Last October, I was asked by a former childhood friend if I could bake some christening cookies for her client. The question came out of nowhere, the order was unsolicited. I asked her--- how did you come up with the idea of approaching me for this? I wasn't selling any of the things I was baking, just kept posting them online. She said, she had simply assumed because of my baking posts on facebook. That amused me to bits.
So I took that as a challenge, to try to learn decorating cookies with royal icing. I was horrible at it. To quote my husband, the stuff I did looked like "a child's doodles" on cookies baked in Home Economics class. Ouch. That hurt. I had wanted to give up. I had wanted to cancel the order and be up front about my capacities--- I wasn't a pro at this, my hands weren't steady enough, I couldn't control the icing, couldn't make them obey what my mind wanted to do.
But my husband taunted me--- "and you kept saying baking was what you really wanted to do. now you're quitting?" THAT did it for me. I was challenged. I wanted to show him that I really loved what I was doing, that I was serious about baking and wasn't going to quit any damn time.
My first decorated cookies, October 2014:
Pretty awful, right? The lines were wobbly and uncertain, the line weights were inconsistent, the colors were bland, and overall...just very madumi--- not very neat to look at.
But from that very first order, I didn't stop practicing--- on the job, so to speak. After 2 or 3 orders, my piping started to improve. Thanks to google, youtube, and other available tutorials and informative sources online, I rapidly learned a lot about decorating cookies with royal icing and applied what I learned to the cookie orders I'd been getting.
So that showed my husband that his wife was no quitter--- and apparently he seemed convinced, so much so that he actually JOINED me. Last December, we unofficially put up an online cookie shop , The Sugar Mommy Cookiery. December was a great time to begin this kind of business, with people giving all kinds of goodies as gifts. I was juggling baking cookies with the day job, and with the help of my husband--- who learned how to bake and fill my outlined cookies--- I've managed to keep the juggling going (many times though, sleep, social life, and even time with our daughter had to be sacrificed just to meet the deadlines).
But all in all I'm thankful, because I've found something I am truly passionate about. I can decorate cookies all day and all night, really. I love doing it so much. So many designs I want to make. So many techniques I still want to learn. We always have orders (thank God!), sometimes even two or three in a week (and for us, that's quite a lot already---since we're a two man team and minimum order is 40 pieces)
Our cookies prices start at PhP 35/piece (simple design, less than 3 inches). And each and every piece is made with lots of love. I do this because it's my passion, and when you do something because of passion, I believe it will reflect on the work.
So, from here on, I think you'll be reading a lot about decorating cookies with royal icing. I'll regularly post pictures of our cookie creations, and if you are in the Philippines, you may place your orders here, too.
I will also post tips and "learnings" I've had from this ongoing cookie adventure, for readers who want to learn how to decorate cookies with royal icing,
So let the Decorated-Cookie Chronicling begin! :-)
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