Kookie Hiatus?

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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.

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

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

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!