Cookie Decorating

Royal Icing decorated cookies

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IMG_5279I'm addicted to wet-on-wet decorating of cookies. It's fast. It's flashy. I don't have to wait for anything to dry between steps. It can easily be done with ANY color scheme.

One of my favorite wet-on-wet looks is marbling. Back in my last life as a teacher, when I was single no kids and had a TON of free time I once took a paper marbling class. The methods are the same for cookies, just a different medium. Here's how I decorated a couple of the M's for my nephew's birthday earlier this month. I'm using all flood icing here of the same consistency, about 18- to 20-second icing.

Start with a cookie. ;-)
Start with a cookie. ;-)
Flood the cookie with your choice of background color.
Flood the cookie with your choice of background color.

One of the keys to this method is to work fast. I wouldn't advise doing more than one cookie at a time, especially if you're doing larger cookies.

Without letting the background icing dry, use your first accent color to make stripes.
Without letting the background icing dry, use your first accent color to make wet-on-wet stripes.
Repeat with any additional accent colors.
Repeat with any additional accent colors.
While the icing is still wet, use a toothpick or boo boo stick to drag lines perpendicular to the stripes you created. Wipe off the toothpick after each pass.
While the icing is still wet, use a toothpick or boo boo stick to drag evenly spaced lines, perpendicular to the stripes you created (mine go down). Wipe off the toothpick after each pass.

The above would be a perfectly lovely marbled cookie and you can stop there for one look. You can vary it's appearance by making the lines with the toothpick closer together if you like. Or...

Using the same method, go in between the lines you just made in the opposite direction (I went up on this step).
Using the same method, go in between the lines you just made using your toothpick in the opposite direction (I went up this time).

This method can be used in so many different ways and on so many different shaped cookies. You can achieve a different look by changing the order in which you make your strips and varying the tip size that you use to make your strips for different thicknesses of lines.

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Last month I posted about N's birthday cookies. Her brother's birthday is this month. When they were here enjoying N's cookies, I had the batch for M's birthday celebration on March 2nd in the freezer. I didn't mention it to him.

Last Thursday morning my sister-in-law called. She said she had asked M what kind of cake he'd like when we get together with the family for his birthday. He declared that he'd like "Auntie Sarah's cookies with the hard icing on top." So my SIL was calling to see if that was a possibility. I confessed about my pile of Ms, 4s and fire trucks* waiting to be iced.  Here's the finished product:

four fire trucks for M's 4thIt took me about an hour and 45 minutes to color the icing and decorate these dozen cookies.  (This doesn't count the time to actually make the icing, or to make and bake the cookies.) I continue to enjoy wet-on-wet decorating (used on the Ms and 4s). I'm also starting to try more designs that involve flooding one color against another color, like I did for the red on the truck around the white windows. (My most intricate example of this so far was the Rapunzel cookie.) Here are some more pictures:

fire truck cookie

fire truck birthday cookies

happy 4th birthday MIf you'd like to see how I did the marbled M cookies or the fire truck cookies, please check back. ;-)

 

*Turns out I had made truck cookies, not fire truck cookies. Ah well, iced them as fire trucks anyway.  :-)

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S turns 4S's party has a Tangled/Rapunzel theme and I was helping with some other aspects of the party planning. Obviously, I wanted to make some cookies as well. I decided to go for it. The most detailed, most colorful cookie I've attempted. I baked a gingerbread girl shaped cookie... just one. Talk about rolling the dice. No room for error. No pressure. Really, none at all. I guess worst case, only The Boy and I would have known that I was attempting something I didn't deliver if it didn't go well.

In surfing Pinterest posts of Tangled parties I ran across tons of adorable party ideas. When it came to sitting down to decorate cookies at nearly 10pm the night before the party, I hadn't a real clue of how I was going to decorate a cookie in a likeness of Rapunzel. So back to Pinterest and I ran across a pin that brought me to this Tangled Inspired Birthday Party. Aha! A lovely Rapunzel image on the invitation that I thought I had a fair chance of turning into a cookie. I did decide to use one of my circles to practice the shape of the face and hair. Then I went to town on the real deal:

Rapunzel cookieIt's not perfect, but this is officially the most detailed cookie I've made thus far.

ready for the partyAgain with the formula of a few feature cookies and a bunch of more simply decorated smaller cookies.  I really went for fast with these: dots, stripes and hearts. I've also decided that I need to always have a bank of basic shapes (circles, squares, etc.) in the freezer so when I have extra icing after doing a main project I can make more cookies within a day to coordinate or just as practice. Or simply to eat. After decorating the batch of Valentine's cookies I wanted to do more, but all I had remaining that were baked and undecorated were cookies for upcoming birthdays, so I had none to spare.