all, a great success!  Thanks Forrest, we’re looking forward to next year.

Stay tuned!

THE PLUGS!

If you haven’t ordered you’re Holiday Cookies yet, get to it! We’ve got some great collections and FREE SHIPING! That’s right, FREE SHIPING!

Also, if you spent all day Friday shopping and still couldn’t find a gift for the quiet, thoughtful, brooding, aloof, teenager/young adult in your life, look no further than my very own self-published graphic novel, Welcome to Birdland. It comes with our highest possible recommendation!

Uh, hello?

Is this thing on??

I’m back for a post on coloring, and to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

In case you’re wondering, I am still alive. If you follow us on Facebook, you know this, but if you rely on the blog, well you wouldn’t.

At any rate, it’s actually Thanksgiving Day RIGHT NOW!!

Our Plew Farm turkey is brining away and I’ve made my very first pumpkin pie. Of all things to do with pumpkin, pie has never been at the top of my list. Give me pumpkin whoopie pies, please!

So, as I was icing around 200 turkey cookies this year, I got to wondering, why do we always ice them in brown, gold, orange and red? Real turkeys aren’t usually those colors…are they?? Maybe we do it because those are Fall colors?

I figured I’d try something a little different.

Coloring outside the lines of conformity, outside the lines of what is expected.

Mod Turkeys, in navy, gold and orange.

The navy base is my favorite, the colors really pop on the dark navy.

Since no one has ever ordered turkeys in different colors, I’ll be waiting for your order next year.

The sky’s the limit, you could do different shades of pink, or colors that actually coordinate with your dining room. Coral and white would be pretty too. Even preppy pink and green turkeys would be super fun.

These weren’t for an order, they were just for fun. Which doesn’t happen very often.  Cookies. For FUN. Hah!

Speaking of color choices, clients tend to order what they see online. They hardly ever call and order the Eiffel Tower in anything but black and white and pink and white. As if piping all those tiny lines and microscopic x’s wasn’t enough to make my eyes cross, do they ALWAYS have to be in the same colors?

No, no they don’t. I had some extra navy and coral left over from the Happy New Year collection at the same time I was working on a black and white Eiffel tower order. Luckily Dave had made a few extra so I could play around with colors.

I LOVE the navy and coral!! Love love love. So much more fun than black and white. (still tedious to pipe, but the colors make it marginally more enjoyable.)

In the end, I don’t know why we are all stuck in these color ruts. Or are they preconceived notions of what colors different things “should” be. THEY’RE COOKIES!! They are suppose to be fun treats! They can be any colors you want them to be.

Maybe I’ll come back again and write another post. Honestly, I nearly forgot all about blogland.

In the meantime Happy Thanksgiving and I hope you’ve been enjoying Dave’s posts!!

Maybe you should check out his new book and order it. I think it would make a great Holiday gift…but, I AM biased.

As a young boy growing up in Oklahoma, I always dreamed of marrying a cover girl.

Well, last year it happened:

Laura’s amazing talents caught the eye of Country Woman Magazine and they not only put her on the cover, they also wrote a whole article about Laura and her “seriously cute cookies”.

You can get a behind the scenes look at Laura and the what it’s like in the Bake Shoppe during the crazy holiday season.

Check it out here!

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Don’t forget our FREE SHIPPING SPECIAL starting on Friday (11/23) and going through Tuesday (11/26). We’re offering Free Shipping on all our Holiday Cookie Collections and Favors! 

IMPORTANT CUSTOMER SERVICE REMINDER: Free shipping on all holiday cookies will start on 11/23 and go through 11/27, so go online, figure out who is getting what, and most importantly, DON”T FORGET TO ORDER!!!

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And now for something completely different.

Forget Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, these are a few of my favorite Bake Shoppe things.

This mismatched pair of oven mitts have been with me since I started baking way back in 2005. The Hawaiian mitt was part of a matched set that my Aunt and Uncle brought Laura and I back from from… Hawaii. I’m not quite sure where the blue rag came from. I might have picked it up at the shared use facility we used to bake at in Boston.

These mitts are the last artifacts I have from when we baked the 16000+ cookies for the Dean and Deluca catalogue… a trial by fire for rolling, cutting and baking if ever there was one. We have since added several other mitts to our inventory, but when I need to pull 10 full size sheet pans from the oven these are the mitts I go for!

I don’t want to get to Milton on you, but I love this stapler. I’m not even sure where it came from. It seems like I’m always stapling something in the Shoppe: job tickets, schedules and toppers (shhhh! trade secret!!!). I’ve tried a bunch of those fancy, ergonomic, custom-fit staplers and let me tell you something: they suck. When I need to package 100+ favors so I can get them ready to ship, this stapler always comes through: no jams!

The Bake Shoppe requires a lot of repetitive actions. Cutting 500+ cookies, bagging and ribboning 100+ favors or prepping, mixing and cleaning up 70 lbs of dough, this record fits the bill. Loud, bombastic and beautiful.

I could go on, but I think Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous tells us all we need to know (even in Spanish)!

Stay tuned!

Also, any Baker/Cookie Icer can write a book about Baking/Icing cookies. How many can illustrate and write a 154 page graphic novel?

Welcome back everyone!

Monday in the Bake Shoppe started with some good news in regards to a UPS Next Day shipment that was causing problems last Friday afternoon. The event was for Monday at noon and it was scheduled for delivery last Friday… the UPS website said delivery would be no problem but the local branch was still having Sandy related issues, so despite an hour on the phone with UPS and several emails to the customer, it didn’t look like the package was going to make it.

Then we got the good news. The UPS driver delivered the package to a relatives house when he couldn’t get to the original destination!! So, a big shout out to the UPS Hub in Parsippany NJ for going above and beyond to deliver a package. Thanks!

Speaking of last Friday, here’s some pictures of a Casino Night Birthday Dessert Table we did:

I also received this email on Monday from another cookie company:

Now as much as you try to be like George Bailey, emails like this make me feel like Mr. Potter.

We sell hand iced sugar cookies. They pay ALL the bills. So to give away our “trade” secrets is to give away our business, which is to give away money that pays our bills. Read “Outliers” and put in the work. There are no shortcuts and you’ll be happy you did.

Speaking of work, we are up to our elbows in Thanksgiving production.

With a bunch of boxes ready to ship on Tuesday and the rest scheduled to be out the door by Thursday we’re trying to clear the schedule of custom/Thanksgiving cookies so we can get ready to ramp up for the 4000+ cookies we need to make for the Holiday Season!!!

We finished off the night with a 1:30 AM snack of Popcorn and Whiskey.

Stay tuned!

Also, my 154 page graphic novel is now available to order online! If you buy 100 copies, I’ll tell you how we make our toppers!