I’ve done a few desserts – mostly cookies – over the last month for school and camp fundraisers. March is most definitely auction season and I’ve come to expect and plan for the various baking opportunities like I plan Christmas shopping in December.

Here’s the latest:

Most recently, a garden cookie set for a friend’s son’s Waldorf elementary school. The school encourages procurement of handmade items for auction and I’m all in…

Next up, a decadent chocolate cake with European cocoa wafers for crunch and pirouettes for flair. This was made for my kids’ school dessert auction. There were so many great dessert choices that day – my table ultimately chose a raspberry lemon curd cake a friend made. Divine.

That auction proceeded St. Pat’s by a few days, so I made a green infused cookie set for sale…

Next up was a chocolate naked cake with silky and perfectly flavored orange curd I made for a friend’s daughter’s wedding. A combination of recipes found online got me over the finish line for the orange curd.

My final offering for this post are some logo cookies I made as “thank you’s” for live auction winners at the Camp Stix Auction, a fundraiser to support camp for kids with diabetes. This year was their most successful fundraiser to date!

A friend contacted me out of the blue a few weeks ago to ask if I was still in the cookie biz. I’m not really, but I said I could make something for her because I miss my cookie projects, full of creative possibilities.

When tasked, my mind lingers on ideas, googles clip art images, and dreams some more of adding “texture,” like airbrushing, disco dust sparkle, and my current favorite – sprinkle mixes! This sounds ridiculous I know, but it’s me, always on the hunt for edible accessories!

The best part of this current project was that it called for pink and almost screamed for sparkle and sprinkles. My friend needed wrapped cookie favors for a baby girl shower brunch. She said to do whatever I liked. So perfect. Time to dream, time to bake, time to draw with icing and time to celebrate!

While snow dumps and gathers on my stairs and walkways today I am wondering why can’t Washington be the sunshine state?

I made these cookies a few weeks ago to celebrate sunshine in people, particularly my dentist, Susan M. Kohls, who helped my dad manage tooth pain while he was visiting from Colorado. Her office got him in within an hour of our calling and he left her office feeling ok again and with a dental plan in hand.

It made us feel important and all warm and fuzzy. People can be powerful like that… So I also made sunflowers because flowers are for lots of things, including saying thank you. It’s nice too that they can bring you to a sunshine state.

We just spent a weekend skiing and then coming back to a friend’s condo for night time swimming, late spaghetti and pizza dinners with time left for nature documentaries before shuffling the kids to bed so that we could do it all again the next day. Great parenting times.

The best part was the comfort-glam style of the place. Overstuffed pillows lean on sequined pillows, coffee table books feature paintings from the Old West and crystals from an oversized dining chandelier shed light on a lovely life.

In a nod to our host’s affection for glam, this thank you cookie set includes some classic valentines, kicked up with some cookie gems.

My daughter Linnea and I are a bit late to view the Great British Baking Show, but we’re making up for lost time.  As a person who takes baking seriously, I’m drawn to the seriousness of the show and how the obviously accomplished judges treat the amateur bakers with such respect.  Everyone involved is in love with crisp crusts, silky ganache, creeping angel food cake batter and perfectly set custard.  Exactly as it should be…  I watched a pie and tart episode tonight and am still craving brown and crackly pie bottoms.

The show is inspiring Linnea and I to bake with abandon.  To try new recipes, follow them to the letter (even if that means sifting the flour three times), and to experiment more.  To get beyond my tried and true cake and cookie recipes and try something new.  So we started that “resolution” this week.  To almost utter failure.

We made Chinese almond cookies that tasted just like the bland vegetable shortening baked inside.  We made Viennese butter cookies that called for hard boiled egg yolks and not much else.  And a new chocolate cake recipe that came from a trusted source but resulted in dry cake.  I tried to improve the butter cookies with finishing salt, sprinkles and a chocolate ganache, but they were still ugly to eat.  Even my little girls, who will do somersaults for a sprinkle, quickly tired of eating them.  Thank goodness I’m not now asked to plate these items and present them to very serious judges who couldn’t even balance the criticism with a nod to my style.

Still, we’ll persist.  I’m still hungry for those pie crusts and the regular people I saw who bake them live an ocean away.