Signature Sweet Shoppe

New places to find me...

2009-06-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

Cookies aren't the end-all of my life! So here are a few other places to find me:

Youtube: MissTruly and Signature Sweet Shoppe

Twitter

Facebook

And two new websites I've put up with my business partner:

Immune System Report

Hot Success Formula

Chew on this cookie...

2009-05-25T16:18:00.000-07:00

I applaud anyone who wants to work from home full time. There's just nothing like it, but it's definitely not a life of leisure if one is to make a successful living from working at home. Although I could work in my pajamas, I still have to take a shower and put on day clothes like anyone else because I don't stay inside all the time. There are errands to run, and even if there weren't, it's not good to be in your jammies all day. You'll always feel better when you're dressed for the day and for anything!

My television is never on during the day, so I am not interrupted by the news, Oprah or Court TV. I'm not out lunching every day with my friends - they're at day jobs. No, most of the time I'm quietly working at home.

Starting a business like a cookie business, is a business that starts literally from scratch. No one has heard of you, you don't have clientelle, you don't have a track record. Heck, you probably don't even have enough baking trays. It's a claw your way up order by order business and then every month you hope to "rinse, wash and repeat" if you're lucky.

As I mentioned before, I have a Network Marketing business, also known as Multi-Level Marketing or Direct Sales. It is also a business to work from home, but let's look at the advantages of having a MLM in your back pocket as opposed to a regular business.

1. When you become a distributor in an MLM, it's like buying a franchise but for a tiny fraction of the cost.

2. You're dealing with an established product or service.

3. Although there is an initial investment and a monthly auto-order (for most), there is no overhead. Personally I wouldn't be with a MLM that required me to resell the products retail, forcing me to have a huge backlog of stuff in my garage. That could make anyone broke. Plus that just reeks of traditional selling, and that's not what I'm about. Contrast this with a cookie business where there is a lot of overhead between baking ingredients to packaging supplies. There's a constant need to keep things in stock and keep the stock rotated.

4. When you start with a MLM, there is a lot of team support and training. Yes, there is a learning curve, but when you start your very own business, there is no team support from people who have been doing it longer and who want to help you reach your success. You are basically on your own trying to fly by the seat of your pants.

5. It would be hard for your home-business to send you on an all-expense paid vacation to a resort. In MLMs, you can earn such vacations every year. Not even your old corporate America or non-corporate American job could offer you that. These are called "incentives." My MLM not only pays for the flight, but the 5-star hotel and all the meals. Plus I can earn enough incentive points to bring someone else along.

A Network Marketing business is simply a vehicle to get you to your goals, and it can be done fairly quickly (within 6-24 months) or longer. The average seems to be 3-5 years - IF you stick with it. Most people don't stick with it. That's the reason for the high attrition rate (but not as high a failure rate as the home business in general).

There are a lot of reasons for the failure, but it's the individual who must accept most of the responsibility.

1. Lack of passion
2. Lack of participation
3. Lack of seeking support
4. Trying to be a traditional sales person in a business that's about NETWORKING and MARKETING.

I've heard it said that when you're feeling down in your MLM to call UP (your upline) and when you're feeling UP to call down (your downline). My upline has been tremendously supportive in more ways than I can count. Thankfully they are some of my dearest friends, and our extended team is like a family, constantly on the phone with each other. You might think we only talk about the business, but we talk about normal stuff too! We even get together for BBQs and movie nights. We think, we plan, we participate, we're involved.

In conclusion, while I again applaud anyone who is contemplating starting a cookie business, I just want to encourage you to think about finding a MLM that you click with and using that as a vehicle to help support you and build residual income (no residual income in cookies, I guarantee you!).

I am always looking for business partners in my MLM - people to strengthen my team and to whom I can be of service. The MLM industry has made more millionaires than any other industry in the world, and the wellness industry, which is the overwhelming majority of MLM companies, is the next trillion dollar industry.

Interested in learning more on how you can start up with a great MLM and be immediately part of a dynamic team? Just email me at: cookies@signaturesweetshoppe.com

The book for home bakers!

2009-05-24T17:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, if you haven't seen, or if you have seen the page on the website for my ebook, "The Sweet Business of Cookies," click here.

While certainly no best seller, it has become a great tool for those who have wished to dabble in the art of starting a cookie business from home - for after all, where else would you start a cookie business?

It always amazes me when people ask, "Don't you have to work from a commercial kitchen?" And I think, good grief, you're just starting out, you have two small orders this month, and for THAT you want to rent commercial kitchen space? It's ridiculous.

Most home bakers really just want to earn a little extra cash. They don't want to open a bakery somewhere. It's not their ambition. That's why this book is so appropriate - it's written for the start-up baker, and I know of no other book like it.

So what are you waiting for? In today's economy, get yourself another stream of income by doing a little baking for others.

Buy the book. You know you want to.

The Truth About Susan Boyle

2009-04-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

If by now you haven't seen the Susan Boyle audition from the reality TV show, "Britain's Got Talent," then apparently you've been in a coma since April 11, because it's one of the hottest news items from the last 10 days. One of the Youtube videos alone has garnered more than 35 million hits in those 10 days although I'm not sure how accurate that number is since I think people visit it over and over. I know I've probably seen it 20-30 times, and I've listened to her soulful rendition of "Cry Me A River" at least half that many times.

I think there's a little bit of Susan Boyle in a lot of us, hidden talents that were once developed and had to go mostly fallow because life happened. Susan did sing karaoke locally and did do one song for a limited release charity album in 1999, but otherwise she put her aspirations aside to care for her mother. Her mother's passing did not kick start the dream immediately because she struggled emotionally afterwards for two years before finally getting up the courage to audition for "Britain's Got Talent."

I studied singing for several years, and one thing I can say is that I can hear it in a person's speaking voice if they are singing consistently and properly. The judges should have heard that in Susan's speaking voice right away, and even before she started to sing, her poise and confidence with the microphone should have also tipped them off. Of course, when she did start to sing, they quickly realized that this unassuming package was a hidden treasure.

Susan is not the only one on the various talent reality series who was an undiscovered treasure. I'm not concerned or terribly interested in the very talented kids that come on the show. Their dreams and training are just beginning. They have no where to go but up. I am more interested in the talent that has had to put their dreams aside to deal with life. That's where the Susan Boyle is in so many of us. Her overnight stardom simply illuminated a long standing fact that the teens and twenty-somethings do not own the world of talent and that they can learn a lot from Susan Boyle.

I once dreamed of singing opera professionally, but life got in the way. I have no desire to switch gears and return to opera training, but I would love to get into a recording studio and cut a CD. That option would never have been available to me 24 years ago, but today I can practically do it in my own home at my own computer.

Having a dream does not make the desire come to fruition because sometimes life just gets in the way. Life can blindside you. I wonder how many other Susan Boyles are out there? Men and women who have put their natural talents on hold in order to deal with life.

To me, that's the real truth about Susan Boyle - that sometimes you can finally grab that brass ring, even with life's interruptions, and that even at the age of 48, life can begin again.

Cookies and Jury Duty...another day at the office!

2009-04-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

Some people never get called for Jury Duty and some, like me, seem to be a JD magnet. In fact, I was on Superior Court JD in January 2008, and in August 2008 on a Friday, I got a summons for Federal Court JD followed three days later by a summons for Superior Court JD. One was to start November 3 and the other November 4, and that obviously presented a little bit of a scheduling conflict, so I postponed the Superior Court until April 6 2009. That was this past week. What does that have to do with cookies? When you are pulled from the Jury Assembly Room to be on a Jury Panel (the Jury selection process), the judge will ask all sorts of questions including the general area of the city you live in and what you do for an occupation. I said I made cookies for a living, and there were lots of giggles from the other jurors, and even the judge said, "Oh, I need your number." The cookie lady in court!

One of the other jurors was a caterer. Guess who got my business card during one of our breaks? Then other people came up to me to ask me for my card, which I gladly gave out. Will they ever call me? I don't know, but the point is, I was prepared with my card, no matter where I went.

After two days of jury panel selection, I was excused by the defense team, and that was just fine with me because I had an emergency photo cookie order... it came in Thursday afternoon while I was at the court, and it was needed by Saturday morning. I assured the client it wouldn't be a problem, and it wasn't! Three dozen beautiful cookies went out on time (see above picture)!

Signature Sweet Shoppe tip: I went to Cost Plus World Market yesterday to get a basket for my cookies. The baskets I normally purchase were no where to be seen... um, hello! Easter! So, next year I'll have my baskets stocked well before Easter!

Stay At Home Moms

2009-04-06T12:02:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!

I sell a lot of my book on starting your own cookie business to young mothers who want to stay home with their young children and have a little extra income through making cookies. This can work to generate extra cash, but for those of you who do purchase the book because you want to earn extra income, I just want you to keep in mind a few things:

1. How much extra income do you want to earn?

2. How much time are you willing to devote to the business of cookies?

3. Where do you see yourself in five years? How will cookies get you there?

I love making beautiful cookies for people, but I have also developed an alternate stream of income to keep me home with a wonderful Network Marketing company. Network Marketing is also known as Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), and if that makes anyone shudder, I'm just going to tell you flat out to build a bridge and get over it. I work with a top company, and I love it and them. I have a fantastic team of people that I'm on the phone with daily, and I get great all-expense paid vacations every year. Corporate America won't offer you that, nor will it ever offer you the ability to earn more than your boss. With an MLM, what you earn is dependent on your desire to build your business.

Now, all that being said, most people who join a MLM to do the business fail. Why? Well there are a number of reasons:

1. They think it's about sales and they aren't sales people and have no training in sales.

2. They focus on selling the company and the products/service rather than on developing relationships

3. They don't know how to run their own business because they have no business sense or training

4. They don't put in the time to build a business

The real truth about Network Marketing is that it's about Networking and Marketing. Somehow the marketing part really gets forgotten, and then a person is back to doing sales methods that don't work. Not everyone within 3 feet of me is a "prospect" and I refuse to treat them that way. People have not been waiting their entire life to join MY network marketing opportunity.

Of course, anyone who joins a MLM should first have established rapport with the person who has signed them in, because it's never about the products/service or the company or the history or the science... yada yada. Second, the person needs to click with the product/service. There are some products/services out there that I don't click with. There are some I have moral/ethical issues with. Some are simply not my cup of tea. There are literaly thousands of them, and every year there are huge MLM conventions where you can hear the top speakers in the industry, meet other network marketers, learn and grow from each other. Also, each MLM has its own corporate conventions where you can meet people from around the world who are also doing the same business.

What I will tell you here is that I am in the health and wellness industry and that author Paul Zane Pilzer of The Wellness Revolution calls the health and wellness industry "the next trillion dollar industry." I will also tell you that the company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ, is solid and not going anywhere.

If you would like to have more information and join MY team and work with ME specifically, this is especially the time to do it. Why? Remember the all-expense paid vacation I mentioned? The time for you to get in on earning it ends June 12. If you want more information, write to me at: cookies@signaturesweetshoppe.com or call me .

And Johanna, if you're reading this (and we spoke today), I must have written down your email wrong because it bounced, so please call me back.

Happy baking.

Jenny Arata

Are your cookies sticking? What to do.

2009-04-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

If you make my sugar cookie recipe, the cookies will stick. However, I don't use any silpat mats, non-stick pans, cooking spray, or even Reynolds Release.

Keep in mind, I have 120 baking trays, and I don't use cooling racks. My cookies have to cool on the tray as the tray cools. So how do I keep them from sticking? Easy.

As soon as they are out of the oven, I simply loosen them on the pan. Move their position slightly. This breaks the seal that had been created, but you must do it when they are piping hot. If you allow them to cool, they will stick.

Some cookies, however, should not be moved on the tray, and these include chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter. These cookies need to firm up by cooling down. After they are set, you can remove them easily from the tray.

Happy baking from Signature Sweet Shoppe!

What's up with eggs?

2009-04-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

CRACKING THE SALMONELLA FEARS
When some people learn that I use raw egg whites to make my royal icing, it sends a "salmonella shiver" (sounds like a dance!) down their spine. In fact, I have never used anything but raw egg whites, and I have no intention of changing that.

Let's look at the facts: Salmonella bacteria are found in the intestinal tracts of animals, birds, reptiles, insects and humans. Salmonella may be found on the outside of the egg shell before the egg is washed or it may be found inside the egg if the hen was infected. It is estimated that one egg in 20,000 eggs (some estimates are as low as 1 in 30,000) may contain Salmonella which is a 0.005% contamination rate. Eggs contain natural antimicrobial substances in the egg white, and all eggs are washed and sanitized before they are packed.

Salmonella is present in more than just eggs, of course, but eggs get a really bad rap for it. More likely, if you do get symptoms of food poisoning, it was from another source, and a pro-biotic will help clear up the issue within a few hours.

In fact, consumption of raw eggs is actually encouraged in many diet plans since eggs are an excellent source of protein and many other enzymes in their natural state. All the necessary ingredients are in an egg to make a baby chicken, but cooking an egg destroys many of those benefits (just so you know when you're chowing down on that scrumptious omlette).

Real egg whites make the best royal icing. It is creamy and very smooth, and meringue powder just can't match it in quality or texture.

To avoid salmonella in your kitchen, make certain you go through your refrigerator once per week and throw out any food items that have not been eaten (especially any leftovers with meat), and keep your counter tops, sink and equipment bleached down. Keeping your refrigerator cleaned out regularly also helps you to avoid contamination.

If you have pet birds, reptiles or amphibians, always wash your hands thoroughly after handling, and always keep their cages clean and sanitized. Turtles especially seem to carry salmonella bacteria, so if you have them as pets and have small children handling them, make sure your children thoroughly wash their hands afterwards.

QUESTION OF THE DAY
Q: How do you make black royal icing?

Okay, believe it or not, I've been asked this a couple of times, even though the answer seems obvious - "with black food coloring," but it turns out some brands are better than others. In fact, there are more colors available in food coloring than you would think. I recently needed some fuchsia - and I couldn't get it locally, but there was a slot for it in the store!

The brand I use and recommend is AmeriColor. Their black is coal black and stays that way. If you can't find it locally in a cake or candy supply shop, you can always order it online from Sugarcraft.com.

TIP OF THE DAY
Never buy the tiny little jars of Cream of Tartar that you find in the grocery store. Why? They are horribly over-priced and will run you broke. If you have a cookie business and are going through a lot of COT for your royal icing, buy it online in bulk at a fraction of the cost.

All the best,

Jenny Arata
Signature Sweet Shoppe

Photo cookies - the basics!

2009-03-26T09:58:00.000-07:00

People are always asking me to do a video on photo cookies, and I've been putting it off. It isn't that the process is complicated, but perhaps I'm just trying to explain it in too difficult a way due to the programs I use. So, here's the basic thing:

Adobe Photoshop
I use Adobe Photoshop for my tweaking my images. If you don't have that program, you will still need a competent photo editing program. For example, I have found that my printer prints the photo cookies darker than they appear on screen. I have had to lighten the original photo up to 50% just to get it to look right when it printed out.

Sometimes I will receive a color photo that has yellowed with time. I don't mean turned sepia. I just mean that the colors have faded out some. Photoshop has an autocolor function that when applied automatically corrects the photo back to its original colors. It's really wonderful.

I like to go the extra mile with photos that need a little help - either getting rid of scratches or dust speckles. I honestly don't do that for the client so much as I do it for me - I enjoy the challenge of photo restoration!

Sometimes too the client will sent a photo that they scanned at a really high resolution - so it's absolutely enormous. I then have to resize it and save it at a smaller size even before I can lay it out in...

Adobe Illustrator

I use Illustrator for laying out my photos. It has a grid function, and with that you can precisely lay out your photos and know how to resize them. When I say resize, I don't mean in the same way you would in Photoshop. For example, on an icing sheet that is 8-1/2 x11 (also called a 1/4 sheet or "quarter sheet" since it is a one fourth the size of a sheet cake pan), I know that I have a 1/2" unprintable border all the way around (on the sheets from Kopykake), leaving my printable area only 7-1/2" x 10". I want to make the most of my printable space. I might have a 3x5 cookie, but how many 3x5 cookie images can I get on the sheet? well, you could say 3, but there's a lot of wasted icing sheet that way. Instead, resize your image (you can keep the proportions by holding down the shift key as you drag a corner in and out to make the photo either larger or smaller), and think of having two images side by side that are no more than 3.75" wide - that way you can get 8 on a page. Remember that your cookie will have an icing border.

So my dilemma becomes, how do I do a video on photo cookies and explain the intricacies of all this? If I had Camtasia, perhaps I could show it on the screen what I am doing, but I don't. This is why I haven't made a photo cookies demo. The actual printing of the photos and the application to the cookies is the easy part! You just cut the photos apart, remove them from their backing (some fun tricks for getting that accomplished), and then you apply them to the wet icing, which in my case means royal icing.

Because the photo absorbs the moisture from the icing, it must be allowed to dry thoroughly, and I give my photo cookies 24 hours to dry. once the icing outside of the picture forms a crust, you can go ahead an pipe on your border, and then the border and the photo can be drying simultaneously.

If the photo is not completely dry (it can fool you!), and then you try to wrap it, any residual moisture will eventually cause it to stick to the wrapping...and it will peel up... not necessarily the entire photo, but it's not a good look for the final product no matter how much comes up.

I hope this helps with a few questions on photo cookies and will tide you over until I can actually get a video made.

Great photo cookies means fixing the Canon printers

2009-03-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

The perils of a new printer... the Epson Workforce 30 has proven to be a lemon of a printer as well as a terrible ink hog, so I am not investing any more money into it but have instead found a local Canon authorized repair shop and have taken both of my Canon IP4000 printers in. One would only print black and the other only color. I had bought a replacement head for one of them recently, but even after installing it, I still couldn't get it to print and I was sure I'd just wasted good money. Well, the print heads DO need to be replaced, but the new one wouldn't work because the machines needed to be cleaned so badly. They have been cleaned and I'm assured they are working properly now. I am just waiting for one more print head to arrive, and I pick up my units on Friday.

Lesson learned: if you like your machine, repair it. The Canon IP4000s are great machines for Signature Sweet Shoppe. Real workhorses. After all, one of them got me through over 1000 icing sheets for the 8000+ Showtime Networks photo cookie job and it had already been in service for a year or more before that.

And I do promise to make the Youtube video on photo cookies BUT I have been handicapped with my computer for a few months - that has to be repaired too. Right now I'm just working on a little laptop, and it hardly has the power to render video, so all my Youtube subscribers will just have to wait!

Sugar Substitutes in Baking - Pt. 1

2009-03-25T21:29:00.000-07:00

Many times people will ask me about making sugar-free cookies. My initial response is... whatever for? To be fair, I have used Spenda in my photo cookies but with disastrous results. Of course, I know that some people cannot tolerate sugar. However, the alternative is worse.

Before you click on any links in this article, be sure to read it thoroughly, then go investigate the links.

Aspartame

Aspartame, sometimes called Equal, NutraSweet or Canderel, is an artificial, non-saccharide (no sugar!) sweetener, aspartyl-phenylalanine-1-methyl ester. It is an artificial sweetener made by chemical giant Monsanto. If you haven't seen the documentary, The World According To Monsanto, I suggest you search for it and watch it as soon as possible since it is a real eye-opener about the intentions of that company and the food supply in the world... but I digress.

It is not by weight or volume a substitute for recipes. To remove three cups of regular sugar from a recipe means that the volume has to be replaced with something else. Aspartame in that volume is deadly, so as a volume replacement, it is unsuitable.

When I say deadly, let me point out that it is deadly in small doses too. It is a common artificial sweetener found in over 6000 products, including diet sodas (people, please stop drinking these!). It breaks down inside the body into highly toxic chemicals including formaldehyde (since when is that supposed to be in our food chain?). It is approved by the FDA - but what does that mean? Anything that is approved by the FDA means there is a toxic chemical in it that has gone through trials to find out how much is deadly and how much is "safe." In toxicology, this is called the median lethal dose, LD50 - what is lethal enough to kill 50% of the test subjects (lab animals). For a drug or chemical made for human consumption, the LD50 is then backed down to a "safe" level for small doses - in other words, it's still toxic but at a small level won't kill you (but there are side effects! I will post about this in my blog soon!)...although you can overdose on it. This is true of aspartame.

Do you really want to put a "sweetener" into your body and recipes that is owned and developed by the company that creates the Round-Up pesticide and who also created Agent Orange? If you are consuming large amounts of apartame, especially in "diet" sodas, stop immediately and go on a detoxing program for your body - and watch your thinking and health begin to improve!

While I sympathize with diabetics who want to have something sweet, Aspartame-laced products are not the answer. If you are struggling with diabetic issues, check out the documentary, Raw For 30 Days and speak to your doctor about a raw foods plan and try it UNDER PHYSICIAN SUPERVISION.

In the meantime, I also suggest reading the book, Sweet Deception: Why Splenda, NutraSweet, and the FDA May Be Hazardous to Your Health by Dr. Joseph Mercola (pictured left). Again, a real eye-opener.

What about sucralose - also known as Splenda? I'll get to that in the next newletter, so stay tuned.

And if you haven't opted in to receive my newsletter, what's the holdup! Opt in now!

Also choose the RSS feed (RSS= really simple syndication). Stay on top of what's current at Signature Sweet Shoppe!

Epson vs. Canon for photo cookies

2009-03-11T13:46:00.000-07:00

I did the 8000+ photo cookies for Showtime using my Canon IP4000 printer, and I kept wondering all the way through the job whether or not the Canon would survive. It wasn't new when I started the job, and I printed at least 1000 icing sheets. It did survive the job and a little beyond, but then the heads became clogged, and I wasn't able to clean it out using the normal clean function, and at the last minute I had abandon it in favor of a new printer.

I purchased the Epson Workforce 30 printer in February 2009, and I immediately contacted Kopykake and got the cartridges for it (note: I had already confirmed by their website that they supported the Workforce 30). Well... things have gone downhill with the printer since then.

1. It didn't want to pull the "ink" through the printheads - so it wasted almost the full five cartridges (at $90!!) before it finally printed! So after that I got about 3 or 4 icing sheets printed and then it was out! And I had to spend another $90! I changed them out today and then it didn't want to recognize them because they weren't Epson cartridges (it took a while to get over this issue).

2. It makes a terrible racket just feeding through each sheet of paper or icing. I'm glad I didn't have to listen to that when doing the Showtime job.

So... now I am taking my two Canon IP400 printers to be repaired - which probably just entails a profession deep cleaning of the print heads.

Canons are work horses and last longer, are quieter, and they are not ink hogs. The Epson is a terrible ink hog.

Just my 2 cents worth.

New videos

2008-12-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

People are always writing to me asking when I am going to make a new video, and I do promise to make more videos as I really enjoy teaching and sharing. I can't promise that all the videos will be on making something sweet as I may do other cooking videos as well. Videos of this nature take a lot of planning, preparation, and editing, so I don't make them too often.

I also know that I have been promising a video on photo cookies. Now that I have become a Youtube partner on that channel, I now have the freedom to make videos longer than 10 minutes, which a video on photo cookies would be simply because there are many facets to the task other than just putting the image on the icing. For example, sometimes the photo needs to be cleaned up, color-corrected, trimmed, etc., before it can even go into the layout mode for printing. I've been using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for at least 15 years, so I can do the editing and layouts very quickly. I know what space I have to work with and how best to manage the printable area of the icing sheet. That has come from years of experience. Putting that experience into a video is more complicated although i do have some parts of it filmed already.

I wish you all the best Christmas and a happy start to 2009!

Not all butter is created equal!

2008-12-08T22:14:00.000-08:00

Sometimes on my Youtube videos I get people saying that the cookies they've made using my sugar cookie recipe have spread too much and lost the design of the cookie. I've had this happen too but not for a very long time.

I didn't realize what difference there was between butter and butter, and at first I was using a brand name butter whose name escapes me at the moment. They all say 100% butterfat, but some butterfat is a lot richer than others. This is especially true of the "European" butter versions. Don't use them in this recipe. Don't use Plugra. Very, very rich butterfat.

Here in California and a few neighboring states we have a series of stores called Smart & Final which help with a lot of bulk restaurant supply - and NO membership fees like Costco. I use their "First Street" brand butter (their own brand) in all my cookies and in my English Toffee. It seems to have just the right richness of butterfat.

So what I'm suggesting is this - use the store brand of whatever your grocery store is. No brand names. Leave the brand names for sauces and gravies, but leave them out of cookies and candy making!

Fit to be tied

2008-12-07T20:05:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to post a quick note about tying bows yourself vs. buying them. I had one reader say that she saves time by buying them because it takes too long to tie. However, when I did the 8000+ photo cookies for Showtime, all of the bows were hand-tied by me and my two assistants. The cost of buying them and keeping them in stock - or even having enough stock for emergency orders is just too expensive, I think. Once you learn the technique of tying, you should be able to create at least 100 bows per hour - busy work for your hands while you're watching a movie or the news or something. I like to grab a spool, put in a movie and start tying. I'll get a few hundred of one color before the end of the movie. One spool will get me over 1000 bows - and that's for $1.50 per spool from Papermart, so it just seems to me a cost effective way to keep production costs down. I'm such a fast bow-maker that I would be making them as one of the girls would be gluing them to the packaging - and gluing is a fast process... so, I could keep up.

Just my 2-cents worth for the day. Have fun!

It's how you frame it...

2008-12-06T19:41:00.001-08:00

Here is one of my latest photo cookies. The Christmas season lends itself to extra decorations on photo cookies, and although I normally just pipe a plain border around the edge of the cookie, some clients inspire me to be a little extra creative. Something very simple can really add extra pizazz to the look as well as giving the client added value.

What kind of icing frame do you want on your photo cookies? Your imagination is limitless!

Less than one month until Christmas...

2008-11-28T10:35:00.000-08:00

The 2nd Showtime photo cookie order was successfully completed without any problems, and because I'd taken some time to restock my bows after the first order, I had enough on hand to complete the 2nd order without having to make them on the fly. Now I just have to remember to get myself over to Aaron Brother's Art Mart and get some more glue sticks. Maybe that's something I'll do today. I also need to make many pounds of English Toffee as I already have lots of orders for it.

And here's a pretty little thing - in case you didn't know, Signature Sweet Shoppe has it's own channel on Youtube at SignatureSweetShoppe. Last week that channel was made a Youtube partner, which means it is eligible for revenue sharing. Now, I'm not anticipating revenue from it because I'm pretty low on scale, but the possibility exists. Somehow also the channel as of today is the #21 "most subscribed partner" for the week, which seems crazy to me because my subscription base is pretty small compared to the top partners who surely are getting hundreds of subscriptions per day. But, it is what it is, I guess.

And the baking continues...

2008-11-17T21:52:00.000-08:00

So, lovely, lovely, lovely. Showtime called again and needs 520 more of the same photo cookies, and I was delighted to take on this additional order. I won't need any help to make 520 happen, and I'm not going to burn the candle at both ends - although I probably COULD make all 520 in one day if I wanted to push myself really hard, but there's no need to. These cookies will go out on Monday, and yay... I'll finally get rid of that last 22x22x16 box I have. People, those boxes are just enormous. And to think... the Christmas season hasn't even officially begun for me...

Some changes are happening at SSS!

2008-11-02T10:39:00.000-08:00

First of all, I've changed the "events" button at the top of every SSS website page to be this Blog, which will actually be a little easier for me to maintain.

Second, the 7800 photo cookie order for Showtime is complete.

Third, I've learned a lot from the challenge of 7800 cookies and may write an addendum or another chapter to my book. So, if you've already ordered the book, I'll upgrade you for free when the time comes that I have something written.

Fourth, I am slowly working my way through the website to remove all the Paypal options. Why? Well, the shipping configuration is never, never right, and I'm getting tired of being stuck with half of the shipping charges. Thankfully only a handful of people have ever ordered using the Paypal links in the five years the business has been open, so they've sort of been a waste of space anyhow. But I know from experience how many fit in a box, what the approx. weight of the box will be and need to figure that pricing according to the zip code (something Paypal cannot configure).

120 baking trays are stacked 4-ft high waiting to be washed.

Cookies for Showtime

2008-10-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I know it's been a while... I thought I'd closed up the business, mostly. You see, I have a fulltime job now in telecommunications, and I'd been doing it for 2 months when I got a call out of the clear blue from Showtime Networks, and they asked me to make 7800 photo cookies for them for their holiday gifts this year. If they had all been hand-decorated, I would have turned it down, but since they were all photo cookies, I hemmed and hawed and tried to work out the logistics in my head about it... including asking my boss for 3 weeks of unpaid leave, and sure enough I got the leave and I got awarded the job. There are 13 images of their programming, and each image is made into 600 cookies. We are currently about 6200 cookies into the venture. This means getting up sometimes at 3:30 a.m., which is a real killer, but I like to have several hours to work by myself before my help comes. I've got a couple of gals working for me, Catherine and Joy, but they work on different days. My days are 19-20 hours long. To make matters even more interesting, right in the middle of the job Showtime asked if I wanted to do a duplicate order for another event, and I was seriously considering it until they decided to cancel the event. More to come.

Photo cookies at Signature Sweet Shoppe

2007-05-30T00:27:00.000-07:00

Signature Sweet Shoppe specializes in beautiful photo cookies. No gimmicks, no tricks, just beautiful pictures and scrumptious hand decorated cookies. Our photo cookies are by far our biggest selling items, and our customers keep coming back for more. We deliver on time, each one beautifully packaged.

So what are you waiting for? Come by and see Signature Sweet Shoppe's Photo Cookies today!

Here for questions

2007-02-05T11:20:00.000-08:00

My Dear Readers,

I received a call last night from one of my clients asking me about starting up a business dealing with sweets, and she wondered what advice I was willing to offer.

Signature Sweet Shoppe is always happy to talk about what it takes to start a business or with any questions in general, so please feel free to email me.

Kindest regards,

Jenny

New Photo cookies

2007-02-02T00:33:00.000-08:00

Hello cookie lovers!

These photo cookies were done today by Signature Sweet Shoppe. As you can see, the picture, the writing and the colors are all very crisp and nice! This client was actually a repeat client, one of my first photo cookie jobs back in 2003. You can see the Variety news cookies on the website.

Each of our photo cookies always has a little bit of hand-decoration on them, usually some sort of decorative piping on the edge.

As Valentines Day nears, don't forget that photo cookie hearts make a great and sweet gift to a loved one. Put on baby pictures, vacation pictures, wedding photos, anything sentimental to bring a smile to your loved ones. We love helping make the world a little sweeter with cookies!

Sugarplum dreams and candy lanes,

Jenny

Photo cookies

2007-01-31T17:49:00.000-08:00

Today I am working on photo cookies. It's interesting that they seem to come in waves. Then I have to gently gnudge the printer and tell it to stop sleeping, it's time for work!

Many people ask about how the photo processing is done. They can't quite imagine it, but it's really quite simple. It's a regular Canon 5-cartridge inkjet printer, but the cartridges have food coloring in them instead of regular ink. Then sheets of this paper-thin edible stuff (it smells sort of like marshmallows when the package is opened), are run through the printer. Some of the sheets come with templates of circles or hearts already, and there's a program that works with those templates. The icing sheets most often used are the 1/4 sheets, however. I'm skilled in Adobe Illustrator, and I use that to layout the images as needed. If you still want to believe the process is magic, however, I won't argue with you!

Many people also don't understand that even printed text is considered a photo cookie because it's done with the printer.

The time of year, of course, people are very interested in photo hearts. We don't just put the photo on the cookie, however. Each cookie always has some sort of hand-decorated design to it, even if it's just a decorative border. We also use pearl dragees and colored sugars, nonpareils, and jimmies.

No matter the cookie, Signature Sweet Shoppe makes them delicious!

English Toffee

2007-01-30T22:48:00.000-08:00

Hello candy lovers everywhere!

Recently a client ordered some English Toffee from me to give away as a gift. The person she gave it to, however, was extremely allergic to gluten in any form or fashion, and I began to receive a flurry of emails about whether or not there was any gluten in my English Toffee. I told her what the ingredients were, which included no gluten products. Then she threw a new twist on the matter asking if the chocolate chips I used were dusted with flour in the manufacturing plant to keep them from sticking together. She named a famous brand which she claimed did such a practice, and I don't use that particular brand and wouldn't have been the wiser anyhow. I still have to research that more. Nevertheless, I called the manufacturer of the chocolate that I buy and was told that they absolutely do not dust their chips and their chips are completely gluten-free. So, in case any of you might be worried about such a thing, my English Toffee is gluten-free. The only caveat to that is, however, that it is not made in a gluten-free environment. Just as I let people know that certain cookies do not contain nuts or nut extracts, I still make it clear that the cookies are made in an environment where nuts are sometimes also processed.

Keeping our clients informed is just one of the steps we take here at Signature Sweet Shoppe to ensure you have a scrumptious experience!

All the best,

Jenny

some new cookies

2007-01-27T19:59:00.000-08:00

I just made some cookies for one of my clients, Delicate Details, which is an Event Planning company that specializes in weddings. The client had two requests: a fancy font and the colors should be pink and brown. As it turned out, I had the exact font to match the ones on her business card, a font called "Edwardian." Very nice and scripty. But this is what my cookies are all about - hand decorated and custom personalized to what the client needs. I do all the work myself, and I enjoy it.

Up next is a bunch of heart cookies on a stick for a client who is a regular, monthly client. She always puts a basket of thematic cookies out in her lobby, so it's getting close to Valentines Day, and I'll do a batch for her for Monday and another batch in a week or so. I've got her set on my schedule for the next few months.

So, cookies anyone?

An Introduction

2007-01-26T22:41:00.000-08:00

I grew up baking cookies for my family but never really thought about it as a career. Even now I sometimes don't think of it as a career but just as that thing I do that pays the bills! Nevertheless, it is something that I enjoy and somehow also am somewhat good at!

I created the name, Signature Sweet Shoppe, because I had this idea to make customized cookies of corporate logos - and my first byline was, "your logo, our sweets," but that seemed too long. So I just changed the byline to "Custom Cookies," which is what they all are. My clients tell me how they want them decorated, and I make it happen. Are any two orders alike? Yes. One person orders pink baby dresses and so does another. But it's so nice when the client says to me that I have carte blanche to decorate the cookies, and then I can just see each one as a little blank canvas.

I didn't take courses in cookie decorating. I'm of the "monkey see, monkey do" school of learning, and through trial and error taught myself about working with royal icing and piping bags. I thought I'd never feel comfortable piping, and now I don't give it a second thought. It also took me a while to tinker with a sugar cookie recipe that was sturdy enough to be shipped, certainly not like those flimsy things you buy in the supermarket which are too delicate and filled with who knows what preservatives to keep them "fresh" on the shelves. My cookies are sturdy enough to be "dunkers," and I encourage people to dunk them in their tea, coffee or even hot chocolate. My cookies can take it!