Working Girl Cooks!

It is my friend Tam’s birthday today. Happy birthday Tam! Tam is a good friend of mine from Australia. Her and her husband, Cam (yes Tam and Cam….cute huh?) moved into the same Avalon apartment complex as TDH and myself in San Francisco almost three years and we became fast friends. Over the last three years we have become very close. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding and I am an “auntie” to her cute six month old daughter, Summer.

I wanted to make something special for Tam for her birthday but I did not have a ton of time (procrastination is an evil thing!) so I needed something that was easy and fast. Cookies are always really good, really easy to make, and can be made start to finish in an hour or less. So I figured a type of cookie is my best bet, but cookies are kind of boring! How can I turn my birthday treat to Tam from a boring cooking to something really special?

Well, the first valentines day I spend with TDH waaaaaaay back in the day when I was a wee little sophomore in college, TDH bought me this giant heart cookie decorated with frosting. It was such a sweet (get it….sweet….haha) gift and thinking about how to make a cookie special brought me back to that memory.

So I decided to make Tam a large cookie shaped and decorated. I used this chocolate chip cookie recipe from Cooking Stuff because it looked so gosh darn good and she has step by step photo directions! I spread my dough into one big blog on some parchment paper then cooked it for about 25 minutes at 325F.  I decided to shape the cookie as a map of Australia (I thought she would get a kick out of it!) so I printed out a map of Australia and used a small sharp knife to cut around my cookie blob to shape it. I had a lot of extra cookie blob left (I had meant to make half a batch but got a little excited and was halfway done with making the full batch when I realized what I was doing.), so I used up the rest by cutting out some cut little hearts, flowers, and bears. Attempting to decorate them was fun, although it made me realize I could use some practice! I used some tubes of writing frosting I bought from the grocery store in cute pastel colors because I know Tam likes cute little girly colors.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TAM!