Happy 50th!

Don't you love a birthday party? This weekend one of my cousins turns 50 and is having a bash right around the corner in San Diego. It is also college volleyball kick off so, I am heading to the courts. I am sorry I won't be there because these are the cousins I spent my summers with at Lake Delavan. Paul is the oldest in his family and was always the serious one. He made mazes and read lots of books, I guess that it is no surprise he is a doctor today. His sisters Mitzi and PJ were my buddies and we ran around together for weeks. The younger boys were Pete and Phil, and if we were desperate for money to go buy cinnamon toothpicks, sweet tarts or Pixie sticks, we would hide Pete's security blanket. It was worth a quarter or so in reward money. I'm sure my Aunt Tootsie was aware of our operation, and a couple of quarters would send us on the mile trek to the candy store. We really weren't terrible kids, we just had a mild sugar addiction! We even all went back to the lake for a reunion when our own kids were little and it sure was fun, but not quite the same as those days of the 70's. So when my cousin Patti (she was PJ, I guess she out grew that) sent me an email asking to order cookies for Paul's birthday, I was feeling a little silly for not thinking of it myself. Shipping cookies always poses a little problem with timing because you can never really count on the post office. And they must dry thoroughly before stacking them. So between my real job which has been a lot of hours and other cookie orders, I whipped up a few dozen cookies for Paul. Now these are not works of art. These are happy birthday cookies. This is not a black tie party, but a party with many family, friends and kids coming. I told Paul to think of the cookies as a collaboration between his sister and cousin. No guesses who the brains of the operation were all along! I am happy Patti thought of it, and I will be there in spirit! Hope 50 is fabulous!

It's A Boy!

So real quick, I did a boy shower recently, and I loved these cookies. The more I make the more I am convinced that I like them simple. Blue and white was she wanted, no polka dots (darn, I love polka dots) and no glitter. Okay, I kept the disco dust away!
And since I had a little leftover dough, I had some random shapes for a few miscellaneous events. Pretty straightforward, nothing exciting, just "eatin'cookies". Of course I made one special one lest someone forgets about me.

Super Hero Cookies/No Kid Hungry

Did your kids have a warm healthy dinner last night? Yea, mine too. But sadly there are a lot of kids going hungry right here in the U.S. This past weekend I had the privilege of working at my favorite kitchen store and manning the sugar cookie decorating station. For a $5 donation, kids (or adults) could decorate 2 Marvel Comic Super Hero Cookies. It was a great event, albeit a little messy! But having done many sugar cookie classes in my home, I know you will only have to chase those wayward sprinkles on the floor for a year or so! And thankfully, royal icing washes out pretty well.

All the proceeds go to No Kid Hungry/Share Our Strength. This website is full of information on how you can help, and for the foodies out there, there are many, many ways. Please take a look and pledge your support. You can participate in area events, host a bake sale (up my alley!) and simply make a donation. There are also products for sale at said kitchen store that send a portion of the sale to No Kid Hungry. So there are many ways to help.

So on to the cookies. My favorite kitchen store sells the cutters, they include Hulk, Spider Man, Iron Man and Captain America. I baked plenty of all, but I was thinking Spidey was still the fan favorite. Wrong! Captain America flew out of the cookie bin for decorating, and perhaps that is because there is a new movie and "stuff" to promote it. The boys also really like my Hulk cookies with the tinted dough. I used a little green and black in the dough and made decorating him much easier! But regardless, we had plenty of cookies and lets just say an abundance of icing! Kids like to decorate their own cookies. One little girl just loved layering all those colors and the sprinkles and wow, those little cookies were 2" high. Her dad calmly suggested that she would be more comfortable eating the cookies in the store than in his car! One little boy took half an hour to decorate one cookie, and did an amazing job. His Grandpa was astounded and didn't know that this little boy had such patience and artistic eye. I was impressed. And of course lots of little ones showed up in their t-shirts and masks of their favorite super heroes. It was a fun day. When all was said and done, I decorated a few myself. Yes, Ironman is missing. I dropped him, so he did not make it to the photo shoot. Oh well. What are you waiting for? Get in there and bake, AND make a difference!