I've been working on a platter of cookies for a fundraiser taking place Tuesday, May 22 at the local high school where our 16 year old great-niece is involved in choir. Every year for several years now, the choir hosts a dinner theater fundraiser event called Cabaret. This will be my first year attending (and sadly our niece won't be singing) but my understanding is that essentially a talent show. The Choir Booster program (of which I just became secretary for the next 2 years - YIKES) puts on the dinner for $10/plate, a dessert auction (dessert is not part of the menu so if you want dessert you bid on something) and this year there will also be a silent auction of gift baskets and donated items. The students provide the entertainment and the dinner service.
Now, I like desserts as much as the next person but as I was trying to decide what to donate for the dessert auction I realized that although I really love to cook and bake, I'm not really a dessert maker. True, I bake cookies... a lot actually... but I only rarely make cakes, pies, cheesecakes or any other dessert items and I certainly don't make anything spectacular that anyone would bid competitively on for their dessert.
So... I decided to bake and decorate cookies. It's what I do. I thought a lot about the theme and finally placed an order over at Karen's Cookies for some new cookie cutters as well as some other goodies I needed to help my design ideas work (don't worry, I'll show you), namely black and white gel food coloring, boo-boo sticks, treble clef and piano cookie cutters to go with the musical note cutter I had purchased previously (I'm sorry, I don't remember which supplier I ordeed that one from).
It's taken almost a full week to get these cookies baked and decorated. I used this chocolate roll-out cookie recipe found on the Lila Loa blog, this recipe for Royal Icing (I use the 1/2 batch recipe) from The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle Blog (and lots of tips from her various tutorials, which you should definitely check out), and this technique for the chalkboard effect cookies from Ali Bees Bake Shop (her video tutorials are so helpful! - I subscribe to her channel so that I won't miss any).
The small discs to the right of the Treble Clef cookies became Bass Clef cookies.
The event went well last night and I understand my platter of cookies brought in over $30.00! Woo hoo! Definitely worth the time and effort and I hope the folks who "won" them enjoyed them - I know I had fun making them!
