What happened to November! Where have I been? I can not believe that I haven’t made a post in a month, I was getting so good at being regular with my post too. Well, the good news is I have a ton of material to write about because while my blog was static I was busy. Mostly, what has been keeping me busy is cookies. I have made more cookies in the past 4 weeks than I have made in my whole life!
Im going to start my cookie presentations off with my most accomplished cookie design and order to date. 200 Nutcracker cookies for Joffrey School of Ballet in NYC!
Joffrey School of Ballet graciously contacted me for a second time to do cookies for their recital gifts, this time the order doubled and the complexity of the cookie quadrupled! While there are many characters and designs that can represent ballet and the Nutcracker suite, the Nutcracker himself is the most beloved. Even thought Joffrey asked for design examples, I knew that they would pick the Nutcracker and I knew that I could not scale back in his detail, every part of him is so important.
I ordered my cookie cutter from Coppergifts.com, my first order from them and it wont be the last. Their cutters are top of the line, thick copper hand formed with beautiful craftsmanship on the seam. As soon as my soldier arrived I put him to work!
I broke the tasks up by days in order to cut down on the feeling of being overwhelmed my the large order. Day one I mixed all the dough and set to chill, day two I baked and day 3, 4, 5 & 6 I decorated in batches of 50. I guess that seems like a lot of days to work on an order but I can’t work 9-5 like a job, I usually work during nap time and at night so I can concentrate. I put my husband and daughter (and MIL who was visiting during the tail end of my order) to work tagging and bagging the cookies. So a big thank you! to them for pitching in.
While each Nutcracker was the same design they all turned out with faces that my husband and I thought had different personalities and we had a good laugh many times about what type of “person” some of the cookies were. My favorite was when the eyebrows turned out a bit furrowed and he looked menacing.
Of course, in my eyes, each cookie had slight flaws. It would be impossible to make 200 perfect cookies, but overall I was very pleased at my craftsmanship and really proud to have pushed myself and taken on such a detailed design.
I love to photograph my work, this time I even got an over the phone crash course in how to use manual mode on my camera from my sister Jes at Captured By Jes. I got some really great shots and didn’t have to take a million pics to end up with one non-blurry picture to post, Thanks Jes!
Just after finishing my order we attended the Nutcracker at Lincoln center, while I have always liked the nostalgic Nutcracker story, this beloved character now has a special place in my heart.
So what else did I do in November? Well, I am super excited to share the cookies I donated to a bake sale at Dwell Studio, which the founder Christiane Lemieux personally thanked me and showed them off on their blog. I also did some cute ballet cookies for my niece’s birthday party. I still have to show off my daughters Halloween costume, I know its Christmas season but its really good I don’t want to wait a whole year to share! And I also have the full set of photos from my Halloween dinner party table that was featured on Amy Atlas. Wow! So stay tuned, I’ll try really hard to get those posts up soon :)
If you are interested in ordering these Nutcracker cookies, I have a listing up on my etsy shop HERE. Until December 19th I am available to make and ship out each made to order batch within 3 days of placing your order. There is still time to gift this wonderful cookie for a party or stocking!
nikkiikkin.com 