I usually have Dave toss all catalogs before he leaves the Post Office. Mostly because I LOVE to look at them, and then they sit around the house forever. Taunting me.  BUT, he did bring home some of my favorite Holiday catalogs back in November. One of those would be Crate and Barrel.

The skating gingerbread man line was so adorable and I thought it would translate into a simple, yet fun collection.

I clipped the photo from the catalog and Dave went ahead and came up with 4 different gingerbread people in unique, ice skating poses. Two boy and two girl designs.

You can see his original drawings on his Tumblr page. HERE! (You may have to scroll down to see the gingerbread people).

In the end we sold out of what we made, but we didn’t get to make as many as we would have liked.

These cookies may look simple, but they took a VERY long time to ice. It was suppose to be an easy collection, with just 3 colors, but since I went with single consistency icing for the white and the red, it was a lot of bag switching when I did the initial outlines.

Bag switching means that I can’t really assembly line produce them.  Normally, we outline all of one color, then go back and outline all of another. It goes 10 times faster when the cookie is outlined in all ONE color.

That’s a little technical cookie talk. Sometimes I wish all cookies could be square. That would cut production time way down.

We made some really fun custom Holiday cookies this year and I’ll be back with some new pics of those. I guess we can get caught up on non-holiday cookies after Christmas.

And if you still haven’t ordered cookies yet, we have a bunch left, so go see what’s up on the site and order!

Last night was the two year anniversary of our most favorite restaurant in all of Vermont, The Downtown Grocery.  Not only is the food fantastic, amazing, original, creative, local, and just plain delicious, the people who make it all happen are among the most awesome people you will ever find in a restaurant.

Dave and I went last night, (we had been saving our pennies!) to help support and celebrate their Birthday. I don’t think you will find better pork bellies. Anywhere. We each had an order. And debated between the pork belly and the tempura beans for dessert.

Yes. Dessert. They are THAT good. Tempura Beans won. We had to have a some kind of veggie!

I had been thinking for months about what to bring as a gift for their anniversary, needless to say it had to be cookies.

We decided to pay homage to not only the food, but the people that work there. Each of the cookies we created represent someone who works there.

I even tried to translate the amazing pork buns into cookie. The jury’s still out on whether the buns worked out as great cookies, but it’s the thought that counts.

Aside from the pork bun debacle,  I just love the plaid shirts and the sign. The front cookie is a replica of their sign and my first attempt at painting on a cookie. Thankfully, it’s a simple milk bottle.

I’m also super happy with the plaid shirts (the servers all wear plaid shirts). The first few plaid attempts were disastrous, but I finally figured it out. Who knew plaid would be so complicated to make with icing?

If you ever venture up here to Vermont, you HAVE to eat at The Downtown Grocery! And you should absolutely have the pork bellies…or the burger…or the shrimp and grits, or anything else on the menu.

Happy Anniversary!!

It’s so difficult to keep track of where I’ve posted pics and where I haven’t.

I’m pretty sure these never made it onto the blog, and since they’ve been languishing in my folder, let’s get them up and out!

To tell the truth, I wasn’t too excited to make this cake. BUT, it came out way better than I had hoped for.

Triple layer 6 inch cake with vanilla bean buttercream.

This was for an Owl themed baby shower. The cake is a 10 inch yellow cake with chocolate buttercream…I think.

Here’s a better view of the cookie toppers. To coordinate with the “stump” cake, I used edible marker for the faux bois affect on the inscription cookie.

We created the cake, cupcakes and toppers and the favors for this shower. The cupcakes are chocolate with vanilla bean buttercream with Owl cookie toppers.

The favors were large and small owls packaged with a custom topper.

I have a few more cake pics, but those still need to be edited and watermarked. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have a little Christmas…what do you think?

On December 11th.

It may not be time for spooky Halloween stuff, but I made this cake for a Halloween party for a local client and I never posted it on the blog. If you follow on Twitter and Facebook and Flickr, then you have seen it, but just in case you don’t here’s the cake.

It’s one of my favorite cakes that we’ve made so far.

The theme of the cake was Haunted Graveyard and I wanted it to be a simple color combination with creepy old headstones and a big gate.

The cemetery entrance gate cookie might have been a little too big, but I wanted it to be taller than the cake. All around the cake are smaller cookies that serve as the fence around the Haunted Graveyard.

The top of the cake features a GIANT silhouette of a creepy, gnarly old tree backed by a silver moon. Each of the headstones was created to look like those old thin stones that are usually tilted and crooked. A zombie hand is sticking out from a pile of “dirt” (chocolate cake).

This was a super fun cake to make! It’s a triple layer chocolate cake with vanilla bean buttercream filling an frosting…and lots of cookies!!

Hello again. Is anyone still there??

Well, I’m going to give this blog thing another try. Oh sure, I know I’ve said it before, but this time it will be different…maybe.

One of the obstacles that is keeping me from blogging is this massive back log of photos. I want to share all the pics but not all of them are worthy of a post. I figure I’ll start posting them and clearing them out of my “blog images” folder, and then I can tell you all about the current projects.

The problem is that there are about 8 months worth of photos that need to be edited and watermarked, so this could take some a while.

Another obstacle is time. We’re busy with holiday cookies, and I’m still working on my last 18 pounds, trying to fit in work, life and working out, then add BLOG to the list…these things all take SO MUCH time. Which I don’t really have a lot left after all those things. BUT, I’m going to give it a shot.

So, these aren’t really “of the moment” themes, but here are some of the photos that you’ve missed:

This was for a wedding a LONG time ago. The couple got engaged on 9-10-11, so it was important to have the wedding date,  10-11-12 inscribed on the license plate.
These took a long time to ice, I don’t remember how many were in the order, maybe around 50 or more.

These were for two separate orders for two different birthday parties. Vintage Mini Cooper cookies with a custom topper created by Dave.

The very same month we also had two different Chanel Bag orders. One got a custom topper as well.

For the topper on the Chanel bags, we decided to go with the simplicity of a Chanel shopping bag. Basic black with the inscription in the same font as the actual shopping bags.

Believe it or not, these cookies are very different. Well, to a Chanel fan they are. The white bag has the chain and fewer quilts. The black bag has many more little quilted boxes and no chain. Neither one was easier than the other, they both took a fair amount of time.

And just a tip about pitting of icing in tiny spaces: it’s not about the consistency of your icing, it’s not about how much or little icing you piped into the space, it’s not about swirling it with a toothpick. It’s all about the dry time. The faster you get the icing to “set up” the less holes you’ll have in your tiny spaces.

Silver, peep toe Louboutin slingback heels.

Cookies and milk. These were for a platter that I donated to the Wallingford Rotary Lobster fest fundraiser. We had never made “cookies and milk” cookies, and I love how they came out.

Nachos and hot dogs. These were for a carnival themed birthday party.

Chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with Goat head cookie toppers. These were for a Goat Roast. Pig roasts are VERY common around here, but GOAT…very unusual.

Small, serving sized cookies created to match the actual wedding dress and shoes. These were for the bridal party to snack on while they were getting ready for the wedding.

I’ve got a few more images to clear out, I’ll save those for another day. Then maybe I’ll get to Christmas cookies. It’s only December 10th! hah.

If you want to see our more current projects, you should follow us on Facebook or Twitter. We post there almost every day.

We finished up the cookies and cake portion of Saturday’s dessert table around Midnight on Friday. All that was left was the gumdrop tree!

We counted all the gumdrops and portioned them out for gluing, put on our favorite holiday movie, Elf, and started gluing.

200!

400!

600!

727!

Final time: 58 minutes and 24 seconds.

So the winners are:

Gumdrops: Corrine L. with a guess of 700 gumdrops.

Time: Paige P. with a guess of 55 minutes.

I’ll be contacting you via Facebook to get the cookie selection and shipping information!

Congratulations and thanks for playing!

Here’s a peak at the dessert table, with the trio of Gumdrop Trees:

Stay tuned!