Spiderman Cookies

Our little man turned 3 in July! It’s hard to believe that in a little over a year he’ll be starting school.  They tell you time flies, but you don’t realize how true it is until you see it zooming by.  For now though, he’s my fun-loving, goofy, kind-hearted and determined preschooler.  He is also obsessed with Spiderman, in spite of having never seen the movie.  It was only fitting that we celebrate his birthday with his favourite webbed wonder. We had an intimate BBQ party with close friends and family, and Spiderman plates, napkins, foil balloons, cake and, of course, cookies.  

Happy birthday to my wonderful little dude – you’ll always be my baby. xox

Elmo Birthday Cookies

I made baptism cookies for Brooklyn as my very first real custom order, and now she’s 1! I was so happy to get the opportunity to make these cookies for her big birthday.  I’ve been wanting to make Sesame Street cookies for a while now, so when her mom asked if I could make Elmo themed cookies, I was ecstatic! I immediately ordered the custom cutters online and started sketching my ideas.

I decided on a fun, bright and cheerful colour scheme of red, pink and melon. I also wanted to give the chalkboard effect a try.  I only made one because unfortunately the all black icing can leave your teeth a rather unattractive colour – tasty, but not great for pictures! I love the look though! Happy First Birthday Brooklyn!!

Pregnancy Announcement Cookies

A friend asked me to help her announce to her family that she and her partner are expecting in January.  The bonus? Her sister-in-law just happens to be one of my very best friends who is also expecting her first baby in November! I can’t even begin to put into words how truly honoured and privileged I felt to be given such an amazing opportunity.  Announcing that you’re pregnant to your close family is always an exciting and momentous occasion, and I was determined to give them a great set that would make the event that much sweeter.

She so graciously gave me creative license, so I went with neutral but modern colour scheme. I had SO many creative ideas, I really had to exercise self control.  Hopefully I’ll get to create all my other inspirations some time in the future…maybe for baby #2?? 

Who doesn’t love baby feet?? Don’t you just want to eat them?! Oh wait…You CAN!

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but anytime I can personalize a set, I jump all over it. For this occasion especially, I wanted to add as many personal touches as possible.

Congratulations again C & T!  I know you both will make excellent parents and I was truly honoured to be part of this exciting time in your lives.

Golf Birthday Cookies

 

My mother’s birthday was a big milestone this year.  I won’t say the number out loud because I know better…but it’s pretty easy to figure out from the cookies 😉  My sister and my dad and I wanted to do something special for her because she’s always doing everything for everyone else and has been such an incredible source of strength and support to others over the years.  It was about time we celebrate her.  My mom doesn’t like a lot of attention and we knew she wouldn’t want a big party, so we threw her an intimate surprise party with close relatives.

 

My mom also LOVES golf.  I’m talking plays it, watches it, dreams it, breathes it kind of love.  I don’t get it. I once asked her how she could love golf so much and not get sick of it, and her response was: “Do you ever get sick of running?”.  Then I got it.  So, golf seemed like the pretty obvious choice for the theme of her surprise XXth birthday party.

I only made a small batch of cookies and my godmother made golf cupcakes.  They were to DIE for! For the cookies, I wanted to test out the 20 second icing technique and, as it turns out, I prefer piping and flooding. It’s more work in the prep stage, but much cleaner in the execution and allows for a bit more control (in my opinion anyway).

For the golf bags, I used a frog cutter, upside down, and trimmed off the legs.  Have I mentioned how much I love getting creative with cutters?? 

I’d seen a few inspiration pictures for the sand trap cookie and was excited to try it.  I used brown sugar for the sand, using white Royal Icing as “glue”.  I’d love to start playing with different and new textures in the future. 

Like I mentioned, my godmother made the cupcakes.  Not only were they DE-LISH, they were adorable.  Everything was edible.  My favourite by far were the flags, made out of dry pasta noodles, fruit roll-up and RI! So creative! The running joke in my family is that my parents couldn’t have picked a better godmother for me because we’re two peas in a pod.  Things like this make me very proud of that!

 

It’s really quite easy and inexpensive to add little touches of a theme to a party.  I had set up some white paper lanterns outside (it was a gorgeous May day!), and inside I’d just gotten a simply green table cloth and found these little turf squares at the dollar store.  I filled a vase with golf balls (luckily my parents have LOTS) and I’d gotten this adorable golf cart cake topper at the party store.  Simple yet very fun! 

Bonne fête ma belle maman d’amour.  You deserve to be celebrated every day.  Je t’aime beaucoup.  xo

 

Tiffany Bridal Shower Cookies

The big day has come and gone, and what a day it was!! The Bride looked beyond stunning – she was truly a vision. The days leading up to the wedding were full of pampering and girly fun and I felt so blessed to have been part of this important time in my friend’s life. In spite of less than ideal weather, the day went off without a hitch and everyone looked great and had fun. There was a perfect mix of laughter and emotions and we danced the night away!

I wanted to reminisce a bit and post the cookies I had made for the Tiffany themed bridal shower. This is such a pretty and fun theme! I LOVE the blue! I felt honoured to be able to make these and help shower the Bride as she enters this next chapter in her life. 

We had a whole table of sweets and every single one was delicious! 

The Maid of Honour ordered a Tiffany cake from Sugar and Spice Cakes and it blew us all away! Not only was it perfectly gorgeous, it tasted amazing – it was red velvet: the Bride’s favourite.  The Bride was over the moon about this cake so a big thank you to Sugar and Spice!
My good friend (also a bridesmaid) made these yummy red velvet cupcakes.  She is notorious for her delicious baked treats and true to form these were just as tasty as all her other creations.

The happy couple are now on their honeymoon and I hope they’re having a wonderful time.  S & A: I am beyond happy for you two and wish you all the joy and happiness in the world. xox

Parisian Themed Bachelorette Cookies

One of my best friends is getting married! We’ve known each other for over 20 years and I am overjoyed to be part of her big day.  The bridal party wanted to plan the bachelorette of a lifetime for the party girl bride.  Our girl loves to travel, so we wanted to take her on a “Eurotour” – we couldn’t ACTUALLY go to Europe but we planned the next best thing: a day touring a multicultural city in a hummer limo with a Passport of dares for the Bride to complete! We ended the night – where else? – in “Paris”!  I was so excited to plan out this design and took advantage to order a few new fun cutters online 🙂 

It was a great trip and I can’t wait to be by her side as she walks down the aisle to marry the love of her life.  Je t’aime S! xox

Sports Themed Cookies

I’m very excited to share these cookies.  They went off to the birthday boy this morning for his 8th birthday party tomorrow so I can finally share what is, to date, my favourite set. I’ve known Nick since he was just under 2 years old, I can’t believe he’s 8 already!! It made me very happy to be able to do this for him and his friends and I really hope they like them.

I won’t lie, when multiple colours are involved, it’s a little bit more labour intensive, but it makes for such a fun finished product.  All in all, this set took a total of 6 hours to make, 2 of which were just mixing the colours and prepping the icing.  But I wanted it to be fun and bright so it was well worth it.  I also decided to add texture with sanding sugar and sprinkles – sugar and sprinkles always make things better 🙂

I was inspired by Sweet Sugar Belle’s stadium cookies and decided to try my own variation. Confession: I wanted to add numbers on the yard lines (that’s what they’re called right??) but I wasn’t sure which numbers to put and by the time I’d Googled the icing was too dry.  Next time I’ll plan ahead!

I wanted to throw in a few customized cookies for the birthday boy too – after all, he’s the star of the party.

Here’s a closer look at each of the balls – I think my favourite are the baseballs 🙂

The soccer ball pattern was surprisingly tricky – it’s not perfect and I learned a few things for next time. 

Happy birthday big guy! Hope you have a great party 🙂

Spring Flower Birthday Cookies for Grand-maman

My grand-maman turned 90 this weekend.  That’s a huge milestone! My grandmother is a very classy lady – always dressed to the nines with hair and nails done.  She’s also an incredibly warm, friendly and fun-loving person. Some of my best memories with her involve delicious home cooked food – a warm bouillie with fresh bread and butter, and pie or butter tarts or date squares or home made donuts – or all of them! – for dessert. Grand-maman’s baking is second to none but she doesn’t get to do much of it anymore, so to help celebrate I decide to whip her up a little treat a la Make Cookie. Her birthday happened to fall on the first day of spring, and what better way to celebrate 90 years of a beautiful life than with fresh and friendly spring flowers.

I wanted to try out a new London Fog shortbread recipe that I’ve been eyeing for a while.  To be perfectly honest, the dough was quite difficult to work with and I had to add a lot of additional flour.  In the end, while they were very tasty and melt-in-your mouth, the London Fog-ness was underwhelming.  Perhaps this is a recipe better suited for un-decorated cookies (if I can ever help myself!). As you might already have figured out, my family is French, and grand-maman has proudly earned three titles that I wanted to honour: Maman, Grand-maman and as of 2.5 years ago, Mami.

I decided to try my hand at painting cookies for the first time.  I regretted not leaving myself more “blank canvases”. I loved using a brush, mixing colours and seeing what I could come up with.  I love the watercolour effect and will definitely be trying this technique again.  I also realized my border piping needs some serious work. I’m very happy to report that my grand-maman enjoyed the cookies and had a wonderful time celebrating her big day with loved ones. Je t’aime beaucoup grand-maman – gros bisous! xo

Dinosaur Cookies

We love dinosaurs. Actually, scratch that.  Our kids love dinosaurs.  We love that they love dinosaurs. It makes things so much easier for us – finding dino stuff is easy, there are endless possibilities for dino-themed activities, and it’s a common interest for our son and daughter.  Common interests might be harder to come by as they get older, so we’re embracing this one while we can.  Plus, it’s super cute to watch them roaring at each other.

I had some leftover icing and cookies that I’d baked and frozen so I decided to play around and make some dino-themed cookies for the little munchkins. I drew inspiration from SugarBelle’s baby dinosaurs using non-dino cutters (seeing as I’d already baked hearts, circles and eggs).  I actually prefer to use shapes in any way other than how they’re intended.  Maybe it’s because I’m a classic type A who likes challenges, or maybe I like to keep my creative mind on its toes – either way, it makes for fun cookie decorating!

These little guys are my favourite.  I can’t help but hear a marching theme song in my head when I look at them!

My own little dinos haven’t seen these yet – I can’t wait to see the little man’s reaction!

Happy cookie-ing.  Roar!!

Retro 1970’s Cookies

A good friend of ours turned 40 this year and her husband threw her an awesome 1970’s surprise party.  I jumped at the opportunity to make custom cookies for the occasion and had so much fun coming up with ideas.  I turned to Pinterest, Google and old photographs for inspiration: disco balls, records, guitar picks, afros, chest hair and gold chains are just some of the iconic 1970’s memorabilia I chose to channel. I was also inspired by the classic 1970’s kitchen for the colour scheme – avocado green, harvest gold and burnt orange.

Unfortunately, because I decorate at night after the kids go to bed, the lighting isn’t that great and I didn’t realize right away that my ivory flood icing was too thick (as you can see on the ivory and striped squares), but luckily I was able to fix it for the rest of the cookies I hadn’t gotten to yet. Note to self: get task lighting!

The afro dudes and women were inspired from a Pin I found and loved. I needed black sanding sugar for these guys but of course when I went looking, right before Valentine’s day, all I could find was pink and red.  I decided to try out SugarBelle’s tips on colouring your own.  It was so easy and worked incredibly well.  I will definitely be doing that again when I need a custom colour!

I had so much fun making these and even more fun at the party.  Happy birthday foxy lady! 🙂