Hey guys,

So sorry I have been missing! To be honest life caught up with me. I've been so excited about the coming holiday season. I can't believe it's right around the corner! If you're anything like me, making cookies as a gift is what the holidays are all about, especially if they are hand made! I have some really great tips on making my super yummy sugar cookies!

Well upon learning how to make and decorate sugar cookies, there were a couple of things that I had to learn just by trial and error. Hopefully with these tips and tricks, you can cut down the time it takes to make these beautiful sugar cookies!

Firstly you will have to gather all your ingredients. You will need :

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 & 1/4 cup sugar

1 large egg, lightly beaten

2 tablespoons brandy, or milk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Cream the butter and sugar together.

First off, do not let your butter come all the way to room temperature. This will keep your dough nice and cool and will cut down the time needed to chill the dough! Time is money people! Once nice and fluffy, add the egg, milk/brandy and vanilla.

Mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Once mixed well, combine the wet and dry ingredients only adding 1 cup of dry ingredients at a time to the wet.

Once the dough comes together, wrap with plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hour.

Now this is very important! Roll out your dough onto a silpat, or parchment paper on the bottom, and a piece of wax paper on top. This avoids putting any more flour in your dough and making the cookies tough. Plus, it avoids having to move your cutout cookies to the baking sheet. Yay, no more broken cookies!

Once the cookies are cut out, place them in the fridge for 20 mins before baking. Bake for 8-10 mins at 350 degrees.

Once out of the oven, let them cool at least 10 mins before moving them. This helps keep the shape.

The last and most fun step is to decorate as your little heart desires! Yay!

Hope this helps, and please feel free to ask any questions in the comment section below! I can't wait to start making my Christmas cookies this year. I will definitely post the recipes to some of the different cookies we will be gifting!

And until next time my sweet,

The Luv Baker

So this blog is a little insight into my "everyday" life. I work at a cancer surgery office with the most amazing group of people! My boss is the surgeon, and she is not only fun, and super talented, she honestly has a heart of gold. I am truly a luck lucky girl! Well bosses day was Oct 16th this year, and the girls asked me to make some cookies from the office. With inspiration from a couple past orders, I came up with these!

We drink coffee from an amazing nespresso machine in our office, and I always make her a heart In the foam whenever I make her one, so this one is inspired by our morning ritual..cappuccino!

These obviously were inspired by the classy fun we always have everyday! We call our boss Muah Muah. It's a cute nickname that stuck!

These included a trophy for the best boss ever!! She is such a talented surgeon, but she truly cares for every single patient, and I love to go to work just to be around such strong, smart women. They inspire me!

So to wrap it up, this December, I am going to visit Barcelona with these amazing girls, and I'm sure I will be inspired by all the gorgeous colors, flavors, and people! Till next time my sweet,

The Luv Baker

Well hello there! Hope you are doing well, and that your getting ready for Halloween and the many other holidays to come. How fun! I just finished some pretty cool birthday/logo cookies for the owner of a hip cafe named Caffe Afficionado. This cafe is so cool, they have baristas that make coffee art, and who doesn't love that! So take a look at the finished set, along side the original pictures! I hope you enjoy them! Till next time!

Hey sweets,

As promised, this week we had another order which included a portrait cookie! Yay! Oh how I love portrait cookies. This week's cookies are special for me as well! They were for the husband of my coworker, whom I love very much. And what do you know, her husband's birthday is the same day as mine! October 11th. Take a peek at the finished set..

Frank is a bird breeder and for his birthday, their family drove to a bird show to support his passion. His birds are really quite gorgeous!

To start off, I made a character drawing of Frank, along with the birds and the trophy that he wanted to win. I then started the process of making the transfers..

As always, I mixed the colors, and started on the bird transfers first.

Then, I started on the portrait. I always take time to let each color section dry before starting on the next section. This ensures that the colors won't bleed. I was also going to try using luster dust to make the trophy gold, so I piped the trophy with white icing so that I could "paint" on the luster dust after...

Once dry, I mixed up some edible shimmer dust that I found at my local craft shop, with some clear alcohol to make the "paint". Once I mixed the two together I knew something was off. The mixture was clumpy and sticky when I tried to paint it on. I have watched many YouTube videos on this technique, and my "goop" looked nothing like the shiny paint in the videos. I let the mixture sit for a minute as I filled in the hat on the portrait. It was late by this time, and me being stubborn, I painted it on my trophy in two sticky coats wishing it to work. As you can imagine as it dried, it dried clumpy... No good :(

It looked more yellow than gold, so I scoured the web to find a solution and low and behold I had bought the wrong kind of "dust". Who knew there was such a variety of "dusts"!?! So I rushed out to my craft store, and grabbed the last bottle of gold pearl dust!! Here is a picture of the bottle in case u want to try this technique..

Second time was soo much better!! I painted on the gold, and it was beautiful!!

I put the finishing touches and placed the transfers onto the wet cookies, and viola! A very personal happy birthday set!

Best part of it all, I got a text on Sunday saying he won first place and won the trophy for the hot pink bird!! Yay! I was so happy to make this set for someone so close. It was a ton of fun, but to hear that great news,makes it that much better! Thanks again for coming back and please share this blog with your friends! I would love to hear from you guys too, so feel free to ask questions and send over any ideas you'd like to see me make! Until next time sweets...

The Luv Baker

She asked me to do a pink boobie related theme, so throwing some ideas around we came up pink bras with the signature ribbon, and some hearts with the ribbon in the middle. I started the order and it looked a bIt like this..

Once we put the finishing touches on, they were perfect! As I was making them, I felt such pride in being a woman. I felt like there is nothing we can't do, or conquer. Even in the face of something potentially lethal, we can still be strong, and fight. We can still support one another and we can always remember the beauties that were taken too early.

So remember that October is breast cancer awareness month, and each one of us can help fight this disease. Whether it's donating your money, time or support, it does make a difference. You should definitely take a moment to find out what great events are being held in your area, and get involved. Or you can always donate by clicking this link >>> http://m.cancer.org/involved/participate/makingstridesagainstbreastcancer/.

Thanks again for stoping by! Next week I am doing another portrait cookie, so stop by to see just how it's done!

Sending my Luv to you all!

The Luv Baker

Wow! I never would have thought my little website would grow so fast! I started it as a place where my creations could have a home. A place where people could look and be inspired. Maybe someone would place an order or maybe it would just be for me. to be honest, I had no idea.

Well it turned out to be all of the above! It has been so much fun learning new things with each new batch of cookies, and I can't thank you enough for supporting me on this creative journey! I know how busy we all can be, and so it means so much that you continue to stop by to check out what I've been up to. I wish I could reach my arms through this screen and squeeze your cute little face but since that technology has yet to be invented, I can only say through watery eyes... Thank you! I don't know who you are, but to me you are my inspiration. So again and again, thank you for being interested, and thank you for continuing to support my sweet cookie dreams! Can't wait to show you what's cooking, so come back soon to see all the fun ideas I have for the holidays! Till next time!

Happy birthday Jason!! This past weekend was a super special one for me. I got to take a flight to beautiful Tennessee to celebrate my nephew's second birthday! Yay!

He loves Barney, and so my sister threw him a Barney Birthday bash that included pin the heart on Barney, hot potato, and lots of dancing kids. Of course I made the cookie favors, and they came out great! Keep reading to see how these Barney cookies came to life!

As always I start off with a sketch, and lucky me, I had help this time! My hubby helped pipe the outlines for me, and I did the details in the face. He is better than he likes to admit, and I was so grateful to get some help! Go hubby! Lol!

I love to pipe on the eyes of the characters. It's the point where I feel the character comes alive! For his party we made about 16 transfers. These included extras just in case.

Next we flooded the area with a darker purple, making sure to avoid the facial features.

While that was drying, I started on a bigger Barney for the cake. His hand is holding imaginary balloons that I would finish when he was placed on the cake. Since I was going to Tennessee, I figured I would take the transfers with me and assemble the cookies there.

Finally when most of the faces were dry, I finished the teeth by flooding white in the mouth/teeth area. Yay! They looked great! (A little tip about flooding small areas : be patient, and wait until the surrounding areas have dried. If not, you can get run in of the two colors. I also used a scribe tool to get the white into the tight corners).

I packed them with lots of bubble wrap and crossed my fingers as we passed through security to board the plane. We landed safely, with every one of my little Barney faces in tact! Success!!

We started assembling the cookies and in the process, some of them broke!! Oh nooo!! But thankfully I made extras and to tell you truth, you could hardly tell the difference one they were all done!

The party was so much fun, and we made such great memories! I had fun making these adorable Barney faces, & my nephew loved them too! And there you have it, Barney cookies! Thank you so much again for stopping by to check out my newest creations. I have some really fun stuff In store for the next coming months! Check back often and I hope you have a sweet sweet day! Till next time!

Happy Weekend you sweet sweet person, you! Hope your week was as fun as mine! Sorry for the late post, but I'm currently on vacay! Woohooo! I couldn't wait to share this special order with you guys. It was for a beautiful little girl's birthday! Not only is her name unique, her party was a carousel theme (so cool!).  I have to say I loved every bit of it! Take a look at her invitation. It was the inspiration for this weeks cookie set!

So of course the invite was perfect! I loved the colors, but it was not an easy job getting the colors right! Lots of mixing, mixing, and mixing again. Once I got the color scheme down, I decided to make an icing transfer of the horse to start.  After a couple of sketches, this is what I came up with.

I was soo happy with the transfer that I decided to make another horse in the two shades of mint. Here was an unfinished version of the transfer.

Once I did that, I thought of making the tent tops with the bunting banner. I didn't sketch this cookie, or do an icing transfer though. Since there were so many components to this design, I just piped it free-hand. I didn't have a cookie cutter that would work, so for the first time, I hand cut the cookie. Scary!! During the baking time, I closed my eyes, crossed my fingers, and asked the cookie gods for mercy. They kept their shape, and so now I know that I can hand cut a shape that is unusual by just making a stencil! Hurray!  Came out pretty good, huh?

Now onto the plaque cookie. I wanted to use the same colors and design as the invite, so I pretty much replicated the center of the invite, and wrote her name with my own freehand font. With my newfound confidence, I hand cut this cookie too. Success! I'm loving this color combination!

It was really starting to come together! I was getting pretty excited to see the final result. I created a sunburst of the green and pink and placed the dry transfers in the middle of some freshly baked cookies. This is the end result!

I had so much fun doing these cookies, and they came out so beautiful! I am soo proud of this set, and thankfully the birthday girl loved them too! Her mom is amazing at throwing her birthday parties, and I'm lucky to have been a part of making her party so beautiful. Here's a peek at how awesome the event came out! (Check out my cookies on the left hand corner! Yay!)

Well cheers to another successful week, and to growing my skill as a cookie artist! Next week's cookies are for my nephew's second birthday, and I can't wait to show you how they came out! Thanks again for stopping by and don't be a stranger, ya hear! Lol! Till next week,

Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog! Well another week flew by, and this past week was all about Mikey Mouse Club House! How fun!

This set of yummy cookies was made for a very cute little boy whose second birthday was made a little sweeter with these Mickey Mouse Club House themed treats! Take a look...

I was also asked to do a portrait cookie of the birthday boy's face, and to be honest, these are soo much fun! I get to use my drawing skills and get creative. Take a peek

And here they are individually...

Soo cute huh?? Hope you all are having a great week, and thank you again for stopping by! I have a very special order for next week that I can't wait to share, so check back to see my newest creations!! Luv always,

Happy belated Labor Day!! Hope you all had a great long weekend. Well another week has passed, and Whew! Is it me, or is this year passing by in super speed? I am soo excited to anounce that I made my very first logo cookies, and although I'm biased, I think they came out pretty darn good. Keep reading to find out how I made them!! ...

As always I started with a sketch, then I did a “royal icing transfer” (Yes I know it's a fancy name, but it is really just an icing drawing on a piece of parchment. Cookie lingo, lol!) The hard part is being patient. You MUST wait for it to dry before you peel it off. This was a bigger order than usual, so in the end I had 35 “royal icing transfers”. Take a peek…

Next, I baked up some yummy sugar cookies, and started to ice the background with an outline of orange and black. Ps: this is the easiest part! I then dropped the “transfer” into the middle. Wow! 35 cookies, and a very excited/tired baker later it started to come together!

Finally I painted on the finishing details and tada!

I packaged them in a pretty basket and Im so happy to say they were a hit!! I learned a lot this week making a bigger order. There are definetly things I can do to speed up the process, but all in all, I feel ambitious and excited about where my cookie dreams are going! Thanks to your support, I am dreaming big and I hope you join me on this sweet sweet ride! Till next week…