Apparently I'm An Artiste

As you know, I've started what was originally just going to be a cake-decorating business, You Take The Cake!, but it has morphed into an all-around dessert and treats thing. Which is fine by me. I can't be confined, you know. I'm just that big a deal. Pretty soon I'll be walking down the street and people will be yelling out, "Hey, Smelly!" And I'll give my pits a little sniff, because, you know, but no, it'll be because me and my fabulous cakes and desserts and treats and stuff are so. damn. good.

Whoa. So not where I was going with this post. Which, by the way, is brought to you via the magic of Firefox, since IE seems to be the Typepad picture-uploading problemator, and not Typepad itself. Ugh. So back to my original subject...

It all started when someone responded to my cake-biz post on Craigslist, asking if I could make iced cookies for her daughter's birthday party in a few weeks. Sure, I can do that. I've been making cookies since I've been old enough to turn on the oven, after all. Then she came back a day or two later, asking if I could make some cookies for her mom's new errand-running business, as a present to her mom for Mother's Day.

Sure, ah, well, what exactly did she want?  Turns out she wanted her mom's logo, which was this:

on some kind of truck cookie. Well. Now. That's a whole different ball of wax, kids. I'm not all fancy-schmancy with the equipment (though, oh, how I would like to be), so I told her, em, uh, yeah, I don't know if you would like me to actually draw the logo on there and see? She wanted to see what I could do, so while I was putzing around making some practice fondant roses, like so:

I drew (with edible marker, natch) the fondant mock-up pictured at the top. I figured she would withdraw her request on the spot, but she was actually delighted! Whaa? Okay, then, so she came out and signed her work order and put down her deposit, and it was a go. Yippee!

So last night, I finally got off my arse and got started, since she's picking them up at noon today. Baking the cookies themselves went smoothly, but any ol' monkey can do that. (Thanks to MIL, who gave us a box of 101 cookie cutters about 9 years ago, I already had a truck one. Woot! Those 101 cutters have come in handy on about a billion occasions.)

After outlining and "flooding" the cookies with icing, I had nothing to do but sit around and wait. And wait and wait and wait. You're supposed to let them sit overnight, but after about four hours, I lost patience. Fortunately I had made a few extras, so if I goofed up, I could afford to lose a couple. I did, too. Not on the drawing, but because I leaned on a cookie and cracked the nice crystallized icy-icing coating. Can't fix that! (Rob suggested spackle, but Client's Mom's customers probably wouldn't enjoy that so much.)

Just in case those didn't turn out well, I made some "Go Mom, You're Awesome" cookies as a back-up for the Client, so she would still have a gift to give her. She had okayed that, too. But we've eaten several of these, actually most, so hopefully she likes how they finally did turn out!

And this is them. Each one painstakingly drawn and painted in by hand, with the marker and with custom-mixed icing paint, details dotted in with toothpicks. It was a long, long process, and I definitely low-balled myself on the cost. I'm half-hoping she comes back and orders more - and my cramped hands are half-hoping she doesn't!

Maybe I'll be back later with more stuff I've been making lately - or you can just go look at the pictures on the shop website! Or maybe both, I've been quiet lately.

Fin.