Amsterdam Holland Happy Birthday Cookies

These cookies with the Dutch flag and a rounded Amsterdam flag were perfect for my brother celebrating his birthday.

Chinese New Year Cookies

Today is Chinese New Year - Kung Hei Fat Choi!  Enjoy these beautiful cookies.  2013 is the Year of the Snake. Those born under this sign are sophisticated, analytical and wise!  A special thank you to Callye from Sweet Sugar Belle for her beautiful design ideas.

“A Box of Chocolates” Cookies

These scrumptious all-butter sugar cookies are decorated with royal icing and are disguised to look like the best quality chocolates.  Boxed and completed with a beautiful ribbon, ready for giving to your sweetheart.  Thank you to Pam of Cookie Crazie for the inspiration for this sweet treat.  Box of 16 1.5” cookies for $30.  

Rose Bouquet Cookies

This romantic set comes with 10 delightful cookies as shown (cookies range in size from 1” to 3”).  Win your lover’s heart with these delicious cookies for $18.

Super Bowl XLVII

To the shame of many sport fans, the only thing that interests me about the Super Bowl is the halftime show.  I also like these cookies!  And if I had to pick a team, it would be the 49ers because their logo was the easier of the two to recreate on a cookie!

Groundhog Day Confusion

As a child, Groundhog Day was always a confusing time for me.  I know it sounds silly, but for some reason, I only ever heard "If the groundhog sees his shadow, there are six more weeks of winter."  I didn't understand what would happen if he didn't see it - according the calendar, winter is actually more than six weeks after Groundhog day, so why were people always so gloomy at the thought of him seeing his shadow?  It took years before I heard that the alternative was an early spring.

So, will it be six more weeks of winter?  Or - for those of you who don't know the alternative - an early spring?  We will find out tomorrow morning and I am hoping for an early spring.

Birthday Cake Cookie

Happy birthday to my brother-in-law, Kevin!

Changing the Focus from Cakes to Decorated Cookies

My business started as an extension of my hobby; baking, and while I didn't know how it would turn out at the time, I started making a lot of cakes - weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, showers, etc.  I loved being part of the celebration for these exciting events but since I am being honest with you, often struggled to love the final product.  I have always considered myself a baker first, an artist a distant second.  The cakes I was called upon to do often involved intricate details, some of which I love to do (like sugar flowers), some of which send chills up and down my spine (sculpting figures, for example).  I tend to focus on every imperfection, despite the accolades I received.  Being a small business owner, I always took the work and sometimes worked myself into a frenzy trying to produce the best cake and all its elements.

Last summer I started making a lot of hand-rolled, hand-iced sugar cookies for my town's farmers' market, to much acclaim I might add, and loved the creative process involved.  I also marvelled at how I continued to improve my skills in this field and often was happy with the products I produced.  I have made thousands of these cookies for the market, as well as hundreds (at a time) for corporate events and weddings. This past Thanksgiving was a revelation - I cranked out 450 cookies over a couple of days, loving every minute of it, probably because ever since I was a child I have had a strange facination with production lines, and making these cookies makes me feel like a one-man production line!  I realized I would be really happy if I did decorated cookies all the time.  And so, for the last few weeks I have been seeking advice, speaking to customers and friends and trying to decide if this would be an appropriate move for Sweet Handmade and myself.

An important factor in deciding to change my business focus is time management.  It is extremely important to me to create a fresh product and since celebrations that require cake often take place on the weekend, my work week didn't usually start until Thursday and I would often find myself working Friday night and Saturdays.  While I haven't exactly been missing out on hot dates and parties, I am sad to be missing time with my family, as they are upstairs watching movies or hoping for family time.  With my daughers being teenagers, I recognize they won't want to hang out with me much longer and I don't like to miss these opportunities.  Decorated cookies have a different kind of schedule.  The decorating often takes a day or two and the icing takes up to 24 hours to dry.  This takes my work week back into the Monday to Friday range and frees up my evenings and weekends.

The final factor that I have been considering is the ability for these cookies to travel.  My niece in Nova Scotia ordered cookies for her sons' birthdays and I would have never considered any kind of cake for this journey.  These delicious cookies not only travel well, they also stay fresh for a couple of weeks.  This allows me to open up my customer base to anywhere in Canada.

So with this post, I am announcing that Sweet Handmade will now only be offering hand-rolled and hand-iced sugar cookies.  I will continue to offer birthday parties (which include both cake and cookies) because they are so much fun!  All cake orders I have accepted will be honoured, of course.  Over the next few weeks I will post pictures of some of my newest cookie photos, with inspirational ideas like cookie gift boxes, wedding and shower favours, birthday party trays, and corporate cookies.  Like my cakes, the possibilities are endless and with your support I hope to continue to grow Sweet Handmade!