Christmas Rubber Stamped Cookies

Scenes from Christmas cookie class:

Mistletoe:

Joyful Ornament:

December Santa (from our Cookie of the Month line)

Mrs. Frosty

Holly Wreath

Thanksgiving Cookie Class

Student work from last week's cookie bouquet class:

Stamping Mistakes

Students in our food safe rubber stamping classes always worry about making a mistake. But there really is no reason to worry... this is the only craft where you can eat your mistakes!

 Seriously, I always tell my students that an artist is not someone who never makes mistakes. It's someone who knows how to hide their accidents!

 Any number of things can go wrong with inexperienced stampers or bakers... we get both kinds in our class...

For bakers, they are not used to coating rubber stamps with ink and aren't used to tamping the stamp on a pad, checking it for good coverage and then stamping.  For those folks, we recommend a foam coated rubber brayer to get an even coat of ink on the food safe stamp. And we train them to ink immediately before stamping.

Stampers have no issues with the coating the stamp fully with ink but often are unaware of pastry tools that aid the process such as a fondant smoother. This piece of plastic makes the fondant oh so soft and it will take the ink much more readily.

Still, there can be mistakes. Waiting too long after inking to stamp; not pressing down with even, gentle pressure; dropping the stamp on the fondant...these can all lead to mis-prints.  There is little that can be done with too much ink... simply cut out and eat or trash.

But for too little, it's easy to fix.  See the area on the sunflower where it's too light?

I take a wet, thin sable brush and drag it through the dry ink on the lid of my stamp pad. I twist as I load the brush to bring the tip to a fine point.

Then I just paint in the missing details with the stamp pad black on my brush. If you are not comfortable painting, you can use a food writer in black.

November Header

Here's a lovey rubber stamped cookie bouquet idea for November from our teacher in San Diego.

This bouquet features the following rubber stamps:

Fall Bounty
Cornucopia (from our Thanksgiving Set)
Golden Gobbler
November Scarecrow (on sale!)

Hats (also from our Thanksgiving Set)
Autumn Foliage

Student Work - Halloween Cookie Class

Student Bouquets from a recent Rubber Stamped Cookie Bouquet class:

For one student, Halloween is more about cupcakes and hearts! She did a wonderful job coloring in her rubber stamped fondant! 

This next student wanted to try modeling some fondant. She cut a smaller heart, colored it black and had molded blood drops coming from it:

I hate didn't get a shot of her spider close up.  I also love the Museum of Modern Rubber Pumpkinhead in this one:

I love the bold color choices of this next one. This busy mom wasn't paying attention when she glued the middle fondant on...her kid's names are all upside down. I'm sure the kids didn't mind!

Rubber Stamp Chat Fall Virtual Convention

The Rubber Stamp Chat BB is hosting the annual Virtual Rubber Stamp Convention! The sale started this morning and lasts until the end of the day Monday. If you aren't a member - it's free to join - it's worth a little effort just to be able to shop the convention.

As of this post, the companies participating are Sweet Stampen / Museum of Modern Rubber, Beeswax, My Paper Moon, Hambo, Viva Las VegaStamps Mad Rat, I Brake for Rubber Stamps, Mark's Finest Papers, YanKiwi, Queen Kat Designs, Sweet Pea Stamps, Red Rubber Designs / Red Rubber Digitals, and Lost Coast. That's a lot of companies and sales!

Sweet Stampen / Museum of Modern Rubber offerings are:

*Recipe Rubber Stamps - 6 Unmounted recipes for $10 + shipping. You may order up to two sets with no repeats.

Just one of nearly 30 recipe stamps!

*Wood Mounted Grab Bags - 6 - 9 wood mounted stamps $16 includes shipping. Or... 2 sets, No repeats $30 includes shipping. These are similar to the sets I've been selling on ebay to cut down our inventory. Full retail price on these items is close to $60 - $80! Order as many as you like without repeats.

Example of one of our Ebay Grab wood mounted grab bags

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Please order these on our website.

* 15% off Sweet Stampen unmounted stamps. Does not apply to items on our Sale Page.

* 10% Museum of Modern Rubber Stamps. These are now made to order and can take up to 10 days after an online show.


If you combine specials, feel free to email us. Fans get an additional 5% off.... please mention if you are a fan!!!

Thanks as always for l@@king!

October Header

Kinda late getting this month's header up!

This cookie bouquet was created by our teacher in San Diego and features:

• Bad Witch
• Halloween Kitty in a Bag
• Happy Halloween phrase stamp
• Haunted House
• Trick or Treat Delights
• Spider in Web
• Trick or Treat Witch (with Happy Halloween again)
• Halloween Dress Up
• Halloween Circle Theme Image

These are just a few of our extensive Halloween line...

Wood Mounted Grab Bags On Ebay

We are cleaning out and sprucing up around here in preparation for fall! There is a desperate need for more space in the shop and we are getting rid of excessive inventory of our wood mounted rubber stamps.

As an incentive, I have package many by theme an am offering them DEEPLY discounted on ebay. You will also find some over runs on recipes that are unmounted and in our food safe rubber as well as some cushion mounted gray rubber.

I hope you will come take a l@@k! I'm adding more all the time and there will be way more than listed here!

Wood mounted and cushion mounted stamps are not food safe!

As always, we will gladly combine shipping to save you money... as long as you wait for ONE invoice!

We're In Style!!

Seriously...we're in InStyle Magazine!!! Check us out... a WHOLE PAGE of rubber stamped cookies in the September issue!

                                                                                                                                    Courtesy InStyle Magazine

Their stylist used the Museum of Modern Rubber Graphic images that we debuted a few months ago! So cool! Be sure to check it out!!!

New Header

Just thought I would show off a bouquet sample I made for my new classes coming up at the Community Center of La Canada and Santa Clarita Community Center! I will be updating my class schedule shortly!

The two round cookies feature images from our new Cupcake Set Food Safe Rubber stamps. The Happy Birthday is from the Museum of Modern Rubber line...which we also offer some images in our food safe rubber for our pastry consumers! Just ask!


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Reminder...if you need custom food safe stamps, I have a customer waiting to share a plate! Great way to save money!

Custom Food Safe Rubber Stamps

Why yes we DO make custom rubber stamps for our customers who want to be totally food safe when stamping on their food! We would feel irresponsible NOT to!

We've finally gotten around to adding info on pricing to our website. And... we are now adding a little widget on the right of the blog to let you know when we have customers who want to share plate costs. We will tell you how much of a plate is spoken for.

We're hoping this will encourage people to get their artwork into us and all more people to save money on making their own food safe stamps.

P.S. We are back the shop and shipping at normal times!

Custom Monogram for Wedding Cookie

New 4th of July Header / Shop Still Closed

Just popping in to change the header to our 4th of July images. I love how our San Diego teacher Carole B used different colors on the rubber stamped cookies to lend a different feel to repeated images in the bouquet below.

I hope you all have a happy and safe 4th. The shop will re-open on July 9th.

New Rubber Stamps from Museum of Modern Rubber

How can Museum of Modern Rubber have NEW images? Well, when the business was shutting down, over a decade ago, Jane ran a few plates and... put them in a drawer! Not one of the images ever made it into a catalog!

But a few weeks ago, I got a call from a big fancy magazine...who liked the idea of stamping on food and they wanted to be food safe but..."We don't like your stamps. They're too cute!" Well as a reformed "I hate cute stamps stamper"... I know the feeling! They said they were looking for graphic shapes. As luck would have it, I had been moving plates around in the file cabinet and had this set on my mind:

You may recognize the three on the right: Ultra Star, Googie and Boomerang are from the backgrounds line and the 50's line. But they fit with the new series and we are offering them at a group price special for our unmounted food customers because of the magazine!

The new images are: Ovals, Diamond Square, Burst, Solid Circles, Circles, Solid Squares, and Squares. I'm guessing the plate was run when "Shadow Stamping" was in it's heyday as the images fit together so well!

We hope you like the new images and... I have to share... these are NOT the only images from MoMR you haven't seen! If sales are brisk, we may just be motivated to dust off some more of the new old plates and get those images out for you as well! ;-)

REMINDER: The shop is closed due to family illness until July 9th!

Shop Closed til July 9th!

My 90 year old mom is having surgery and needs us with her. When you have a small family business, there's nothing you can do but shut the doors for a bit!

Any orders that come in ...you will be contacted and asked if you still want your items after July 9th. Thanks for your understanding!

We will be checking emails and working on custom food safe designs (not that they can ship before the 9th... just so they CAN ship by the 9th!).

We also have a few blog posts scheduled, so you don't forget about us!

In the meantime... doesn't our friend Carole's Father's Day bouquet ROCK??

We Found a Stamp at Michael's...

I had a customer at a bakery in the great state of Maryland utter these horrible words to me when I phoned her back the other day in response to a query on custom food safe rubber stamps.

I feel it's my bad... I didn't phone her back right away. Our shop is hot and loud. Every thing we handle needs two hands and phone calls don't fit into that when all hands are needed on deck. While an email is usually answered within five minutes up to a few hours, phone calls can take DAYS!

And people are lazy and they want what they want when they want it. And they don't seem to care if they are misinformed as to what is safe on food or even if they get a customer sick! OY!

All rubber is NOT food safe! There are petroleum based products in there that should not come in contact with food. The release agents used to release the rubber from the molds is NOT food safe. Many of the molds still contain asbestos!

Add in that the stamps at most retail mass market craft stores are wood mounted...Wood is not food safe nor is the cushion used to mount the stamps! It BREEDS bacteria! Even our food safe rubber, once mounted on wood, is no longer safe for use on food!

There is so much to know in this area of crafting on food and I wish more bakeries would take the time to learn a little about it before rushing headlong into a project!

If you need food safe rubber, we have hundreds of images readily available. And if you need something custom, we can do that in about two to three weeks. Be smart, be safe and keep your customers alive...it's the right thing to do! 

Holly Dare on When Creativity Knocks

Holly Dare with friends Ana and Megan Arujo on their web show, When Creativity Knocks

The Basic Sugar Cookie

The Sugar cookie is another popular choice for cookie pops. This particular recipe won some cooking contest for our chef (sorry, my memory is foggy!) But the hint of nutmeg is unexpected and lovely!

 

The perfect cookie pop, ready for decorating!

• 1 Cup Butter
• 3/4 Cup Sugar
• 1 Med – Lrg Egg
• 1 Tablespoon Milk or Cream
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla OR ¼ t. Nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• 2 Cups Flour

 

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg and then the milk / cream. Add vanilla (if using it). Mix the salt and the nutmeg into the flour. Mix the flour into the batter. Knead and chill for about twenty minutes.

Remove chilled dough. Spray cookie pan with Pam and press cookie dough into individual circles. With fingertips, pull cookie dough away from outer edge of circle toward center; this will help the cookie release. Gently hold the dough with the heel of your hand and slide the cookie stick into cookie about 2”. Pierce cookie with fork several times to aid steam release during baking. Bake at 350◦ until edges are nicely browned.

 

Sweet Stampen's Cookie and Candy Video - Part 1 Baking

Shortbread Cookie Recipe

Why do we use shortbread cookies in our cookie pops??? Because they taste AWESOME! But that's not the only reason. If you are giving someone a cookie bouquet, you want a thick hearty cookie that won't break and will hold up to some handling. Shortbread is excellent for that!

Shortbread Cookie Recipe for Cookie Pops

• 1 c. Butter       
• 2/3 c. Powdered Sugar
• ½ t. Vanilla    
• ¼ t. Salt   
•  2 c. Flour

Cream butter til smooth. Add powdered sugar & vanilla. Blend sugar thoroughly. Stir in flour mixed with salt. Knead quickly so the butter doesn’t melt. Refrigerate dough for half an hour.

Remove chilled dough. Spray cookie pan with Pam and press cookie dough into individual circles. With fingertips, pull cookie dough away from outer edge of circle toward center; this will help the cookie release. Gently hold the dough with the heel of your hand and slide the cookie stick into cookie about 2”. Pierce cookie with fork several times to aid steam release during baking.

Bake cookies in the upper third of 325◦ oven til they are a pale golden color and the edges are starting to brown. Remove and place on a cooling rack until completely cooled. Remove cookies by lifting edges with a tapered spatula or knife. Do not pick up by sticks; this will loosen cookie stick (if baking with a whole stick for final use in cookie bouquet. See Holly's Tips for details). 

Holly's Tips for Cookie Pop Baking

Sticks: I always thought the sticks looked a tad icky yellow after baking and never liked the look of them in a finished bouquet. Add in that a) I have a smallish over and b) I'm a clutz and I ended up rearranging the cookie dough every single time I baked! Then the idea hit me...if I could get rid of that long stick and still have a hole... hmmmm. So I came up with this technique. I've been doing it for years now!

Cut cookie sticks in half to avoid knocking them out of place during baking. Once the cookies are cool to touch, gently twist the stick out of the cookie. Dip a new, clean stick in corn syrup and place in cookie hole.

Now, I don't make a mess of my dough and I always have a nice, clean stick in my bouquets! 

Ingredients: We always get asked about family recipes for cookie pops. You can use almost any cookie recipe with a few simple rules.

• Do not use any cookie recipe that contains baking powder or soda as the cookies my not shape correctly in pan during baking. These two ingredients also make a more fragile cookie that is more likely to break with handling... and cookie pops require handling. 
• If using nuts or chips, chop them fine or use mini chips. Make sure to press them into the dough so that they are not protruding.