The Maze Runner Cookies

Did you know I have a famous cousin? I do! My cousin, James Dashner, wrote a book called the Maze Runner. On September 19, the movie based on his book was released in theaters!

My son Casey and I got to go to a sneak-peak screening with James down in Utah the night before it’s release.

Some of you might recognize my sister Kristie and her daughter Kira as two of my super-awesome CookieCon staffers. The giant boy in the back is my son, Casey, and the other two boys are Kristie’s. That’s James sandwiched between his proud-as-punch cousins.

I wanted to bring a congratulatory gift, but what do you give a guy whose dreams have literally all come true in the past months and years?

Cookies, that’s what!

That is the magic of cookies, don’t you think? Everyone loves cookies, and the time spent on making them pretty makes them special. Need a gift for the guy who has everything? Cookies! Need a gift for the guy who feels like he still has a long row to hoe in life? Cookies! Both will appreciate their gift equally.  Isn’t that amazing? I love it.

So I made some movie themed cookies. I made some tickets:

I used our Small Plaque cutter and just cut off the rounded parts at the top and bottom to make these tickets. Super easy, and cute. (The ticket numbers are the release date of the movie! You could do a birth-date if you were doing birthday cookies.)

Then I made a clapper:

I couldn’t figure out what shape to use for this, so I just cut it out by hand. It’s pretty easy to hand-cut a mostly-rectangular cookie. If you’ve never tried hand-cutting, that’s a good one to start with.

Some plain shimmery stars:

This is something that took me a while to learn, but I learned it from the best. I think one of Callye’s (Sweet Sugarbelle) strengths is her ability to mix in some easy, plain cookies with her fancier (time consuming!) designs. I used to think every cookie I made had to be detailed and extra-fancy. Then I realized, after watching what Callye does, that mixing in some simple cookies not only saves you buckets of time, but it also adds to the overall presentation. If every cookie is wildly detailed, sometimes it’s just too much to look at. These stars were outlined in black, filled in yellow, and sprinkled lightly with Rainbow Disco Dust. They probably took about a minute a piece! Wish I would have learned this sooner!

Then, what’s a movie without popcorn?

This was also hand-cut, but you could do it on a tombstone, or on the Ice Cream Soda cutter. Or you could just do it on a plain ol’ rectangle. (Remember that post where I was going to make 100 things on rectangle cookies? Haha… yeah. Well there’s another one for ya!) Actually the clapper could be done on a rectangle, too. It would just need to be closed, which would be equally cute.

I also made a cookie that was supposed to look like the cover of The Maze Runner book, but it pretty much looked terrible, so I’m not going to show you an up close and personal picture of it!! 😀 But here’s another lesson about decorating cookies. Even if you make an ugly cookie, when you mix it in with the cute ones, the general look is there! Here they are all together:

If you look closely at the book cookie in the middle, you will see that it looks pretty darned bad. But with the others surrounding it, it passes.

So anyway, congratulations to my cousin, James! I am so happy for all of his success! And for you, Cookie-Decorating-Reader, keep making cookies. They really are the perfect gift for just about any occasion.

Have a happy Wednesday!!

 

 

Notta Cookie and New Cutters Winners!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend! Just a quick post to announce the winners of our giveaway…

The following posts were selected randomly from all of the awesome and kind people who posted!

Congratulations Winn, Nancy Cavagnaro, Linda Jacobson, Sheila Mom to Seven, and Mera Tucker! And thanks so much to all who participated!

Winners, please shoot us an email with your address and we’ll send you a Notta Cookie and one of each of our four new cutters!

Thanks again!

Karen

Introducing Notta Cookie (and some new cutters!)

We have an exciting new product to introduce to you! As many of you know, Mike and I put on a big cookie convention in Salt Lake City called CookieCon, and I baked a lot (and I mean a LOT) of cookies for it so that the attendees can practice decorating. After the first CookieCon (fall of 2012), Mike and I were talking about how it’s a shame that there isn’t a dummy cookie for practicing, so that so much delicious butter and sugar wouldn’t get wasted practicing on cookies that would never get eaten. We even joked about a name for it… Notta Cookie.  You know, in case someone tries to eat it, you say “Don’t eat it! It’s Notta Cookie!” Haha!  And so the concept was born.

I kind of thought it was mostly a joke and a fun idea, but Mike was serious and determined. He started researching plastics and manufacturing. We found a local company to make the mold and another one to do the manufacturing. The mold was made with an actual cookie that I baked. We wanted it to be shaped and textured like a real cookie.

That way you’re practicing on a surface that is more realistic, and close to what you’ll experience using a real cookie. You can do anything on them that you would do on a real cookie– Piping, flooding, marbling, lettering, stenciling, painting, airbrushing… the list goes on as far as your imagination will take you.

You can either scrape the icing off while it’s still soft, or let it harden and pop it off with a metal spatula. They clean off so nice, and are dishwasher safe. They don’t stain either! When we got the initial sample of plastic, we poured straight food coloring (Americolor Gel Paste in Super Black, Super Red, Royal Blue, etc) all over it and let it sit for several days. It washed off very nicely, so we knew we had a winner.

We weren’t sure if they would be done in time for this year’s CookieCon, so I baked cookies again. As luck would have it, as soon as I was about done baking the CookieCon cookies, we got the call that the Notta Cookies were done! Darn. But we brought some with us anyway for people to try. Here are a couple of our awesome attendees practicing stenciling on the Notta Cookie.

(Kim and Beverly, you are both adorable! 🙂 And great job on your stenciling!)

The Notta Cookies were a hit! They are perfect for practicing all kinds of decorating techniques, and next CookieCon, I’m not baking as many cookies! Yay!!!

The Notta Cookie took almost exactly 18 months from concept to finished product, but it’s finally done, and you can start using them for your cookie decorating practice! You can find them here.

We also brought a few new cutter shapes to debut at CookieCon. We got them up on the site, and they are now available to everyone.

Check out the new KC exclusives. They are the Large and Small Fancy Sign and the Large and Small Thought Bubble. Incidentally, the thought bubble was this year’s Mystery Shape at CookieCon. Check out this link to see some of the crazy-creative things people did with it (scroll about 3/4 of the way down, past the regular sugar show entries to all the ones on the black background).

I’ve decided I’m not going to apologize for long (LONG) spells between blog posts. Because I’m busy, you know. I have a lot going on. So I’m not going to apologize for leaving you hanging. I’m not going to apologize for silence at the Karen’s Cookies Blog. Nope. Not going to do it. Because I don’t do that anymore. (So sorry!! I’m going to do better, I promise!!!)

No, instead of apologizing, I’ll just keep bribing you to stay tuned by doing giveaways. Comment on this post, and 5 lucky winners will be randomly selected (using Random.org) to receive one each of the new cutters and a Notta Cookie. Tell us what you think of the Notta Cookie and you’ll be entered! You have through Friday, Apr 4th to enter. Good Luck!

Sprinkles Giveaway Results!

Wow, quite a response! Nearly 850 responses! I wish I had enough sprinkles for everybody (and enough money to ship them all! 🙂 )

Thanks so much for entering! Here are the 3 winners:

Yvonne Horowitz
(Entered September 18, 2013 at 3:02 pm)
Comment: You can never have too many sprinkles!

Gayla G.
(Entered September 18, 2013 at 2:42 pm)
Comment: I love sprinkles!

Kim (Barefoot n Baking)
(Entered September 20, 2013 at 10:29 am)
Comment: Sprinkles!!! Who doesn’t love sprinkles??!!

Go ahead and shoot us an email through karenscookies.net with your addresses and we’ll get your sprinkles sent off!

Thanks again!

Sprinkles Giveaway!

It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything. Just so you don’t think we’ve gone away, here’s a quick, fun little giveaway!

You like sprinkles? How about a chance to win 32 different jars of sprinkles? Just comment below and we’ll randomly pick 3 different winners who will each receive a package in the mail with 32 jars of sprinkles!

I’m not going to list every single kind here… just know that you’re getting an awesome variety! And really… would such a list really make a difference on whether or not you enter? 🙂

So there you go. Get that comment in by Saturday the 21st, and we’ll use a randomizer to select the winners. Good luck!

Winners!

We have some winners! Thanks so much to everyone who entered. I loved reading about your moms, and I hope you all had a great Mother’s Day weekend!

The winners of the 4 new cutters are:

yesmakemylunch

My mom is amazing! There for us whenever we need her!!

Samantha B

My mom is one of my best friends. She’s supportive, but let’s me figure things out on my own. She’s there every time I need her. I hope my girls grow up to say the same about me!

vtay 1

Yay new cutters!!!!!!!!! My mom would meet us at the door after school with fabulous homemade treats…I had an idyllic childhood

Eileen Bartsch

I would love to win a set of these. Thanks in advance for the chance to win them. Eileen Bartsch

Elizabeth

These are FABULOUS!!!! I’ll definitely be buying these!!!!

Congratulations to the winners!  We will be emailing all of you shortly. If you don’t see an email and you’re one of the winners, give us a holler at contact at karenscookies dot net. Thanks for reading my blog, and thanks for sticking with me even though I don’t post very often! Cookie decorators are the best! Have a great week!

New Plaque & Scalloped Oval Cutters (and of course a give-away!) *Giveaway Closed*

We’ve had an unbelievable response from our square and rectangle fancy frame cutters and we’ve seen some AMAZING things done with them from so many people. So we came up with a couple of new shapes that hopefully will inspire as much creativity. Say hello to our new Plaque and Scalloped Oval cutters!

Just as before, we wanted to just come up with a basic shape to use as a canvas, and let the creativity flow from there. Also, people have loved the frame cutters for message cookies! So once again, here are a couple of new shapes to allow you to write just about anything you want – or just decorate them up for whatever occasion you’re decorating for.

So here are just a few ideas I came up with (And, ok— Mike helped!) Can I just point out that the Summers family wasn’t really established in 2000? My head said “1996” and my hand said “2000”.  By the time my hand caught up with my brain, it was too late. Does that ever happen to you?  But anyway, I digress. I”m so excited to get these cutters out there and see what you uber-creative geniuses come up with!

These cutters are now available on Karen’s Cookies if you’d like to try them out! Click here to see them. We have the Plaque in large and small, and the Scalloped Oval in large and small. To save you some money on them we’ve got a 15% off coupon for you as well! Just type in may2013 in the coupon code box on the shopping cart page and the coupon will be applied.

Ok, so let’s give a few of these away shall we?

Reply to this post by the end of the weekend (By end of day Sunday, May 12th) and we’ll randomly draw 5 of you to win a complete set of these four new cutters (Plaque in two sizes, and the Scalloped Oval in two sizes).

Since it’s Mother’s Day weekend, go ahead and tell me what you love about your mom. I’ll go first– My mom is my number one fan. She has always encouraged me to grow my talents and go after my dreams, (even if they’re a little looney), and she always tells me how proud she is of me even if I don’t deserve it. Thank you, Mom. I love you!

Good Luck!

Christmas JOY Cookies

I’ve had a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. I think it’s a combination of being busy,  no snow (really weird for this part of the country), and incredibly sad things going on in the world. Ironically though, I think it may be the saddest thing in the news that pushed me into the Christmas Spirit more than anything. I spent a few days being devastated by the news. It’s such an incomprehensible thing that happened. I have elementary school children so it is impossible to fully to comprehend the pain of those families. But at church this past Sunday we sang “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”, and it really touched me.  Here are some of the words by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

And in despair I bowed my head,
‘There is no peace on Earth’, I said”
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on Earth good will to men.

Then Pealed the Bells more loud and deep
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With Peace on Earth, good will to men.”

The true Christmas Spirit is about Hope.

And Peace

And Joy

It doesn’t take away the bad things that happen in the world, but it gives me hope that things can get better, and that there is more good in the wold than bad. So I made some joyous cookies to help get me into the Spirit of Christmas.

And it was fun.  And it made me happy. Did you see Sweet Sugarbelle’s 12 Days of Christmas project this year? She had 12 amazing decorators collaborate and each took one day. They were all absolutely mind-blowingly gorgeous, but I was particularly inspired by the 9 Ladies Dancing post by Sarah of Klickitat Street. She showed some cool ways to make lacy accents, and it made me get out my decorating bags and give it a whirl. I had so much fun with it. Definitely check it out and give it a try.

I’m giving them to my kids’ teachers this year in (cheap!) tins I found at Wallgreens.

I think they’ll like finding the layers of joy.

And I hope that all of you find many layers of joy this Christmas season.

“For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”  Luke 2:11

Merry Christmas!

Julia M. Usher’s Ultimate Cookie Decorating Series

We had the wonderful opportunity to meet Julia M. Usher in person last month at CookieCon. She was there as a sponsor and instructor, and did an awesome demonstration on cookie stenciling and 3D cookie design and construction. On top of that, she’s simply a very nice person. So when she told us she had some lessons available online, we were very excited to watch them.

Well, now that we’ve watched every second of each of her 16 video tutorials we can tell you that they are awesome!

The lessons are based off of her book “Ultimate Cookies”. But even if you have the book, it’s so useful to actually see the techniques she shows in video format. She covers a LOT of techniques too! She starts with the basics making icing, cutting out cookies, making parchment cones, her favorite tools, and then outlining and flooding. Then she gets into all sorts of fun stuff like marbling, stenciling, using rubber stamps on cookies, applique work, wafer paper, and more.

One of the coolest things about Julia and her decorating philosophy is that she’s a minimalist when it comes to tools. That means that she’ll show you how to get the very most out of very basic and inexpensive equipment. Seriously – you can spend a small fortune on tips, and bags, and couplers, and squeeze bottles… or check out all that Julia does with a sheet of parchment paper. It really is amazing – and VERY encouraging to anyone wanting to learn how to decorate. It really doesn’t take much to do some very beautiful work.

So these are videos you need to pay for to view, but they are WELL worth the very reasonable price. You can actually just pick and choose the individual lessons for a couple bucks a piece, but the price for the whole set is a meager $12.99. It gives you plenty of time to watch them too, so you can look back and review specific lessons at your leisure.

So yeah, this gets an easy two thumbs up from us. Karen’s Cookies has always been about being the best resource we can to budding cookie artists, so we simply cannot pass up the opportunity to give Julia M. Usher and her Ultimate Cookie Decorating Series our full endorsement and encourage you to check her out.

Julia’s video series can be purchased securely and viewed through Youreeeka.com. Click here or on the image below to check out a free preview.

CookieCon Swag Winners

Thanks to all who entered! And thank you for all of the birthday wishes for Lorene! She enjoyed reading them.  I hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving!  Here are the winners:

Michele J
wow! such great sponsors and it sounded like a super event. Definitely going to try and make the next CookieCon!!

Jennifer
Great assortment of goodies! Would love to be lucky enough to win some.

Leigh Ann Shaner
So bummed that I missed it, but will definitely make plans for next year!

Abigail Maartens
Congratulations on a successful Cookie Con! The blogging world has been singing your praises, you must be very proud to have brought all the amazing cookie people together. Would love to receive a bundle of goodies – will help cheer up the grey UK autumn!

Lindy
I would have loved to have gone to CookieCon, maybe next time! It is a long way from Australia, so having it somewhere easy to get to (West Coast) and plenty of notice on the dates would be great 🙂 The Homespun Christmas Tree is gorgeous and the pixie dust shaker is just a fantastic idea!!

Glenda Zavadil
Happy Birthday, Lorene!
I wasn’t able to attend CookieCon…bummer! What a great group of people gathering together to make cookies!! I can’t wait until I am able to attend!
Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Cookie Making!!

Sarah Reyna
how awesome is that. so nice of you to share…thank you…

Natalie Byrd
Didn’t get to come to CookieCon this year:( Hope to make the next one! Happy Birthday Ms. Lorene!

I’ve sent an email to all of the winners so look for that. If you’re on this list and you don’t see an email, email us at contact at karenscookies dot net with your shipping address.

I hope to see lots of you at the next CookieCon! We have scouted out venues, and will have more information about the next one soon, so keep an eye on the web site (www.CookieCon.net). We’ll put updates there as soon as we have some definite information.

Happy Monday!