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!

CookieCon Sponsors and Giveaway! *Giveaway Closed*

Mike and I recently got back from hosting CookieCon 2012. It was so much fun! We had such a great group of cookie-loving people together for a weekend of cookie decorating and cookie-art appreciating! I will do a post about the actual event soon, but I wanted to give a huge thank you and shout-out to our awesome sponsors. One of the things that made it so much fun was the their amazing and generous support.  Here’s a peek inside the goody bags:

We had a few left-overs from our goody bag assembly, so we’re going to give away some bundles of goodies to those who weren’t able to attend this year. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First let’s talk about what was in the bags!

Mandy Wallington from Kool Cookie Cutters came all the way from Perth, Australia to attend CookieCon , and she brought with her gum leaf cookie cutters, handmade in Australia!  So awesome!

Julia M. Usher came and demonstrated how to use stencils, (among other awesome things! Thank you Julia!!). Designer Stencils is THE place for culinary stencils, and they donated a stencil to every attendee. This one can be used for brush embroidery. So cool!

Along with the donation of one of their awesome projectors as a grand prize, Kopykake donated a gift pack of frosting sheet decals to everyone. We had fun playing with them during open decorating.

American Tradition Cookie Cutters sent cookie cutters for everyone! They are such a great company and have a fun selection of high-quality cutters. Check them out!

Patrick from Plastics in Print sent a cutter for everyone. Their custom cutters are very reasonably priced and they also have some really fun stock shapes.

Fondarific sent a sample of their delicious fondant for everyone to try. Did you know they have fondant in lots of fun flavors? Buttercream, mocha, grape, peppermint…. just to name a few. It is great fondant!

Fancy Flours sent some really fun wafer paper sheets for everyone. The attendees got to play around with them during the open decorating session, and it was so much fun to watch what they did with the wafer paper. Very fun! Have you tried wafer paper yet?

Kip and Connie from BRP Box Shop came and participated in CookieCon. They were such a fun addition, and we were so happy to have them there! In addition to donating an awesome grand prize (A BRP- Branded BIKE!), and a Half-as-Grand second prize (a BRP-Branded UNICYCLE!), they also gave generous gift packs of their boxes and bags.  Look what was in there!

Amazing, right? If you haven’t checked out BRP Box Shop yet, do yourself a favor and head right over there. They are a great company with the prettiest boxes available. They also debuted a limited-edition Ornament Box and gave one to everybody. Go check those out before they’re gone!

Americolor Corp (THE place for the best food coloring out there) donated a bottle of their awesome Soft Gel Paste coloring to everyone.

This one blew everybody’s mind. Nielsen-Massey Vanilla sent a 2-oz bottle of their Madagascar  Bourbon Vanilla to everyone! Such a fun surprise and generous addition to the goody bags.

In addition to a grand prize of a $150 gift certificate, Country Kitchen Sweet Art donated a fondant impression mat to everyone. The attendees had lots of fun playing with fondant and impression mats during Open Decorating.

Sylvia from Foose Cookie Cutters donated so many fun goodies! In addition to an awesome gift basket loaded with cutters, she also donated more than 20 gift sets of cutters to be given away, and a set of adorable mini cutters, note pad, and coupon for the goody bags.

Karen’s Cookies (that’s me!) donated a little gift pack of fun stuff to each attendee. Here’s what was in it:

We included both of Pam (Cookie Crazie)’s new exclusive cutters— the Homespun Christmas Tree and the Cupcake that we are selling through our site. We also included a PME tip, a disco dust, a pixie dust shaker, and a boo-boo stick.

I don’t have a picture of the next one because we used all of them in the goody bags. Kee-Seal donated two of their disposable decorating bags to each attendee, along with some gift packs of their bags to be given as prizes. They are great bags! Definitely check them out.

So that was what was in the bags! Although this post is dedicated to the gift bag items, I want to also mention the other awesome sponsors we had. They were just as generous, and donated prizes that were not in the gift bags:

The Cookie Cutter Company

The Cookie Thing

Spices, Etc.

Copper Gifts

Julia M Usher

Sweet Cherry Gift Shop

A huge thank you to all of the generous sponsors of CookieCon! You helped make it an awesome and memorable event for all those who were in attendance.

Now for those of you who weren’t able to attend, we have a chance for you to win some of this fun stuff! We don’t have complete goody bags left. We just had a few extras of some of the items. So what we are doing is giving away “bundles”– kind of like a grab-bag. Comment on this post and we will randomly choose 8 of you (through Random.org) and send you a fun bundle of  goodies. Please comment by Wednesday, November 21 at midnight (wherever you are!). International entries are welcome. I will try to get the winners announced on Thanksgiving, but I might be too sleepy from all the carbs…. so I reserve the right to announce the winners on Friday. 🙂

We’d love to offer these prizes to people who didn’t already get this stuff from CookieCon.  So to be eligible, please indicate that you didn’t make it to CookieCon this year.  And you can also feel free to wish Mike’s mom, Lorene, a happy birthday! Have a great week!