Molasses Cookie

I saw this giant molasses cookie in the store the other day and let out a little gasp. 

When I was a kid, we'd walk over to Heintz Bakery in Country Club Center * to get treats. They had these gigantic cookies (to a kid's eyes, anyway), and it was always exciting to get to choose one from the display case, then the have the nice bakery lady in her bakery lady uniform reach over the counter to hand it to me, wrapped in its little piece of tissue. They had sugar cookies with scalloped edges, peanut butter, chocolate chip, and molasses.

 (* If you remember Country Club Center from 'back in the day', here's another little article about it.)

I just had to draw this. And I decided to make it one of my 'architectural food' pieces since I haven't done one for a while. Its a sort of odd thing to do a side and section view of, but then I thought, why not? The inside has a wonderful rich, dense section where all the molasses kind of gels together. These are sprinkled all over the top with white sugar. They are just sugar bombs, pretty much. But they smell heavenly, and are delicious.

I also scanned it as I went, so you can see how it developed.

The drawing is 8" x 10", on Fabriano Artistico paper. I used almost all Caran d'ache Pablo colored pencils on it, with one layer of Polychromos, and wee bit of white gouache for the sugar at the end.

I like to establish the pattern on something like this, then work into it with more details. 

At this stage it looked like one of those chocolate cookies with the powdered sugar on top.

Here it looks like a toll house, without the chocolate chips.

Here it looks like peanut butter.

Crumbs! There are always crumbs.

This is the layer where I added some Polychromo Bistre.

And here I dabbed some white gouache on for the sugar. All done!

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The yard is in full swing now. I noticed today that all my white flowers are in bloom. Not sure if that means anything, but thought I'd take a few (blurry) pics for posterity.

The magnolia has some new flowers, but they're all so high up, I can't get a good photo. You'll just have to take my word for it that that white bit in there is a lovely magnolia flower.

My little miniature rose struggles valiantly in this heat. It lived in a nice foggy yard in San Francisco for many years, so now I have it nestled in with some other green things to help keep it sheltered, and try to remember to mist it often.

And gardenias! They smell so wonderful. I don't think this little guy bloomed last year, so I was so happy to see flowers on it today.

Phyllo, looking three sheets to the wind, helping me examine a magnolia cone.

These things are so cool, but not so cool to step on on the lawn. Its a wonder I haven't broken an ankle stumbling over these.

I'm itching to get out my watercolors. I think some picture book art is on the horizon next . . .