The Cookie Life of Pi
This year was a once in a lifetime opportunity to make cookies to celebrate Pi.
Why?
Well, Pi = 3.141592 … and so on. An irrational number, but there’s nothing irrational about this post.
A few weeks ago was March 14, 2015. So on 3-14-15 at 9:26 Math lovers everywhere celebrated Pi and Albert Einstein’s birthday.
When I was in school my favorite subject was Math. I loved it! So, I was delighted to say “yes” to the request of making cookies to celebrate the special occasion. Here we go..
I love this first cookie. Super Pi to the rescue! Can you see it? I showed the cookie to my husband before writing on it with the black edible marker and he just stared at it. He couldn’t tell what it was. Oh boy! “Did I make a mistake with this design?”, I thought. My husband was just focusing on the gold color, but if you see the red you get it. You do!
This next cookie I also like very much. You need to look close and try to figure it out. I told you about the date (the black cookie). Try to read the blue and the white cookie.
I ate some pie and it was delicious! Yes… it is funny.
Here are a few other designs that I enjoyed making. Pi is infinite, so it was only appropriate to have the symbol somewhere in a design.
I have another fun cookie for you. This is a notebook with fun uses for the word/symbol Pi so you can figure them out.
Whenever I make a platter of cookies I always try incorporate some simple, but pretty cookie. I call them “fillers”. Here are some of those simple cookies, balloons and other assorted mini cookies with Pi references.
Black boards with math teachings, notes and drawings. Black boards because the cookies were for Mathnasium, a math learning center.
One final look of this cookie platter. This was one of the big cookie platters that I offer with over 25 cookies. This is definitely the only platter I will ever make for such an occasion as we will never be able to celebrate this same event. No tears please…
Happy birthday Albert Einstein and happy Legendary Pi Day.
I believe Mathnasium is a franchise and they would locations all over, but if you are in the Des Moines (West Des Moines) area, follow the link for more information about this amazing learning center.
Valentine’s Day Cookies 2015
The first hearts I call “Abstract Hearts”. They are hand painted and they were an ‘experiment’. That means that I messed up a lot of cookies before I was happy with the finished hearts.
I fell in love with an image I saw online while searching for ideas. A set of hearts full of coordinating colors, but no pattern at all. The colors looked brushed and spotted at the same time, if this makes sense. I took the brushing idea and the result is what you see below. They looked very dull and opaque after they dried so I sprayed them with edible glitter to make them shine.
Are you familiar with Burlap fabric? Burlap is a fabric material used for sewing and creating home decorations. The next hearts are decorated with the idea of trying to recreate the texture. Let me tell you… decorating these puppies was so time consuming and my hand was cramping after working on just a couple of them. The lines are meant to be really tight and close. I might have achieved the burlap look in one or two cookies, but my hand was numb with all the piping. The red hearts were some of the first ones and the brown ones… some of the last. I’m sure you see the difference.
The flying hearts are next. I worked on these cookies last year, you can see them here.
Burlap was one type of fabric design. This next hearts are decorated with a style called Filigree. Filigree consists of curved lines connected to each other and because it is typically used in jewelry or metal pieces in either gold or silver.
You may wonder why there is a musical theme to this year’s cookies. I worked on this set for a musical Valentines piano recital offered by children taking piano lessons from Pied Piper Studios (Kindermusik). My daughter participated this year so it was a very special Valentine’s event for our family.
Musical notes, symbols and pianos were some of the designs. You can see last years music Valentine’s Day cookies here.
Two more designs to show you. I love birds and this year I wanted to incorporate some sweetness inspired by these beautiful creatures. These cookies were some of my favorites.
Here are some teddy bears that may require a little bit more attention next time. there’s no connection between the heart and the arms, but they are still cute. What I like about them is that they have texture to them, like fur. It might be hard to see it though in this picture. I do like the pandas, they are super cute. They can always get cuter!
Here is the treat table. Besides the Valentine’s Day cookies, I also made rich chocolate cupcakes topped with a dark chocolate buttercream and pink vanilla cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream.
Another sweet treat I made for them were Cake Balls. Flavors included chocolate and chocolate ganache buttercream and vanilla with dulce de leche buttercream. Those are delicious!
My daughter Lillie did a wonderful job playing her piano pieces and she delighted the seniors with a couple of songs as well as the other children.
Valentine’s Day (Cookies) 2012
I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine’s Day and spent time with friends and/or loved ones. It is truly a day for friendship and certainly for love (innocent and mmmh, wild).
This year we made over 80 Valentine cookies in al different colors, shapes, and sizes. This year is I focused more on ‘sets’ of cookies. I took so many pictures that I instead of showing you 100 of them, you’ll see some pretty photo collages (well, I think they are pretty).
We start with the Love Birds Quilted Pink and Gray cookie set (yikes, what a name….!).
This particular set of Lovebirds went to a lovely couple engaged to be married in October. Congratulation on your engagement Josh and Katie!
Those cookies went to Lillie’s teachers. She wrote their names on the cookies to make them extra special (Mrs. Howard & Mrs Finny). Thanks for your hard work!
Next!!!
I have been waiting so long to make the next set of cookies. Valentine’s Day was the perfect excuse to make sexy cookies and I really loved the way they turned out. The inspiration for those was real lingerie (NO! I don’t own them).
Need I say more?
Next…
Back to the cute and lovely…. Here’s a bunch of hearts in many different shapes and sizes, colors and patters. Loved them!!
Hearts with wings.
A dozen cookies went to my niece’s (Laysha) teachers for Valentine’s Day. Another dozen went to my other niece’s (Alexis) teachers. They both took some of those corset cookies and they loved them!
Next…
My sister works at this company called Proteus and the were having an after Valentine’s Day party. They ordered Valentines cookies displaying their company logo on a big heart cookie.
There are actually more to show…. I’ll do this on another post.
For more pictures visit my Flickr Page.
Thanks to everyone who ordered cookies for Valentine’s Day. I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did making them.
Christmas Cookies
I am way behind on posting and updating the blog. I have many Fall cookies to show you, but I haven’t gotten the chance to edit the pictures to write the post.
Christmas is right around the corner and it’s my favorite theme for decorating cookies. Christmas cookies can be so fun and colorful and because there is a huge amount of cutters out there, the possibilities are endless.
Here are some cookies I made for my daughter’s Godfather’s mom’s nieces and nephews. Did you follow that? I even got confused writing it (I hope it is correct).
These bears look like they had too much pumpkin pie during Thanksgiving!
One of these houses is ours. Trust me, we don’t have any more beautiful flowers in front of our window.
It’s weird to be posting Christmas cookies before my Fall cookies, but I guess I still have time since winter is not here yet (although it feels like it already here in Iowa).
Have a Sweet Treat today!
We again had the opportunity to make treats for one of my favorite family events, Kindermusik’s Fall Family Music Night. It was only appropriate to make spooky treats since the event was held on Saturday 29th, just before Halloween.
Here are some of the cookies we prepared for them this year.
I’m not a huge fan of candy corn (although I can eat a few of them without complaining), but I love how they turned out in cookies.
I love this cookie because it is so versatile and I can make for pretty much every occasion.
The next one was also one of my favorites. I don’t have the spider web cutter, but the circle cutter worked. I wish I would have made it in different colors. The spiders (on the webs) look more like mmh… ticks (yikes!). I’ll fix that next time.
My mom loved this particular cookie design. Eye catching uh? It made a few people wondered how we made that.
I love these friendly creatures. Adorable and cute ghosts.
What’s Halloween without some witches? Here we have the boots/leggings and the hats. Maybe I’ll work on the entire body next year.
And just to make it spooky enough for the little ones…
I was never happy with the “B”… I just couldn’t get it right.
The family night was a lot of fun. It was all about sharing a music night with the whole family and learning while doing it. Let me share the experience with you if you have never been to one of them.
Parents and children gather in a spacious room with the very awesome and talented Jenn Horak leading everyone on a musical journey of fun and games. Jenn either plays music or sings to everyone to make kids become active while they jump, sing, dance and share musical instruments. They may not know it, but children are learning and developing other skills (social, musical, and more).
Caregivers become active too! Grown ups get to participate along with the kids on this musical event as they also get to sing and dance with their little ones.
If you are interested or just curious about Kindermusik, visit their website. My children have benefited tremendously from this learning experience and I’m sure yours will too. My son Noah is almost 3 years old and he absolutely looks forward to Saturdays for his music classes.
We got very positive feedback from the cookies we made this year. I just feel bad that I ran out of them in the end!
Check out last year’s event here.
Enjoy a sweet treat every day!