As a professional event planner, I get to be apart of some very fun parties. Today, I had the chance to work with Karen Wade from the Velvet Crumb Bakery. She baked all the cookies, using her special recipe, assembled bags of icing and shared her techniques for decorating beautiful cookies just in time for Valentine’s Day – which next to Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.Our supply closet at work is full of handy props to use for many occasions. I pulled out the 5-section acrylic tote from The Container Store.
We put the undecorated cookies on the larger side and bags of royal icing in the smaller compartments. We weren’t using sprinkles, but you could easily fit small jars of sprinkles in the smaller spaces as well.
When I stopped into The Container Store for inspiration for Miss Bee’s upcoming grown-up birthday lunch, I saw these adorable chalkboard placemats and knew they would be a perfect touch for the cookie party.
We used them as the base for each person’s place with their own tote and supplies. I used a chalkboard pen, but because it’s not really chalkboard media and more like paper, I think a white paint pen would be better suited for the lettering. It’s also permanent, and not erasable, so be sure to practice what you want to write first.
We served simple refreshments including this recipe for a Breakfast Cookie from my Pinterest cookies board. They are perfect for a simple coffee with friends, hold up well for transport to parties, and make a great cookie to take to someone who needs funeral food. Any good Southern gal always has an arsenal of “bereavement” recipes on hand and this is a good one. I may have to write another story on this subject…
You use 10 pieces of yummy, crispy bacon.
Chopped up like this…
They also have cornflakes, for a nice crunch, and raisins for added sweetness. This recipe calls for 1/2 cup of raisins and I am not a raisin fan, so I substitute with either cranberries or cherries. The contrast of salty and sweet is just right. It has the other usual suspects in a cookie, butter, flour, sugar, etc…
One batch makes two dozen so I made two batches of these for the ladies today and there were none left, letting you know the recipe was a hit.
Here are some fun photos of the finished cookies. It was like looking at little jewels…no two were alike and the ladies were so proud of their work!
The smiles and laughter today were the best Valentine’s Day gift! I hope you share something you love to do this week.
Hospitality is in my DNA. I founded Home with a Twist, a daughter’s twist on her mother’s traditions, in memory of my mother to celebrate her life and the gifts she shared with me. Mother loved to celebrate life’s occasions – big and small.
