In the Beginning

My earliest memories of baking center around my Nanny Lil. My Grandmother was an exquisite baker, and I often remember sitting in her kitchen while she was preparing goodies for parties and as gifts for friends. I went from licking the beaters, to chief bottle washer, eventually moving on to spooning raspberry jelly into mini tarts lined in marzipan. After her passing, shortly before the birth of my first son; I felt closest to her in my own kitchen, while baking and decorating cookies.

“Why don’t you paint something pretty Honey?”

I think the cookies started out of frustration, not knowing what to do with my creative energy I started to put it all into birthday parties for my two boys. Memories flow back to cakes and cookies I had made in the past, my first cookies ever made completely by myself at 13, Peanut butter cookies with fork marks on the top, while living in Switzerland, to cream cheese, cut out cookies that spelled something romantic for valentine’s day from a recipe in Seventeen Magazine? for my summer camp boyfriend.

A cake for a friend’s 20th birthday that looked like the pair of boobs she always wanted was hilarious and wrong all at the same time. I decided to attach the breasts baked beautifully round and fluffy in matching Pyrex bowls to a rectangular base of the same white cake with strawberry jam. Not realizing that when cut the cake would look like a crime scene.

Cakes would never really be my forte, but I would go all for the parties I planned for the boys. Each party had a theme based on kid’s interest, from Batman, Pokemon, Blue’s Clues, Cars, and Music. Loot bags were curated with candy cigarettes for race car driver guests for the car theme, and Canadian Squirt Guns aka real plastic turkey basters for the Ed Edd and Edie themed party. No expense was spared, I made giant wood cut out picture props of Johnny Bravo, and tailored other theme related activities.

The once constant element however was always the cookies. If they didn’t make a cutter for the theme, I would make it myself. Eventually my cutter collection was so huge that I started to bake cookies for friends and family and eventually decided I was having so much fun, it was time to destroy it all by making it into a business. And so the Cookie As Canvas LLC was registered.