Her canvas is cookies
Mar. 26—This is not exactly cookie decorating season — though last week's St. Patrick's Day usually brings us cookie shamrocks with green frosting.
Still, with graduations on the horizon along with Easter, Mother's Day and other opportunities to celebrate, a Rochester woman is making a name for herself and earning a reputation for creating amazing art with frosting.
I'm calling her the "cookie artist" and here's why: A few weeks ago a local study group heard a presentation on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, among other vessels. Chris Cross brought cookies as a snack, and we soon saw these were not ordinary cookies by any means. They were all decorated in a palette of colors resembling a shipwreck, complete with waves washing over the ship's sides.
Naturally there came a chorus of "ohs and ahs" and we soon found out that not only were they amazing to look at but delicious to eat as well.
So, who was the talented creator? Eva Harmon, a bookkeeper at Mayo Clinic Hospital-Methodist, who is new to Rochester. Prior to moving here she had a thriving cookie business in California, then Mississippi and hopes to do the same here.
Cross found here through Harmon's fiancée who was fixing Cross' garage door and gave her a few Halloween cookies.
"They were amazing," she says. "I knew I needed to order some for the study group event."
Harmon initially came to this business through trying to get cookies to decorate for her niece's first birthday. She ran into a few roadblocks and decided to just do them herself. That was eight years ago and it's been going strong ever since. "Fortunately my job is finished every day at 2, so I have the afternoon and evening to do the cookies."
As friends and family saw what she could do the rush was on and her business took off. While many home-bakers do a great job with decorating cookies, Harmon takes it to a whole new level. Those first birthday cookies were elaborate snowflakes, an immediate hit. Knowing she had found a niche, she set out to learn everything she could to make her creations unique.
"I studied the internet, watched videos, watched YouTube, and just practiced," Harmon says.
It certainly paid off. She has literally decorated hundreds, if not thousands, of cookies for just about any occasion you can think of — birthdays, graduations, wedding showers, baby showers, you name it and she has probably provided the cookies. She even had a recent order from a customer in Mississippi.
Harmon puts a tremendous amount of time into each cookie, some taking as many as 20 minutes per cookie to decorate. "It's a process, " she explained. First there is the actual baking of the cookies and letting them cool completely. Once that happens she "floods" them with an icing that acts as the base for the actual decorating. Often then she lets them sit for a day to be totally dry.
Then the decorating takes place. A perfectionist, this takes quite a bit of time, depending on what the customer wants. Her frosting of choice is Royal Icing, a favorite of professional bakers as well. What has been her biggest decorating challenge?
"Creating Teen Titans for a young boy's birthday. It took me days but I got them done." (I had to look up what those were.) Interesting her cookies are never frozen and she wraps each one individually.
Another interesting aspect of her creativity is what she can do with cookie cutters. "I love to see how many different shapes I can get out of one. For instance a simple cupcake cookie cutter can be flipped over and turned into a gnome."
Have you even seen Santa as a lumberjack? She's even done that. You'll likely want to see for yourself what she can do. Her business is called Sugar Coated and she can be reached at 559-719-5869.
Post Bulletin food writer Holly Ebel knows what's cookin'. Send comments or story tips to life@postbulletin.com .
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