Sweet Surprise Sugar Cookies

Most of you probably already know that I like making my fair share of edible crafts, but there is one thing I've stayed away from until now.

COOKIES!

I've certainly had the urge to try my hand at making some decorated sugar cookies. I'm constantly drawn to the amazing design work I see around the blogosphere, and have quite a few cookie sites amongst the favorite blogs I follow.

But for some reason I just haven't made that push to try it out. That is until I heard about the project that Amanda from I am baker was putting together.

If you didn't see it I'll give you the short synopsis (But you should still click over to see her amazing cookies and cakes). She put a post up saying that she would make 5 people (or families) who were in need of a sweet pick me up 2 dozen cookies each. She asked her readers to nominate someone they knew whom they felt was really in need of a cookie surprise.

After getting over 160 nominations Amanda realized that she couldn't just pick 5. All of the people who'd been nominated were going through hard situations and none were more deserving of being picked than others. But she also couldn't make and ship over 4,000 cookies herself.

That's when Amanda put the plea out to other bloggers. She asked her readers if they'd be willing to bake and ship cookies for a nominee who'd they be randomly matched up with.

I was so moved by what she had offered in the first place, and was now asking us to participate in, and touched by the spirit of so many people jumping in to to help that I wanted to pitch in too!

So I jump, piping bag in hand, and started baking/decorating.

In was some ways making the cookies wasn't as hard as I feared it might be. In others it was harder. For example, I hadn't really considered shipping. It took my brain an absurdly long time to catch on to the fact that sending cookies to someone in another part of the country meant I would not only have to figure out how to make decorated cookies... I'd also have to know how to ship the delicate little creations! I'm still holding my breath once in a while and saying a little prayer that they arrived to my nominee as cookies and not crumbs.

Thank goodness for all the wonderful tutorials out there to help me along!

Bake at 350's flood icing Tutorial

Cake Journal's Flood Icing Tutorial

Haniela's 10 second Rule for flood icing

I am Baker's How to pack and ship ccokies

Overall I'd say I definitely liked the process and will make cookies again. Most of all I'm glad I got to make them for someone who could use a sweet surprise. There really was no better reason to dive in and give this a try. I hope she likes them!