Suzy Q and I get off the wall requests regularly, this one was no different. A friend of mine and his wife were having a zoo birthday party for their very special and amazingly strong daughter Alexandra, a.k.a. Alex. Not just your run of the mill zoo party, nope, this was being held at Woodland Park Zoo during Wild Lights. Wild lights is over 600,000 Christmas lights all over the zoo, and is quite a sight to see. If you haven’t been to your local zoo’s Christmas light spectacular, I suggest a trip. It’s such a fun way to spend an evening.
We are normally given a set of guidelines or an inspiration to go with when we are commissioned to make cookies. Alex’s dad and I had a brief discussion of what he thought his wife might like and I took those tid bits off to Suzy Q. We brainstormed and it came to us; ugly Christmas sweater wearing zoo animals. I proposed this to Alex’s mom and she loved it. We made some test batches of different flavors and cuts to see what would travel well, as I would be delivering them, and what we could really make work. It was also agreed upon that we would have to have some filler cookies, so what better fit than some Christmas light bulbs!
We found the cutters that would hold their shape well for decorating, wouldn’t lose a limb in transit and lent themselves to some ugly sweaters. Suzy Q loved the flamingos, and their sweaters are so fun.
My personal favorites were the alligators, because, well who has ever seen an alligator in a sweater?
They couldn’t all be in sweaters now could they?
Suzy Q had a blast with these giraffes. On our trial run, she tried adding dots of icing to make their spots, ut she just wasn’t happy with the final result. In my ques for cookie cutters and sprinkles, I came across randomly shaped chocolate bits. They worked out great for these giraffes.
And we can’t forget the birthday girl’s special cookie, complete with a cake and lit candle.
Suzy Q and Mrs. K