Cake #25 - OK not cake again, but rather my super Sea Cookies (Crab, Seahorse, Fish, Sea Turtle and Starfish) made for a birthday party earlier this year. This was probably one of my favorite projects!
This project was made by request for a young girl's birthday party. She had a "sea" theme and wasn't particular as to which sea creatures we used. That was good because on short notice I had a little trouble finding cookie cutters to fit the theme. I hunted at (and called around to) all my local craft stores and it figures, nobody would have even a simple fish.
I sent my husband on a hunt near his work to pick up one that I thought would work, and even bought a set of 100 various cutters, but they were all really random, and not worth it for the one fish in the 100 that was frankly just too big anyway. So this is when I learned about Amazon's fabulous one day delivery on certain things. I love Amazon already for many reasons, but this was just truly fabulous. I really didn't believe I could get what I needed in one day, or in one case, SAME day, and how reasonable priced it was, so I took a chance and ordered several of these metal cutters all of which were delivered right on time and were all the right size. I had a hard time deciding which to use, and which to return. The ONLY one I sent back was the mermaid as while it was cute for sure, I could see the decorating would be way too intricate and time consuming for this project.
The starfish was done in blue, with blue sprinkles and white dots for the accents. Eventually I found my edible light blue pearls and added 2 or 3 pearls at the end of each arm to ensure the tips were perfect, while the upper "arms" were in a variety of bigger sizes for effect. If you look closely you can see them at the very tip.
The fish were really an afterthought. I hadn't planned to make the fish, but after I had some extra dough and wanted to see how they would come out, it turned out to be one of my favorite pieces in the project. They were just the right size. Not too big, and not too small. This fish had a candy eye (readily available at the craft stores or online in packs of 50 or more) . I used my edible gold pearl candies by dropping them one one by one to create the stripe behind his eye and the one in front of his tail. I made a few plain blue fish too since I had leftover blue icing, and covered him with "scales" of blue crystal sprinkles.
The sea turtles were made by creating the shell with the green outline, flooding it green and then doing the brown legs and head with an outline and a flood of icing. I then sprinkled the green sprinkles on the shell while it was still wet and then added the criss cross after it was all dry. To fancy it up, I put on 2 edible gold pearls on each foot and hand to represent toes and fingers. I then added 2 black steel pearls for the eyes. This was a little more tedious of the creatures in the project as you had too drop each "toe" and "eye" precisely or it wouldn't look right. To help with this part I used a toothpick to move the "toe" or "eye" around if it didn't land quite precisely where I wanted it to. (I did this with the eyes too.)
The crabs were created with more candy eyes and the edible gold pearls. I thought about making them red, but decided on the orange to fit the color theme and match the buckets. Next time I might try a red one anyway and see how it looks. Red might have been better since the fish were orange, but alas the fish were orange only because I had leftover orange icing or the fish might have been red. :-)
While at first I wasn't that fond of the crab like I was the Starfish above and the Seahorses below, he grew on me after I put on the gold pearls to resemble the lumpiness of the crab shell. They were the thicker of the cookies and though they held up pretty well, I did lose a claw or two on a couple from handling them. I glued those back with frosting and kept them for family treats, but next time I will be sure to make the cookies thick enough to avoid the claws breaking off.
This picture above does not do justice to the seahorses! They were rather plain, but kind of beautiful actually in their stark white splendor. They were made better when I found I had a leftover vial of silver edible flakes (I think they were in the shape of stars--they make them in hearts and other shapes too.) I had used some of them for Jacks' Hockey Birthday cake and had plenty more. They are about $7.00 vial so thankfully they do go a long way. I was able to use about 2/3 of what was left on these seahorses and it added the beautiful accent they needed.
I made extras of these cookies I liked them so much. Shannon brought a few to her friends at school, and before you know it I had more orders for individual cookies--another dozen or two at least. That was fun. Shannon was such a great salesperson too!
For the project I was requested to wrap each cookie individually so I did and tied them with small wired ribbon in either a matching or contrasting color to the sand pail I was going to use.
I filled the four pails with newspaper topped with a foil covered paper plate and then sat the wrapped cookies on the plate. These extras were attractive, easy to carry and deliver the cookies in (and without too much pressure on them so as to avoid breakage) and yet very inexpensive to put together.
The pails I bought were from the local Dollar Tree. They did not have the colors I REALLY wanted, but I bought them anyway. Rather than get the pails back, I figured I would just give them to the customer. But I just didn't like the colors and how they took away from the color scheme of the cookies, so I had a couple of blue and green personal pails I had left from Easter (more expensive ones) and decided to use them instead as I couldn't live with things not quite matching right. I did let the customer keep them and tried to return the other ones and found out that at the Dollar Tree store, you cannot return anything, so alas, I am ready with a yellow, pink, orange and green set for the next order. I can use the pails for my surfboard and flip flop themed cookies too (see Cake #13) should I get another order!
I started with the yellow and then put on the bunny decorations to ensure I had enough space and the bunnies didn't end up stuck in any of my zig zags. 
