I recently came up with a new option for edible favors. For a while now I have been making decorated butter cookies like the tiered cake cookies shown in the two pictures below. I recently decided to try taking it to another level by creating a box made entirely out of sugar and using a decorated cookie as the lid.

To make the edible sugar box I add a little bit of water to sugar to make it the consistency of sand. Then I used various containers to mold the sugar like you would make a sand castle at the beach. I let the sugar hard for a few hours then turned the box over and hollowed out the inside. This is the difficult part since you have to be very gentle as to not break the sugar. Once it is left to harden over night it becomes very sturdy. This is a great way to make a completely edible favor. The box can be filled with M&Ms, almonds, or any other candy.

Today I had an amazing experience. I got to work with a charity called Smiles for Jake (www.smilesforjake.org). I met the founders of SFJ over the summer when I set up a booth at Rice’s Market in New Hope, PA. We immediatly clicked and they asked if I could make them a cookie to look like their logo. They had a custom cookie cutter, but hadn’t found anyone who would make the cookies. I never pass up a challenge so of course I said yes. They wanted the cookies to give out to their team at the Race for Hope in Philadelphia on November 7th. They also asked me to make a birthday cake for their late son who would have been ten years old on November 6th.

So this morning my husband and I drove down to Philadelphia with 100 “super” cookies and a birthday cake in honor of Jake. I even joined their Team Superman and ran the 3.1 miles. I got to meet some amazing people and I look forward to working with them again soon to help with the cause. Please go to their website and read about their amazing son and their amazing charity that they started in his memory.

I had to do a Valentine’s Day demo at Michael’s Last weekend. I made some heart shaped sugar cookies in various sizes. Instead of using the flood-in icing technique I have done in the past I used modeling chocolate in pink, red, and white to decorate the cookies. Modeling chocolate is made by melting white or dark chocolate and then adding some corn syrup. The result, once cooled, is a chocolate dough that can be molded, cut, and shaped any way you can imagine. You can do with it many of the same things you can do with fondant and it tastes really good because it’s CHOCOLATE!

Besides modeling chocolate I also used some royal icing to make a cornelli lace design on some of the cookies, and colored sugar also adds a nice touch.

For my second demonstration at Michaels Arts and Crafts I decorate a variety of Holiday cookies to look like ornaments as well as snowflakes. A combination of Royal Icining and Color flow was used to get the various effects. The gold and silver accents were done with luster dust mixed with a little lemon extract and then brushed on the dry royal icing.

This weekend I had to give my first demonstration as a Wilton Method Instructor at Michael’s Arts & Crafts. The theme of the demonstration was Halloween treats. I made some pumpkin, ghost, acorn, and leaf cookies cookies. The cookies were decorated by first outlining them in stiff royal icing. Once that was dry they were flooded in using very thin royal icing. Once the flood-in icing was dry enough some detail, like the eyes and mouth of the pumpkins, could be added using medium-stiff royal icing.