Oh what a difference a year can make.
Last year was my first Blissdom, and to be quite honest, I was terrified. I am not a natural extrovert so walking into a conference full of 700 women I didn’t know was about as appealing as pouring lemon juice into a paper cut. In the past 12 months, I have learned a lot about putting myself out there, and while it still doesn’t come naturally, I have found it is not quite so hard for me anymore. Of course it also helped that I was getting to see lots of people I already knew.
It also helped that this year I baked cookies.
Because, in the words of my friend Edie, “that’s how you make friends in the South.”
But I just didn’t make any cookies. I made dahlia cookies. You know, to match the dahlias that are all over my websites. So they would match my business cards. Because that’s the kind of nerd I am.
Despite my dorkiness, they were a HIT, so I thought I’d share how I made them. All 75. (And if you’re wondering, the answer is yes, they did take forever. I thought I was going to die.)
I don’t have an original sugar cookie recipe. I use Martha Stewart’s sugar cookie cutout and royal icing recipes from her Cookies cookbook (page 241). I’m not sure it matters what sugar cookie recipe you use–the process is the tricky part–but I can tell you that Martha’s cookies are the best. I have made dozens of recipes from that particular cookbook and they are always to-die-for. The sugar cookies, however, are always everyone’s favorite. They are the perfect combination of beautiful AND tasty.
For a detailed tutorial of the baking process, check out my How to Make Sugar Cookies post. Be sure to use a 3″ flower cookie cutter to cut out the cookies (I found mine at Jo-Anns) Ice the cookies with a plain white base of royal icing, then follow these steps to create the dahlia design:
Here is what they looked like with my business cards:
Okay, okay, I’m pretty sure I was the dorkiest girl at Blissdom, but be honest…don’t you want one?
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