Happy Holidays!

Just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Thank you for your continuous patronage. We are thankful for all our wonderful customers, employees, family, and friends.  We would not be where we are today with out all of you.

Cheers to a great year 2011 with more fun sweets: cakes, cupcakes, and cookies! We are closed for Winter Break 12/24/10-01/09/11. We will be back on Monday, January 10, 2011 at 12 PM. Happy Holidays!

Something for Everyone

This week at Polkadots, we were hard at work on a diverse selection of cakes and cookies. With graduation coming up this weekend, we fulfilled a number of orders intended to suit the occasion. Since UT has such a major presence here, graduation is almost like a biannual holiday to us! Breaking out the special cookie cutters and jazzing up the traditional Longhorn decorations with mortarboards is a fun twist on an always-popular concept. Some of the highlights included "special edition" Longhorn cookies, a funky "hook 'em" cake, and some cupcakes featuring mini diploma fondant decorations!  Congratulations to all graduates!

 

There was also a batch of Beatles sugar cookies that turned out really well. I thought that the ones with colorful album artwork looked particularly groovy.

A very dreamy winter snowflake birthday cake for Lettie's 9th birthday - our decided favorite - along with matching silver and white snowflake cookies.

Pop culture baked goods took a turn for the nerdier with the creation of a Star Wars cake covered with chocolate buttercream and fondant decorations from a galaxy far, far away!

 
There were several music-themed orders this week, but sorry, no Justin Bieber this time : ( We made a sugar free two-tiered white birthday cake decorated with black musical notes, and an orange Longhorns cake with a fondant Bevo and some guitars.

Last but not least was our fun pig cookie project - the character "Hamm " from Disney/Pixar's Toy Story:

Thanks for stopping by!

Countdown to Christmas!

Wow, the past couple of weeks have been a blur. It sure has been hustling and bustling here at Polkadots, filling many a holiday order on top of the usual ones for birthdays, baby showers, graduations, etc. Sometimes, we joke that our kitchen is like Santa's workshop, and all of our helpers are the jolly little elves! It sure feels that way during this time of the year, and even though it can be stressful now and then, we always manage to have fun together.

Last week, we completed an order calling for 60 dozen gingerbread men for 2 days!  Yes, that would be 720 cookies, individually iced. Being that we do everything the old-fashioned way (made from scratch, and decorated by hand), this was quite a timely task. But we pulled together as a team, and ended up finishing them well ahead of time.

We also baked and decorated a wide variety of really cute, scrumptious Yuletide cookies. The selection included ornaments, reindeer, soldiers, Christmas trees, Santas, snowmen, angels, candy canes, snowflakes, wreaths, and stockings. They are like edible little works of art. A fun and little-known fact is that decorating just one of our more complex cookies can take upwards of 15 minutes!

Apart from all of the holiday requests, we've received an interesting and diverse selection of orders recently. Take for example, a rainbow post-impressionistic tie dye birthday cake.

 We also made a batch of "El Toro Loco" cookies and a coordinating cake for a monster truck enthusiast. That project was definitely something different, and they turned out to be quite elegant somehow, despite the "dirt" on top of the cake!

The next project gave us all a good laugh - a "Harry Potter the sea otter" birthday cake, covered with a selection of happy fondant sea creatures. It is great to know that we have such interesting and creative customers! So next time you need a cake, consult us and let your imagination run wild, because we can do just about anything here.

 Thanks for stopping by!

'tis the season...to ice cookies!

As of last week, it officially feels like the holidays are upon us here at Polkadots. Leading up to Thanksgiving, we made what were likely our last autumn-themed orders for the year. They included hand-iced cookies..

 Squirrel, pumpkin, turkey, fall leaves, and cute scarecrow!

  and cupcakes decorated in traditional fall motifs...

 and even a silly demented turkey cake! This cake was a 6" round consists of 4 layers chocolate cake, marinated rum cherries, and fresh whipped chantilly cream - serves 12 adults.

After those were complete, we moved on to creating what were the first of our many winter-themed treats. Holiday goodies are always lots of fun to make in our kitchen - we like to turn on Christmas music while we work, Country Christmas, R and B, pop, oldies etc...,which never fails to get everyone in the spirit. We tend to make more cookies around this time of the year, and each one calls for a lot of time and attention to detail. The varieties we made included snowflakes, mittens, Christmas trees, sleighs, wreaths, snowmen, ornaments, stockings, candy canes, Santas, reindeer, and gingerbread men. They look so cute together on a nice platter when they are all finished!

We'll have limited varieties available to pick up at the store starting this weekend, or you can place your custom cookies order with a 72 hrs notification.