Mickey Mouse Cookies

Quick post: Mickey Mouse birthday cookies! Some of these are from Jack F.'s first birthday last fall, and some are from Matthew F.'s second birthday today.

Orange Creamsicle Ruffle Cake

I have a husband who loves sweets. Anything I make, he is always willing and eager to test out for me. He's had to watch some delicious items leave our house lately without a bite for him, so I wanted to fix him something special today! It didn't hurt that I also wanted to practice a new decorating technique...

This ruffle effect is very similar to the frills on the top tier of my Embrace Grace cake, but these are a little easier and less time-consuming. The cake is a box mix (Orange Supreme), and the frosting is a homemade buttercream with orange zest and a dash of fresh orange juice. So refreshing! Matthew says it tastes like an orange creamsicle. Yum!

Anyway, I'm going to go get a fresh little slice of Orange Creamsicle Ruffle Cake, with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream. Hope you're having a great day!

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. Zephaniah 3:17

Embrace Grace Cookies and Cake

Yesterday, I had the unique opportunity to help throw a special baby shower. Embrace Grace is an organization that reaches out and supports young single pregnant girls, and I've been a part of leading the Embrace Grace group at my friend's church for the past few months. Women from all over pitched in to meet the material needs for these girls and we had the best time showering them with gifts at the baby shower!

I knew I wanted to make some cookies for the shower, and I decided to use the opportunity to try out a few new techniques! I've been seeing some tutorials using spray color to add detail, and I knew some cute little blue stripes would look adorable on the baby onesies.

I bought these striped and polka-dot stencils at Hobby Lobby the other day, and I'm excited about how well they worked. I'm telling ya, you can learn anything through YouTube tutorials.

I was also interested in trying to re-create the Embrace Grace logo in cookie form. I'm super-pleased with how these turned out!

I've done several different styles of monograms so far, but the challenge with these was getting the gold color just right. I wanted the gold to shimmer just a bit, so I added some bronze luster dust to the icing.

I had planned to do the cookies from the beginning, but when someone mentioned cake, I jumped at the chance to practice some cake decorating too!

This two-tiered devil's food chocolate cake is covered in homemade buttercream frosting, with candy pearls for accents. The flower on top is made from melted white chocolate and was a seriously tricky thing to do (looking forward to trying this method again and working out some of the issues).
So... I make cakes now! I love cookies, but this was definitely a fun and exciting challenge, and cakes open up a whole new world of decorating techniques. Stay tuned for some upcoming cake shapes and styles!

Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2

Eagle Scout Cookies

I've had the pleasure to teach hundreds of teenagers over the past seven years. It was a delight to get to know my kiddos and figure out their unique personalities. Some were silly, some were serious, some were sweet - but in some students, you could see a deeper maturity growing, a desire for responsibility and a recognition of their potential impact on the world. That's one of the reasons I love the middle school years: they're right in the middle of childhood and young adulthood.

A group of my boys were involved in the Boy Scout troop that was based on our campus. These young men were marked by a higher level of personal responsibility, a willingness to try new things, and a healthy respect for authority. While I only taught them in seventh and eighth grade, our school is a K-12 academy, so I had the opportunity to watch them continue growing and succeeding in high school as well. I was therefore delighted when asked to make some cookies to celebrate four of my guys achieving the honorable rank of Eagle Scout!

Apart from eagle-shaped cookies, I had no idea what the logo for Boy Scouts looked like or what colors I needed to use. Pinterest and Google quickly helped sort that out.

I think the fleur-de-lis cookies are the most detailed cookies I've done so far - I was quite nervous about them at first, but they really came out better than I was expecting! These cookies were to be favors for the Eagle Scout reception, so I offered to individually bag them.

I really enjoyed making these. I'm glad I got to practice making the red stars on the fleur-de-lis cookies, and I love how the blue eye of the eagle ties in with the blue on the other cookies. Congratulations, Eagle Scouts! I'm so proud of all your hard work and dedication!

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Psalm 84:11

Roses and Monograms

As I sit on the couch with my husband to my right and my snuggly crazy dog to my left, I'm taking a moment to regroup. It's been a very busy week, filled with hospital visits and baby showers and long days and great people. Tomorrow it will all begin again, but right now... things are quiet.

One of the highlights of my week was getting to make a couple different batches of cookies. The first set was commissioned by Melissa for her daughter's birthday party with a rose garden theme. HOLY COW, go search Pinterest for vintage rose garden cookies and prepare to feel extremely inadequate. I was equally terrified and extremely eager to try these out.

I was short on time (remember, busy week?) and only managed to snap a few pictures before they went in the delivery box.

The monogram cookies above were so much fun to make! I separately piped the little roses onto wax paper and let them dry, then attached them to the cookie with a dab of icing. I had made little roses like this before, but this was my first try making the little green leaves. They actually stand up slightly off the cookie! I also spent some time playing around with the green color and learned a lot about what changes the hue in different ways.

I gotta admit, I was scared to try this large rose method. The trickiest thing about getting your icing to work correctly is the consistency: too watery and all the separate petals run together into a big blob... too thick and the icing won't come out of the piping tip. What I'm not showing you (and I wish I was able to, but I forgot to take a pic) was the five or six additional cookies that I practiced on first. I want to make a point in the future to document the not-quite-pretty cookies and remind myself what I learned through them.

More of the large roses! I'm not extremely pleased with the pink bows, but I think I know how to make them look better for next time.













At the same time I was decorating the rose cookies, Carter's baby shower cookies were in the oven. I knew I wanted a blue, gray, and white color scheme for them, and spent some time planning out the designs.

If you know Carter, you know that she is the monogram queen! Her oldest little boy is always sporting a cute monogram on his outfits, so naturally boy #2 should be heralded into the world with some monograms of his own. I used the online monogram generator over at Mark and Graham to play around with some different styles, settling on this fairly masculine-looking one. I was worried at first that the white lacework around the circumference would make it look feminine, but those strong blue block letters aren't backing down to understated frills.

This was my second time playing with sanding sugar, and I've decided that my trial pack of blue was a great investment. Time for a trip to Michael's or Hobby Lobby to pick up some different colors!

I originally had different design plans for these cute little onesies, but in the end I decided simple was best. Besides, who can resist a baby bowtie?














Well, the hubby's already headed for bed, so it's just me and Crazy Daisy to finish off this post. If there is something you've always wanted to try, or wondered whether or not you could achieve, I want to encourage you to go for it. Take the first steps towards learning a new skill. Research a new topic that interested you. Borrow a book on a fascinating era of history. God has given us this whole world to explore and discover, along with incredible brains to help us make sense of it all.

Have a great day :)

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Easter Cookies

Over the years, I've learned a lot about myself. I know my own tendencies and struggles. I know how easy it is for me to bite off more than I can chew. For that reason, I stayed away from Pinterest for the longest time. But once I moved from teaching to tutoring and began to have more time at home, I finally allowed myself to leap into the never-ending abyss that is Pinterest. Just as I suspected, I was immediately hooked. So many ideas! So many crafts! And... so many cookies!

I've heard people lament that the amazingly skilled and impossibly perfect Pinterest posts often make the viewer feel inadequate, but I tend to look at the beautiful pictures and see #craftgoals. I may not ever get as good as the people on Pinterest, but I'll never even improve my own skills if I don't try.

I was excited to have the opportunity to make these Easter cookies for my mother-in-law. She gave me very few specifics for what she wanted in terms of cookie shapes and colors, so I was able to be creative and try out some new Pinterest techniques!

I love the look of lacework with icing. There were quite a few Pinterest examples of lace-decorated Easter cookies, so I straight up tried to copy a few. Hey, imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? I'll get to designing my own lace later. Practice comes first.

I think this is my favorite cookie of this batch. It was so tricky to get those pin-prick dots in between the lines without a super-narrow piping tip, but it'll be that much easier when I do finally buy a size 0 or size 00 tip (hopefully soon!)

Another technique I wanted to try was the basket-weave pattern. I've been researching this method for a few weeks now, and what better opportunity to practice it than an Easter basket? For my first attempt, I think it came out pretty good. I also have a pretty good idea as to how I can improve it next time! I'm not so sure about the pink bunny, though... those blank white eyes just kind of stare into your soul... ugh.

And finally, this is the cookie that wins the "Least Satisfied but Still Looks Pretty Good" award. These little flowers were also a new technique, and while I learned quite a lot, I can't quite look past the flaws on this one. I'm eager to try again soon.

(Also, I'm noticing that this pic has my bare fingers touching the cookie, which is not typical for me. My policy is to use food-grade gloves as seen in the pics above when handling cookies.)




This batch also contained some tulips and bunnies, but I restrained myself and stuck with a single type of pattern/decoration on those.

Happy Easter, everyone!

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” Luke 24:5-7

Taylor Treats!

Hello and welcome to Alyson's confectionery adventure blog! On this site, I plan to feature some of the cookies and cupcakes that I've been working on, as well as provide a location for folks to reference my prices and availability. If you're here to inquire into a possible role as taste-tester, I'm afraid the husband has already filled that position.

General info:

• To order, please complete the contact form to the right or email me at alysontaylor8@gmail.com.
• My cookies, cakes, cupcakes, royal icing, and frosting are all homemade from scratch, while embellishments like sprinkles, fondant, or luster dust are store-bought.
• I don't do any gluten-free treats at the moment, but it is on the to-do list!

Cookies:

• Minimum of one dozen, maximum of four dozen
• Up to three shapes/designs per dozen
• $3 per cookie or $30 per dozen
• Add-on: cookies placed in individual clear plastic treat bags with customized ribbon: +$3 per dozen

Cupcakes:

• Minimum of one dozen, maximum of four dozen
• One flavor/design per dozen
• $3 per cupcake or $30 per dozen
• Add-on: edible toppers on cupcakes: +$5 per dozen
• Add-on: cupcake picks: +$5 per dozen

Cakes:

• Basic 4" round cake with two layers with basic frosting coat: $15
• Basic 6" round cake with two layers with basic frosting coat: $20
• Basic 9" round cake with two layers with basic frosting coat: $30
• Basic 9" cheesecake: $30

      Add-ons:

• Round cakes:
• Each additional layer: +$10
• Lv1 decor (sprinkles, drip, chocolate shavings, fresh fruit, basic buttercream embellishments, small fondant embellishments): +$10 per tier
• Lv2 decor (extensive buttercream piping on sides and top, plus any Lv1 decor): +$20 per tier
• Lv3 decor (extensive fondant, plus any Lv 1 or 2 decor): +30 per tier
• Chocolate flowers: +$10
• Cheesecake:
• Chocolate topping: +$5
• Fruit topping: +$10

I hope to continually add additional treats to my repertoire, like cake pops and French macarons. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated - the taste-tester thanks you in advance.

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. Proverbs 31:25