On this blog, I usually don’t divulge much of my personal life outside my world of cookie making, but this post will provide more of a peek. As you probably figured out, I spend most of my free time making cookies. It’s a fun hobby that I love doing, but it doesn’t really pay the bills. For a living, I’m a full-time engineer at an aerospace and defense corporation in the Seattle area (if you Google it, I’m sure you can find out which one).

Last weekend, my old work group had its annual Christmas party. This event brings together members, past and present, who works/worked in the Aero Simulation group. I moved on to another group within the company but this party was always a festive opportunity to reunite with everyone again. Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend the party this year, but I did make cookies for them in my absence.

Without getting too technical, the Aero Sim group validates the aerodynamic handling qualities of flight simulators used for training pilots. Simulators like the one seen here.

(image source Seattle P.I.)

I was pretty sure my co-workers would get a kick out of a flight simulator cookie, so I did my best to try to replicate one.

The past few years, the Sim group has been working feverishly on two new airplane models, so I had to make sure to pay homage to them in this batch.

The first being our latest, long-range, passenger aircraft. I made cookies that reflected the nose view in our flight test paint scheme, as well as silhouettes of the airplane in flight. I was excited to do these cookies because I got to break out my airbrush kit again, although I still feel like I need more practice on applying the color evenly.

The second airplane model is of our largest commercial aircraft we build. It comes in a passenger and freighter version, each with a unique paint scheme. I did both paint schemes on a cookie, as well as its silhouette.

Lastly, I finished off this batch with a few aerodynamic tables everyone in the Sim group would be very familiar with (they’re of lift, pitch, and drag curves if you were curious).

You probably noticed I didn’t go into too many job specifics in this post, mainly because I didn’t want to bore you with the details (also, because I didn’t want to get in trouble at work if I happened to say too much). Well, I hoped you enjoy this small field trip into what I used to do 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I should be back on track with Christmas/winter cookies with my next post.