Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Cookies

One of my favorite kinds of cookies to decorate are character cookies, especially from kids shows. I do a lot of the Yo Gabba Gabba cookies but I got an order for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse-themed cookies so I thought it would be super cute to make "toodles" cookies. These were a lot of fun to decorate and I love it when kids recognize their favorite characters as a delicious cookie!

5 Blue Horses

My 4-year-old son is constantly telling us stories about his 5 blue horses (they can fly!) so I decided to feed his imagination (literally) and made him a blue horse cookie while I was working on some other projects. He was happily surprised, especially since he's always wanting to eat the cookies I'm working on for orders. And to say the least he loved and enjoyed it!

More Yo Gabba Gabba Cookies.

So I have baked lately, just not new stuff. Here's another batch of Yo Gabba Gabba cookies that I made for a birthday party a couple weeks ago. I think they look great tied up with the ribbon!

Flippie-Floppies

Here are some pastel flip flop cookies I did for a wedding up in Lake Tahoe earlier this month. They were for a casual wedding and the bride wanted to hand out cookies instead of cake to her guests because she said they tasted better than cake! She chose different pastel colors for the cookies to go along with all the colors in her wedding. They were sugar cookies with royal icing and sugar sprinkles.

Kuhn Rikon Mouse Measuring Cup Set

I'm going to start highlighting all the cool new kitchen gadgets I'm slowly acquiring because I love them all! I love having fun stuff when I'm baking and I've found that the best way to do that is to get products that are made for kids. I especially love kids cookbooks because they're always so bright and colorful with TONS of pictures!

So one of my latest purchase came from Sur La Table at The Grove on our recent vacation to Los Angeles. I found this Kids Kinderkitchen Mouse Measuring Cup Set by some Swiss company and fell in love with the colors. One of my favorite kitchen tools are these measuring spoons that are just plastic, but they're all a different color, which for some reason makes it easier for me. I also got some Le Cruset pinch bowls (green and red ones) and a Le Cruset Turquoise spatual, but those aren't quite as exciting (but they are colorful!). Ok, ok, ok here're pictures...

4th of July Cupcakes

Here are some chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting I made for a 4th of July party. I like the ones with the little star sprinkles better than the glitter ones, but they all tasted yummy!

Happy Father's Day!

I let go of the reigns for Father's Day and let Christopher decorate some cookies for his Daddy. He picked out the rainbow sprinkles and said he wanted to decorate with blue frosting. The end result were some yummy cookies that spelled out "Daddy" along with a fish cookie, since he fishes. Yummmm:

Ok, do I didn't completely let go of the reigns. I figured Gregory already had enough cookies with the one's Christopher made him, but a friend asked me to make her a neck tie cookie for her dad. Here's what I came up with, all sugar cookies with royal icing and sugar (and sprinkles!):


Happy Father's Day honey!
-J

Chocolate & Carrot Cake

Here are some cupcakes I did for a baby shower this weekend. They were chocolate and carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Blue & yellow fondant flowers to celebrate the mom and her baby boy on the way!



I finally got around to listening to Hanson for my decorating tunes, so it was their album "The Walk" for these cupcakes.

-J

Harlow's Hairbows

I took a break from the baking craziness to make a few more bows for Harlow's Hairbows and they've just been picked up by the East Sac children's boutique, Koukla Kids! It's so exciting, I feel all professional and all now! So you can either buy my hairbows directly from me or stop in at Koukla and purchase them there. The store is SO stinkin' adorable! Here's a couple pictures of the store. That's Christopher and his friend Peter hanging out on the couch (and little Katie on the floor).

Spiderman Cupcakes

Spiderman Themed Cupcakes for a 4-year-old boy's birthday party. The party was great too- nice and laid back and I relaxed the whole time! More pictures can be found here.

Simple Cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Simple and yummy! I think I did these on the fly, so there were no decorating tunes :(

-J

Birthday Cookies 2009

Besides doing cupcakes for Christopher's birthday I stuck to my speciality and did some cookies to give out in the goody bags. Since Christopher's starting to have his own little opinion I wanted to include him in the party planning so I let him pick out what colors he wanted the cookies to be. He first picked blue because that's his favorite color and then for the 2nd color he picked yellow "so it would look like Sprinkles." Sprinkles is his stuffed animal giraffe and his best friend. I thought that was too adorable!

Also to help keep him involved and because I needed someone to try them, Christopher stepped in as my cookie taster and they seemed to be good enough for him! They were sugar cookies with orange royal icing them time. Decorating music was Taylor Swift's "Fearless" album again :)

-J

Birthday Cards

If you'd believe it, baking isn't my only creative outlet. Before I ever started baking my main creative outlet was through scrapbooking and making cards. I don't get as much time as I'd like anymore, but once in a while I can get a couple things done. Here are some birthday cards I did last year for a 1 and 3 year old's. My style is definitely not to keep things simple (when I have the time) and I like lots of small details. I especially like that glitter on the 2nd card!

-J

Christopher's Birthday Cupcakes

first photo credit goes to my dad of Rudy Calpo Photography.

Christopher had his first real birthday party this past weekend and it was a blast! Despite my planning every last detail I was finally able to relax once the party was set up and the kids were running around. Now he doesn't watch it all that often, but we did a Sesame Street themed party, basically centered around these cupcakes. Gregory's sister, Elaine, saw a picture of them and told me I had to do a Sesame Street themed party for Christopher. So starting with the cupcakes, we centered things around bright, bold colors, the letter C and the number 3, and all the Sesame Street characters.

The invitations said "Christopher's birthday party is brought to you by the letter C and the number 3." we had his cake done by Freeport Bakery with Big Bird and Elmo racing across it, these Sesame Street cupcakes, the kids played a stick-the-nose-on-Elmo game, and the favors were those little beach buckets with Sesame Street stickers on them, Sesame Street pencils, bubbles, Elmo lollypops, C & 3 cookies and those fun little crazy straws.

I know Christopher had a lot of fun and that was the most important thing :)

Butterfly Cake

Butterfly cake I made for Stephanie's birthday last year. I tried to make one the year before but it didn't turn out quite right. This one was WAY better. So pretty, but I should have used more colors. The biggest challenge was keeping the sanding sugar from going all over.

I don't remember if it was white or chocolate cake, but I think it was a chocolate cake and I used store bought frosting. The big dots were gobstoppers and the small ones were just round rainbow sprinkles. Also, it was way easier to decorate when I let it sit in the freezer for a little bit to keep it from crumbling.

-J

Easter Cookies

Well, I had a family emergency that sent G & I out of town the day before Easter, but luckily I already had the cookies baked and Elaine took the time to decorate them. Aren't they so cute? Bunnies, eggs, and tulips. I was able to add the tiny details of the bunnies eyes, noses, and tails. Thanks Elaine! Sugar cookies with royal icing.

Hope everyone had a great Easter!
-J

Birthday Cookies

Well, it's that time of year again. Christopher's birthday is quickly approaching and it's time for more cookies! Last year Christopher and his cousin Austin, who also turned 2, had a joint birthday party and I did little A, C & 2 cookies and put them together as favors. Here are some of the cookies from last year. Since they were so small, only about 2 inches high, there were a TON! I was sick of cookies for a while after that party!

But this year I'm going to be doing number & letter cookies again because Christopher is having a Sesame Street themed birthday party- yay! Luckily, each child only gets 2 bigger cookies, so I'm not going to have to do quite as many this year. It'll be fun though!

Have a great weekend.
-J

Flip Flop Sugar Cookies

Here are some yummy flip flop cookies I did for a bridal shower a couple months ago. With sugar cookies I love using bright colors that really pop and draw your attention. I also love adding extra detail to cookies like the dirt on the dump truck cookies and the sand on these.

I hope everyone enjoys eating them as much as I love making them! Sugar cookies with yummy Italian-lemon royal icing.

-J

Got the Blues

Ok, this isn't really baking related, but I wanted to share this cool project that Christopher and I did. Inspired by the cool Idee Color thing, I took pictures of all things blue (C's choice) during a little walk we took to Compton's Market the other day. Put them all together and voila! A beautiful blue picture collage. At Gregory's suggestion I also took pictures of all things S, so here's our letter collage...


Christopher loved pointing out blue things, especially the bright blue soda at the market! And who knew there were so many blue cereal boxes? Maybe we'll make it into a continuous project and do a different color each week. This is a great little fun (and free!) project to play with your kids, especially if they're just starting to learn colors or letters!

If you haven't checked out the Idee Multicolor Search Lab you're missing out- it's so awesome! This links to my favorite color search: pink & purple. But you can do whatever color combination you want, up to 10 colors!

I will get back to the baking posts soon, I promise! Have a great weekend!
-J

A, B, C... don't you want to eat me!

Got the snack cookies done! I did letters for first names of all the kids for my son's preschool class and some extra stars for the parents. I lost my list of their names but I somehow managed to remembered them all and everyone got the right letter (whew!) except for 1 little boy who was new, but luckily he was happy with one of the extra A's. And because one of the little gir's named Cate was absent today, a new little girl named Cassie got her C!

Unfortunately, little peanut woke up sick on Wednesday so he couldn't go to preschool today. He missed all the kids enjoying the cookies as well as getting the chance to eat his own! But no worries, I set his aside and he'll get to enjoy his blue C cookie when he's feeling better. Sugar cookies with royal icing and colorful sprinkles- I just love how the sprinkles look!

decorating tunes: Taylor Swift's Taylor Swift album.