Hello Kookie

Kookie Hiatus?

2010-03-30T14:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since we blogged, but we promise, we've still been baking. We made some super cute robot kookies for a little boy's birthday (which sadly, Dina forgot to take pictures of) and then we just filled another order for the Golden Gate Mothers Group for their annual Easter celebration at the San Francisco Zoo.

300 mixed kookies: bunnies, lambs, and chicks

So we know that while it seems we took a kookie hiatus, we haven't. But on that note.......

Hello Kookie is, in fact, taking a hiatus because Hello Kookie is baking something different in the oven these days. This time, it's a bun in the oven!!!

Dina is pregnant with her third due this summer. And as a result, we are actively slowing down and cutting down production until things settle down for Dina and Baby3. The great part about running our own business is that we have the flexibility to slow down like this; the bad part of running our own business is that when one partner is out of commission, it really is quite crippling. But we hope all you HK fans out there understand and are patient with us.

We look forward to bringing our baking back to you again soon...

Hello Kookie says helllloooo kitty!

2010-02-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

Well, not that Hello Kitty (although Dina loves her, even at her seasoned age, there's still Hello Kitty stuff in her purse). But for a little girl in that loves kitties and decided to celebrate that love with her classmates.

G'day Valentine

2010-02-09T17:33:00.000-08:00

Here's an order we got all the way from Australia from a girl sending something special to her lovey (and we don't mean stuffed animal). So thoughtful. We think the best way to express your love is through food (well, ok, through thoughtfulness, but food really really is a close second).

Pop Culture...or Just Culture

2010-02-07T14:44:00.000-08:00

We love doing our J-Pop inspired kookies, but sometimes, just straight up culture is what's in store. Here, we did some hanbok kookies for a little girl's 1st birthday. A hanbok is the traditional korean dress, and we tried our best to model our kookies after the little girl's actual hanbok. It's not exactly easy finding hanbok cookie cutters, so we made the stencil ourselves and honestly, just prayed for the best when it came to the decorating!

Seeing 4s

2010-01-31T14:48:00.000-08:00

Another 4th birthday for one of our little friends, with a modern color sensibility.

For whatever reason, we still (!) haven't bought our number cookie cutters. We are still using our homemade stencils, and while the end product is fine (and still delicious), it's such a bummer when the edges aren't perfect. Decorated cookies, we think, are not only the best friend to the anal, but also, their worst enemy. Oh, how we love to hate you -- or hate to love you, or something like that...

La la la...Elmo's World!

2010-01-30T10:22:00.000-08:00

These fun crayon-colored kookies were created for a little guy and his 2 best gal pals' 2nd birthdays. The Moms asked us for primary colored kookies, and boy, that is what they got! Totally inspired a la Elmo's world (sing to yourself "Elmo loves crayons...his goldfish too!"), we thought the colors turned out super vibrant and cute. Happy 2nd birthdays to the little guy and his best girlfriends!

Sweet Baby Girl

2010-01-28T19:59:00.001-08:00

So another little friend HTS is having her baptism and we made these at her mom's request. We added some sanding sugar to the cross to make it, well, a little more heavenly??? We also made some of our duckies, but really, haven't you seen enough of those?!

We're in Daily Candy Kids!

2010-01-18T06:22:00.000-08:00

How psyched are we! To boot, they found us, making us feel pretty darn special and so glad that our product and concept is getting seen. As Homer would say, WOOHOO!! Thanks Daily Candy Kids!!

We do Art.

2010-01-18T06:18:00.000-08:00

For Nico's 4th birthday, we went back to the drawing board finally. Er, maybe we mean the painting board. We created some kookies for an Arts & Crafts themed birthday party in the way of some paint palettes and number "4"s. Strangely, we just assumed that we had number cookie cutters, but in fact, we did not. So we created our own #4 stencil, which involved the elegant task of cutting cardboard and covering it with foil and saran wrap. It wasn't the most elegant stencil, but it got the job done and we think the 4s turned out pretty cute (and more sizable than the usual number cookie cutters!). Happy Birthday to our little friend Nico!

Signature Series

2010-01-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

Oh wait, what's that again? We've been so busy making custom kookies, that we haven't had time to make some of the animals in our Signature Series! These are the kookies that were designed by a local Bay Area anime artist. So we finally got to it, and well, we think they're pretty irresistible. Well, not so much that we wouldn't eat them!

Ready for their close-ups...

Roarrrr! (It's the Chinese Year of the Tiger, by the way!)

Somebunny loves you (wow, that's cheesy, but we just couldn't think of anything to say here. But cute, huh?)

And... you've seen them once, you've seen them twice, but heck, why not thrice! Our logo duckies!

New Year's Resolutions

2010-01-01T06:25:00.000-08:00

Ok, we just can't say "lose 5 pounds." One, because we make kookies. Two, have you ever seen Wendy? She doesn't have a pound to spare (to which Dina says, lucky lucky girl!).

But we do have some resolutions about Hello Kookie!

1. Fix the website. It's been "baking" for some time...surely it's burnt to a crisp by now!

2. Focus on quality not quantity (this means we are limiting our production each month; we're just not happy when we are producing a zillion thousand and two kookies).

3. Get better at taking pictures. We admit it, our pictures are lousy (usually because Dina is taking pictures in bad light), but we're hoping to get a clue this year!

Happy New Year to all of you out there!

Birthday Planes for Quinn Kong!

2009-12-22T22:53:00.000-08:00

An old high school friend of Dina's (actually, she was his prom date!) ordered some vintage inspired airplanes for his son's 2nd birthday. Super cute because the theme is "Quinn Kong" (Quinn, the name and Kong, the movie). They sent us over a King Kong vintage poster, from which we drew inspiration for these red planes. Red is usually a pretty hard color to work with, but we were really happy with the red we achieved. We hope Quinn Kong has a heck of a birthday!

Starting to come to life

All bagged up and ready to hit Los Angeles

Blurry but still cute!

What, More Xmas Kookies?!

2009-12-14T12:22:00.000-08:00

This time, it was for pleasure. Wendy's pleasure, that is (as Dina's been delving into the world of brownies of late). Here's some fun winter kookies made by Wendy's hand for her family and friends!

Christmas Packs

2009-12-11T22:41:00.000-08:00

The photos are stinky, but we did some cute Christmas gift packs. The snowmen were our favorite, so much our favorite that we made an extra batch for some of our friends and family, too!

Birthday order

Christmas variety pack

It's Beginning to Look a lot like...

2009-12-07T22:16:00.000-08:00

Christmas! After a long winter's break, we've woken up to fill some holiday orders. Should we take another long nap after Christmas, here's wishing everyone an early Happy Christmas!

Rubber Ducky, You're the One!

2009-11-12T21:44:00.000-08:00

We had our little kookies at the Golden Gate Mothers Group Holiday Boutique this evening. To prep, we made a few batches of our duckies and then made some polka dot kookies that we could break up as samples.

At first, our table seemed a little bare in comparison to all the cool clothes, jewelry and various other wares that were there (including Blueblood, whose owner Dina originally met at Crissy Field when they both used to go to the beach each weekend with their respective pups!).

However, we quickly realized that where we might have lost on decor, we made up on by having kookie samples. Ain't nuthin' like some free grub!!!

Even Scientists Like Kookies

2009-10-25T18:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks Genentech for the order! We don't know what Process Improvement Awards are, but we hope our kookies made it taste better!

Loca Kookie Lady!

2009-10-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

Even after our huge order this past week, making, baking, decorating, packaging, labeling, and delivering over 800 kookies, Dina still did 50 more for her son's preschool Halloween Faire in the eleventh hour. Esa mujer es loca!!!

Halloween Blitz

2009-10-23T20:12:00.001-07:00

This week was crazy with Halloween kookies. The 500 order for a Halloween party inspired the 4 pack you see here. And incidentally, we're very happy to say that this four pack is ALL NATURAL. That's right people, as in no preservatives and no chemical additives and all that fun stuff that moms don't really like to see in their kids' food, but will sometimes pretend is not there anyway. We've created this option of All-Natural food coloring for the people that can't pretend. While we prefer the vibrancy that regular ol' food coloring gives our icing, we get that our organic kookies are very compatible with all-natural icing. Enjoy!

DBK Identified

2009-10-23T20:07:00.001-07:00

In case you were wondering what Death by Kookie looks like, here it is:

140 for Genentech in the front drying and 535 in the back for GGMG's Halloween Party. Whew.

Calling in Sick to our Blog: We have DBK

2009-10-21T06:25:00.001-07:00

We've been sort of absent lately, and that's because we've been struck with a phenomenon that we'll call "Death by Kookie" or DBK (cue ominous music here). DBK is when the orders are huge and all-consuming, but so are our lives. Basically, the equation is something like: family needs + mass kookie orders = AAAACKKKK!!!

The good news is that we're optimists (or at least Wendy is) and we learn from our experiences. So we know now how to manage the kookie production better to make sure that home life still feels good and we return to sleeping at least 12 hours each night and eating bon bons all day. Oh, just kidding, but we're at least shooting for not being so exhausted for preschool drop-offs in the morning!

Keep it Simple, Stupid!

2009-10-20T06:22:00.000-07:00

Well, we're not really stupid, although sometimes we certainly feel that way. But the point is that sometimes a cookie cutter is so cute, it doesn't call for much. Here's a 4 pack of animals that we did for a baby shower.

The Little Big Guy

2009-10-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

Dina's little man turned 3 last Monday and she made these little party favors for his playground party.

Sanding sugar on these 3's because Dina packaged them before the 3 had time to dry! Lesson learned. Lesson number 2? Sanding sugar is a nice cover up (not like a beach sarong, but for icing mess-ups).

Here are the ones that managed to dry before Dina got her grubby fingers on them.

For the Wee Ones

2009-09-29T16:18:00.001-07:00

Have we mentioned that little kids like our kookies?

The big kid in the background didn't mind them, either!

P.S. These were the 75 birthday kookies in the last post!

Happy 75th Mom!

2009-09-21T18:50:00.000-07:00

Dina's mom turned 75 this last weekend! Yowza! She's off to L.A. this coming weekend for a birthday celebration in honor of her mother, and made these monograms for the party favors. She's not sure whether her mom would really appreciate actually having the number "75" on the kookie, but hey, it is the truth and mom always told Dina to tell the truth!!!

Happy 21st Birthday Mom!

Baking for Pleasure

2009-09-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

You know how when you eat the same cereal every morning, you get so tired of it that you don't want it for, like, 2 years? Or if you work in an ice cream shop, people think that's so cool but really, the last thing you want to do is ingest any cold creamy substance? Well, baking kookies can be like that some times. There must be something about smelling the same smell every day that gets to someone. Kind of like Chinese water torture...slow, but deadly? Ok, we're exaggerating.

But we use Baking for Pleasure as little breaks away from Hello Kookie, to remind us that we really do enjoy and love this process. There's something about baking that is simply so satisfying. You feel good doing it, but you feel even better knowing that you're producing something that people truly enjoy. When you give someone a kookie (or a cookie) or a cupcake or a brownie or whatever it is, you just know that you're taking that person back to fourth grade where all they really want afterwards is either a hug from their mom or a glass of milk (or both).

Here's Dina's latest installment: whole wheat oatmeal chocolate chip cookie bars. Sort of healthy, but really not.

Even raw looks pretty darn yummy.

Baked was pretty good, too. Almost too many chocolate chips, if you can believe it.

P.S. This turned out to be a great Sunday activity since it was raining today in San Francisco. In September! What's up with that?!

Blast Off!

2009-09-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

For Liam's 3rd birthday, we took a cue from his birthday invitation and made the little guy some rocket kookies. We hope Liam has a blast eating them, as we had a blast making them!

We tried to think of some cute saying combining Liam and rocket together that we could write on the kookie, but alas, "Liam's 3!" seemed to be the most appropriate of all.

Ok, it's a little patriotic, but primary colors seemed perfect for a preschooler!

60 kookies ready to be delivered to the Noe Valley moms crew. Thanks, Liam!

The Best of Both Worlds

2009-09-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

For Molly's birthday, why make her choose? She should get kookies and eat her (cup)cake too! Happy Birthday Molly, and thanks for your order, Stacey!

Off to L.A. we go!

Weee're Baaaack!!

2009-08-26T22:29:00.001-07:00

From a long vacation, that is. We're back in the kitchen and are so excited that we received an order from Malinda Lo! Malinda's book Ash, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella, is already out in stores. Our order is being sent to her publisher, Little Brown, as promotional items, and we're also making a big custom batch for her official book launch here in San Francisco. We did our best to do right by the gorgeous cover of Ash, and are so happy for Malinda's major accomplishment. Kudos!

The cover of Ash is amazing, so we tried to get the feel of the book with the grey backdrop and deep-hued script

All packaged and ready to go! Look! We have labels!!

Continuing Education

2009-07-26T10:14:00.000-07:00

Sounds like something we had to do in our former careers, but not now! Now it's for pleasure, and sure, a little education, too. Here's the results from a cookie decorating class Wendy took recently at Spun Sugar.

Best tip of the day? It's only a cookie, for crying out loud! Don't sweat the small stuff, people are going to EAT them!

Wedding Gift Surprise

2009-07-25T19:20:00.000-07:00

Some good friends of Dina's were celebrating their union with a wonderful dinner in Mill Valley. It was a small, intimate event, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to give a personalized gift (we thought it'd be nice to make some personalized wedding favors). Fine china and crockpots are great, but sometimes, it's nice to get something so obviously made just for you!

M +

A =

Yay!

Congrats M&A on a lifetime of happiness!

Quacky Birthday!

2009-07-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday A, our little friend in Los Angeles. We hope you like our kookies (maybe your Mom could prominently feature them in her next movie? Nah! We're just happy she's featuring them at your party!).

Yes, We Do Make Kookies, Too!!!

2009-07-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

We've had a lot of non-Kookie digressions as of late, so let's get back on track!

As a thank you to Dina's son's preschool for a wonderful summer session, a batch of these were specially-made. The preschool is in an adorable red schoolhouse with white trimmed windows, just what you'd imagine a preschool should look like!

Baking for Pleasure

2009-07-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Bakerella's awesome blog and her cake pops, this was Sunday's adventure:

Cake balls (cake mixed with frosting, formed into little balls, dipped in chocolate, topped with sprinkles. Whew!)

Looking super cute in their little to-go boxes (one for the babysitter, the other for the dogwalker who let Dina & Wendy in when Dina locked herself out of the house!).

The only thing is that the cake balls are pretty sweet. After all, it's cake, mixed with frosting, then dipped in chocolate! As Dina's husband said "Don't let the kids have too many of those. They're like speed balls."

So the kids actually didn't get any (yet). But they did get some whole wheat banana muffins!

Bad Kookie!

2009-07-17T18:34:00.003-07:00

Almost like a naughty puppy, sometimes kookies misbehave. Bad kookie, bad!!

Went into the oven flat, came out with Aqua Net style poof, circa 1987.

Baking for Pleasure

2009-07-12T18:56:00.000-07:00

Some of the best childhood memories are of family traditions. Maybe it was game night every Friday night. Or maybe it was Meatloaf Monday (thankfully, not a tradition in either of our households). In Dina's house, there's Pancake Saturdays (there also used to be Mango Shake Sundays until Dina realized that was more of a gift to her, than her children).

But we think that these traditions are pretty cool, so we're toying with the idea of Kupcake Sunday for our families. That seems like just the stuff that memories are made from, don't you think? And even though we spend our days making kookies, decorating, and trying (and trying and trying and trying) to perfect our kookie techniques, we still want our families to have fun baking memories.

Here's the first installment of Kupcake Sunday at Dina's house: Fruit Ring Kupcakes (Fruit Rings = organic 365 brand from Whole Foods), adapted from Froot Loop Cupcakes.

These look little because they are minis.

Little Fruit Ring kupcakes all in army formation.

Cockle Doodle Don't!

2009-07-04T16:04:00.000-07:00

Things not to do when you're icing your roosters:

Don't get air pockets in your icing. Punctured piping is a breakdown.

"Keep your fingers off my face, thank you. Now I've got a dent."

"And what's up with the bad make-up job on my forehead? I need concealer #2, not #15!!)

Don't get impatient. This wayward eye got doused with rooster icing before his time.

This is our summer special, the Fake Bake kookie. No, actually, someone (who shall remain nameless) forgot to reserve enough icing to flood the kookie with the same color as the outline. Durrrr. To boot, she must've not dried her squeeze bottle thoroughly before adding the icing to the bottle, because a water spurt clearly happened on the top, or this lil' guy not only has a bad tan, but he also has a nasty streakline on his forehead (must've not wiped down the mist tan after getting out of the booth).

Baking for Pleasure

2009-07-03T08:50:00.000-07:00

Another kookie-decorating bash the other day, and another need for some reprieve. So Dina baked Blueberry Muffins, and not only are they Blueberry Muffins, but according to Cook's Illustrated, they are the BEST Blueberry Muffins! Not sure why they are the "best," but they did call for making a little blueberry jam to swirl into the the muffins so you get some blueberry goodness in every bite.

The jam (and no, I don't mean jam as in an 8th grade slow dance song):

The batter-in-waiting:

Jammy goodness dolloped!

Swirl, or attempted swirl (only a misdemeanor here in California):

End product.

Seriously, though, these were so good that for a bit, Dina said forget kookies, I'm baking muffins now (or should she call them kuffins?).

Double Take

2009-07-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

Is it a misshapen heart?

No, it's a rooster!

Cock-a-doodle-doo!!!

P.S. Excuse the imprecise piping; first time executing this barnyard staple.

Koala Blue, Where Are You?

2009-06-30T06:05:00.000-07:00

Remember Koala Blue? You know, Olivia Newton-John's venture, where she had clothing stores and this cute little koala with rainbow colors? Well, that Koala Blue is no more. Now, Koala Blue is the branding for wine, fine chocolates, and water. Talk about switching up the business plan!

In any event, making these little guys made us think back to Koala Blue and those Suh-uhhhhmer Niiiiiiiiiiights. Our business plan remains the same, although we will happily indulge in wine and fine chocolates. Oh, and we guess water, too.

Rated R: Naked koala waiting to get his base tan on.

Based tan achieved.

Less artsy shot.

Baking for Pleasure

2009-06-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

The hard thing about when you make something you love (like baking cookies) into a job is that it becomes exactly that -- a job. So every once in awhile, it makes sense to go back and remember why you love what you do so much that you do what you (a doo doo doo, a da da da, is all I want to say to you -- woops, sorry, couldn't resist).

So Dina, after baking cookies and icing them, found her zen moment baking some Apricot Muffins. She got a pound of organic apricots in her produce box, and since her boys don't love the tart taste of apricots, decided to bake something that would be a little easier on their newby palates.

Here's the final product.

P.S. The sad part of all of this is that although baking muffins was a nice reprieve from cookies, her boys still didn't want them!!!

Learning by Mistakes

2009-06-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

We remember when we were kids and our moms used to tell us that you can learn through your mistakes. We didn't know how right our moms were until, well, until we started dating, but apparently, this applies to our kookies as well! Photo montage now:

Our little kookies, all piped with blue.

Lesson 1: You need to pipe with a bigger pastry tip.

Our little kookies, flooded with blue.

Lesson 2: Don't be lazy. Don't use the icing you have; use the icing it needs.

Lesson 3: The blue from yesterday is not the blue from today (Ok, we already knew that, but that was a previous lesson learned!).

A house can't be built on a cruddy foundation.

Lesson 4: aka, You can't put lipstick on a pig.

Our poor little elephants. They didn't deserve this. We promised we've learned and will try harder (i.e., with good lighting, proper consistency icing, and more patience) next time. Incidentally, when we say "we," by the way, we mean Dina.

And the final lesson:

Lesson 5: When you muck it up, you must try try again!

What's Up with "Kookie"???

2009-06-27T14:54:00.000-07:00

Mmm...yes, terribly annoying, isn't it? That purposeful misspelling. You might think it was because we wanted to be cute. Not. You might think it was because it was a play on the word "kooky" (like, look how kooky we are naming our business Hello Kookie). Nope, not it either.

Instead, the reason why we are not Hello Cookie is because there is a domain squatter sitting on Hello Cookie. These domain squatters like to sit there and sit there until people decide they want that name and then guess what? Oh, they'll sell it to you for a measly fee of 2000 bucks (pretty good margin they're working, eh? Maybe the cookie business isn't the right business to be in...). In any event, since we're not backed by any venture capitalists (the Valley just doesn't seem to be interested in a little cookie company), we came up with some creative solutioning and Hello Kookie was born. And look, now we're the squatters until we can get our website up and running.

So maybe C isn't for cookie...maybe K is for kookie...and that's good enough for us! (And we're putting dollars to donuts that the Cookie Monster would gobble our treats up despite the misspelling).

P.S. For the interested, here's the definition of kooky.

P.S.S. We will now officially refer to our cookies as kookies. But don't worry, we're just branding. A chocolate chip cookie is still a chocolate chip cookie!

Test Batch Bonanza Part 2

2009-06-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

We lied. We had to test one more time. This time, Dina forged ahead alone (no kids, woot! woot!). Just another flour tweak because of fun things like gluten and protein and flakiness and crispness and all that stuff that you shouldn't think about when you eat our cookies (but that we should).

"Take another little piece of my heart now, baby;

Break another little bit of my heart now, darling."

(Janis Joplin is telling you to eat our cookies!)

Dina's just reward for another day of baking.

If it means anything at all, baking, which led to the beer, then led Dina to think "hmmm...chili sounds good for dinner." You can bet this wasn't the only beer imbibed that day (which is why, again, no icing yet).

Organic Schmorganic: What the heck is this?

2009-06-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

So like we said before, our cookies are organic. But what is that, really?

Here's a quick and dirty definition:

"Organic agriculture is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony.

‘Organic’ is a labeling term that denotes products produced under the authority of the Organic Foods Production Act. The principal guidelines for organic production are to use materials and practices that enhance the ecological balance of natural systems and that integrate the parts of the farming system into an ecological whole.

Organic agriculture practices cannot ensure that products are completely free of residues; however, methods are used to minimize pollution from air, soil and water.

Organic food handlers, processors and retailers adhere to standards that maintain the integrity of organic agricultural products. The primary goal of organic agriculture is to optimize the health and productivity of interdependent communities of soil life, plants, animals and people.

From the Organic Trade Association, www.theorganicreport.com

Without any attempt to preach (seriously, we're not the preachy type -- ok, well, Dina can get on the soap box now and then, but Wendy is definitely not preachy), we just think of it this way: Eating organic is eating cleaner, knowing what you eat, and eating without worry.

P.S. Here's some extra credit reading about what Organic means.

From Concept to Kitchen

2009-06-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

The designs for our little treats were really important to us and even though we could see them in our head, no one else could (a la Beautiful Mind -- Go New Jersey! -- sorry, we digress). Thankfully, we were lucky enough to collaborate with a fantastic artist who we commissioned to help us design our characters. So from her pen to our our pastry tips.

Test Batch Bonanza (and 1st Post!)

2009-06-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Hello Kookie! We're just a couple of pals who, aside from raising our boys (2 for each of us, thank you very much testosterone gods), love love love cookies (and well, ok, almost any food, too). Our little company is dedicated to organic cookies -- fun to see, fun to eat, and for us, fun to make!

We're still in our infancy (although thank goodness our youngest boys have turned that corner), so it's time for us to make what we hope is our last test batch in the home kitchen before we move to the big leagues, a commercial kitchen! Juggling the 4-kid schedule, we finally got together to see what would happen with a tweaked recipe (now being armed with a little science behind the flour -- yes, that's what we said -- science).

Getting ready:

Butter + Sugar = Yum, already!

Our precious little monkeys...

Storing up for the winter (aka, the icing).

Ok, if we must, we'll taste test! You can stop twisting our arms!

Next post, prime-time icing time!