My Friday Fix - Spring Flowers

This week's "fix" serves two purposes - it satisfies a craving for cookies and for spring!  Despite the calendar telling us spring is here, Mother Nature seems to have other plans for us with snow and freezing rain in the forecast tonight!  Today's cookies are 8 for $20.  There is one box of 4 available for $10.  Contact me to claim your box and arrange pick-up.

Get Better Soon Bouquet Cookies

Teresa's mom separated her shoulder (ouch!) and Teresa thought some delicious cookies would cheer her up.  An edible bouquet, if you will, complete with butterflies and a little reminder why she has to take it easy for the next little while, which we all know is so hard to do!

Happy Birthday Flower Cookies

These beautiful daisies and black-eyed susan cookies were sent across the country for a favourite sister who lives in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Lalaloopsy Cookies

Lalaloopsy is a line of rag dolls, popular since 2010.  Here is Crumbs Sugar Cookie in cookie form.  Her biography describes her as sugary sweet with a big heart.  She is well know and liked.  She likes to spend time baking and planning tea parties and inviting friends over for treats.  I had no idea we had so much in common when I baked and decorated her!

Cookies Celebrating the Grammys

Do your Sunday night plans involve the Grammys?  While award shows are not that interesting to me, I love a good musical performance (I thought the Band Perry was outstanding last year) and the clothes sucker me in every time!  Personally I would like to see Mumford and Sons, Adele and Deadmau5 walk away winners tomorrow night, but I must admit I will probably PVR it and fast-forward through a number of the performances while nibbling on some snacks, including these yummy cookies!

Birthday Bouquet Cookie

I created this birthday bouquet cookie for my sister-in-law, with royal icing ribbon roses. I wish I could have given it to her in person, alas she lives overseas in the Netherlands.  I love you, Ellen!

Birthday Flower Cookie

Happy birthday to my beautiful sister-in-law, Amy.

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!