I recently participated in another Operation Cookie Takeover mission.  If you don’t know what OCT is all about you should check out their Facebook page!  The quick rundown though is this – people nominate deployed soldiers to receive cookies from the volunteers who have signed up to bake and send them.  Volunteers have shipped over 37,000 cookies to deployed soldiers since 2013!

This was the fourth mission and my fourth time participating.  It was also, by far, my favorite experience.

My idea for this round of cookies was to create a cookie “postcard” – a handwritten, edible note of thanks.  I have been seeing a lot of cookie decorators using the stamping technique to embellish their cookies and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give it a try.  I used a rectangular cookie cutter to make my postcards and covered them in a layer of white royal icing.  Then I picked up a few postage related stamps from the craft store, read this tutorial on cookie stamping from Fancy Flours and went to town.

After trying out a few stamps I decided I liked the postmark one the best, so I stamped each of my postcard cookies with it.  Because my cookies weren’t perfectly flat, sometimes the stamp didn’t lay the ink down evenly in all spots but I figured that was okay – most postmarks aren’t completely uniform so I’m calling it “authentic.”  I let the ink dry overnight and then packed the cookies up and took them into work the next day for the fun part!

Along with my cookies I brought in a few sets of edible ink markers and set up a cookie signing station in an empty cubicle.  I invited all my coworkers to stop by and write a note to the troops on one of the cookies.

Here are a few of them:

And here are all 24 together!

Thanks to the help of all my awesome friends at work these turned out so much better than I imagined.  I was so excited to ship these off to the Marine that I was matched up with.  I hope they all made it in one piece!