Month: December 2021

LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW!

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We have not had any snow yet, but to quote a certain series… Winter is coming, better be ready for it. And for snowmen, nothing brings more happiness than plenty of snowflakes falling from the skies above.

A gingerbread cookie, with a simple decoration, flood the base in red, the globe in light blue, and let it set. Then pipe the body with thicker icing, add black pearls for the buttons, and let that set for an hour or so (thicker consistency dries a bit faster, and if you are gentle enough you can continue with the additional details). The snowballs should be added in stages so they don’t join together. Finally, the arms, scarf, smile and blush on the cheeks close the design.

Moving on, a little series I really enjoyed, inspired by Kathy, from Art Projects for Kids.

I love their different expressions and movements… Starting with flooded rectangles fully set, I drew the different snowmen with a food pen, then used Sugarprism watercolor to add the background. While that was still wet, I showered some white non-pareils.

Another very simple design for a snowman, uses a cookie cutter from Sugarbelle, in which each shape comes with appropriate stencils to help you decorate.

Two colors needed, white and blue. Starting with the band on the hat, so that you can add sanding sugar to that part, the rest is quite straightforward.

The stencil really helps quite a bit. I have a hard time judging how to space details in a cookie, so for me a set like this one from Sugarbelle makes life a lot easier.

From the same set, this little angel also materialized in our kitchen….

Closing this post, how could I not include Snowmen Macarons? These were filled with Pistachio-Lemon Buttercream, a slightly more decorated version from the ones I made last year.

After baking, all details were added with Royal icing in bright colors, plus the mouth and eyes with a food pen.

I often like to pipe some mini-macs just for fun, these were air-brushed with a stencil.

I loved making these! Some were a bit chubby, some had funny expressions, but they turned out as a happy family. And they have a message for you, now that a new year is about to start…

IS IT A CUPCAKE? IS IT A FERN?

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IT’S A COOKIE CUTTER FLIP!

I love when a cookie cutter is used with new designs in mind, and this recent version from Haniela is one of my favorites. So elegant in its simplicity, and very effective. She demonstrates it in great detail here, starting at 2 min and 20 sec. If you have a cupcake cookie cutter, you are all set! In the same video she shows how to make a very cute Santa Claus, also with the same cutter. She is the Queen of Cookie Cutter Flips!

For these gingerbread cookies, you’ll only need four colors of Royal icing: white, black, cream and green. For the ferns, black stems and twines, make sure to have icing in piping consistency.

The twine decorations are simply small red dots painted with a food pen after the lines are fully set. Amazing how little details can elevate a design!

Piping ferns is a skill that comes in handy for countless cookie designs. It is quite forgiving, since you can add new layers in stages. A few red sprinkles (or royal icing dots) complement this look quite well.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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Sharing the last collection of cookies for the season, these are simple to make, and I like their almost minimalist look, particularly the Christmas tree. I wish I had saved the source of my inspiration for the little gift packages, but I took a screen shot of some Instagram stuff, never saved the actual post and was unable to find it again.

Apart from simple Royal icing details in red and green, fondant details make them special. I always use white fondant and paint in any color I want later.

You can do a lot with just three colors of icing, and during Christmas season, it’s pretty much all you need…

Two tones of green can also make a pretty cute wreath design, when coupled with red accent sprinkles…

Just pipe them as shown below and run a needle through the center, drawing a circle.

This year I’ve done a lot of Christmas trees, but not as many ornaments…

It is now time to say goodbye to Christmas cookies… makes me sad, but in a way every season that ends leaves that feeling that too many cookies were left unbaked. But another season comes to get excited about… Can you feel the Valentine vibes forming?

CHRISTMAS COOKIES

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Still in the spirit of the season, a few more ideas for your holiday bakes, starting with socks to hang by the fireplace…

They were made after a video from Marlyn (Montreal Confections), using a “frankencookie” approach (watch it here). A sock cutter is combined with a little head to form the final design. From that point, it is pretty straightforward: ice the different areas, let them set. Pipe decorative lines with black Royal icing, and the detail on top of the sock with a star tip and stiff consistency icing. While that part is still wet, carefully place a mini candy cane as decoration. The eyes and mouth were made with a food-safe pen.

The hexagons were featured recently in the blog (click here for the original post). Once the franken-sock cookie was fully set, I painted a bit of luster pearl on the white part of the sock. Because bling makes everything better.

Moving on, another very cute idea from Marlyn: when a Christmas tree and a dress fall desperately in love and have a baby… You can check her IG video for this cookie with a click here.

Marlyn used a template to get a perfectly symmetrical shape for the dress, I went free-hand. Each layer of the dress is piped independently, starting with the bottom layer. A darker tone of green is air-brushed on the edges, a step that adds quite a bit of pizazz to the dress. The red details and top of the dress are added later, as well as the black belt (with tip Ateco #44).

Finally, my own contribution to this post, with a super simple design using mini-cookie cutters from Sugarbelle. These are tiny, two-bite little things, perfect when you don’t really feel like indulging too much in sweets. All you need is green, red and white icing, plus sprinkles. The fern cookies require some piping consistency icing, but you can conceivably just use a food pen to simplify things quite a bit.

I am definitely going to be using mini-cutters quite often in the future. They are adorable and the set comes with 40 shapes plus a cool “idea sheet” to offer alternative ways to decorate each shape.

I hope your holiday season is going smoothly. For many, plans had to be canceled, meetings with family postponed once again due to the virus that won’t leave us in peace. Let’s hope for a much kinder year ahead…

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN!

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A super fun cookie project, following the cookie-steps of Marlyn once again. Her full tutorial and templates are available in her Patreon page with a click here. You can conceivably make the design without cutting stencils for it, but they make life a lot easier. Same thing goes for the Royal icing transfers, you can skip and just pipe on the cookie but they add a lot, so my advice is to enjoy the path and go with the flow. I am so happy with my little chubby Santas, even if one of them indulged a bit much in the eggnog and got wasted.

Yeap, the bottom right one took over the eggnog and would not let go… Truth is, the air-sprayer malfunctioned and let’s say he got more blush than advisable for a respectable Santa. My apologies. He is very merry, though.

Below you see the items you must prepare in advance, if you want to do the decorations as transfers. You will need Marlyn’s templates for that (link here), or if you are a pro at drawing, you can try to make them yourself. The stencil helps air-brushing the basic design on the naked cookie, but you ca definitely draw it by hand.

I made the beard using two different styles, either air-brushing with the stencil, or piping with Royal icing. I like them both, actually.

Marlyn does so many cute details in her cookies, and I learn a lot trying to incorporate them all. I need to get better at handling the air-brush and judging the distance, amount of dye, and how hard to press the little trigger. But only one Santa out of four got hopelessly drunk because of my actions. Not bad, not bad.

I wish all my readers happy holidays and, if you celebrate….

AMY’S CHRISTMAS COOKIES: A FUN VIRTUAL CLASS

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If you follow my cookie adventures, you know that I am always trying to learn from the great decorators out there. I recently joined a virtual event hosted by Amy, from Seriously Sweet in Davis St, and it was a lot of fun! The class was supposed to be beginner to intermediate level, and we had to make six designs. The picture above shows two of them, plus two small cookies I made with leftover icing from class. Everything super well explained, all we had to do was bake the 6 different shapes, and have four of them iced the day before, so we could work with stencils, stamps, and colors during class. Since the event was by zoom, we could always ask specific questions and even show our cookies to her and other participants in case of eventual drama.

For the preparation, we flooded the angle tree with green, the center of the ornament with red, the candle and the star with white. We also had the option of making little fondant decorations, if we wanted to follow her exact design, which I obviously chose to do. During class we did brush embroidery for the angel, and painting with watercolor technique for the star and candle. All at a nice pace, with very detailed instructions by Amy, who was decorating hers, in real time. The only cookie that gave me trouble was the tree, I could not make the stamp go smoothly over the whole surface, but still like the effect. I need to practice stamping, it is not that easy for me.

It is hard to pick a favorite, for me it is a tie between the ornament and the wreath…

The painting method for the star was very cool, and as Amy pointed out during class, the technique can be used for many different designs. For a more advanced adventure, she suggested we could write “Fa-la-la” over the tree with the musical sheet in the background, but I did not feel quite up to the challenge. Writing with Royal icing will require a bit more mental prep from me.

So here they are, my six babies from class!

Amy, thank you so much for organizing this class, I always learn a ton of stuff during your events… I look forward to the next one!

If you’d like to join one of Amy’s future classes, visit her IG page and join her Facebook group, you will meet lots of cookie-addicts and will improve your skills while having a lot of fun.

MARLYN’S HUNGARIAN TREE

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As I mentioned in my last post, this cookie is a work in progress, because the intricate piping was a a bit beyond my skill level. Marlyn designed a real masterpiece, and I knew it would be a challenge to try and get it right. But if we don’t get out of our comfort zone, we never improve. So here is my first attempt, not sure I’ll have a chance to re-visit it before the holiday season is over, but there is always next year… Marlyn’s detailed tutorial and template for the stencil are part of her Patreon site. You can find it here.

The cookie starts by flooding with Royal icing in the color of your choice for the background. That layer needs to fully set, so you can apply the stencil on top (available at Marlyn’s site as a Silhouette or Cricut file), and use that to spray paint the design (using a very soft color that will be barely visible). Once that dries, you can lay the drawing with piping consistency Royal icing, and that is the tricky part. I reduced the size of the cookie, which was not a very clever move. For a drawing as complex as this, bigger is easier.

For the air-brushing I used pearl white, so that even if I was not able to cover each detail, it would not be a problem.

Some of my colors were a little off in the consistency, so the piping was not as sharp as I wanted. But for a first attempt I am pretty happy with them. Of course, there is no need to wait for the next holiday season to practice this technique. It can be used for all kinds of cookies, and Valentine’s will be a perfect excuse for me to try it again… Stay tuned!

A CHRISTMAS TREE PARTY

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Moving along the Holiday Baking Path, today I share a series of Christmas Tree Cookies with different styles of decoration. Some are gingerbread with very little icing, some are sugar cookies also very austere in the icing department. Some are simple, some a bit more involved. Some are modern, some more traditional. I hope you will find a cookie with your name written on it…

This is the perfect cookie for those who are anti-Royalists, as far as icing is concerned. I used a large oval cookie cutter and a mini-tree shape. Cut the tree from the center of the oval cookie, lifted it out, painted green with Sugarprism. The great thing about Sugarprism is that the color is unchanged during baking. And it tastes great, a nice vanilla flavor that won’t interfere with your cookies. Placed the painted tree inside, and baked them together. Finally I just glued some confetti sprinkles with a tiny drop of icing. Basically, it is a naked cookie, but looks pretty decorated, right?

Now for a slightly unusual shape, I used this cookie cutter. I think it calls for a more modern design, so I went with three different types, the first with minimal icing + white sanding sugar, and the other two either flooded white and with added swirls, or iced with fine green lines all over. In that one, a bit of copper luster powder was added for a little extra bling, as well as a golden star made as royal icing transfer the day before.

As some may know, I have a hard time resisting the Call of the Zentangle, so I had to incorporate a black and white tree version. Flooded white and details added next day with a black food pen. The white star is molded fondant sprayed with PME luster pearl.

Same shape, same white flooding as a starting point, a super simple design: draw lines with black pen and glue confetti sprinkles all over the lines.

If you are good at drawing, you can do a similar design free-hand, but I used a mini-projector to help me out… The candy corn shape works well for that.

Another option that is pretty simple: ice with white and wait for that to set for about 30 minutes. The do little indentations with the handle of a brush or a fondant tool. Glue the confetti and a golden star. Simple and I think pretty cute, particularly for a small cookie.

For another modern-ish version, after flooding the angled tree with white, I used a stencil to add a delicate leaf pattern. The design was made a bit more evident with a beige food pen, and gold luster powder added to the base and accent star. The whole cookie was then lightly sprayed with PME gold.

For the next design, I was inspired by a recent Facebook live from Marlyn (watch it here, starts at 25 minutes). Her tree was much more complex, but I simplified mine a bit to go with the simple triangle shape of the cookie.

To make the snowflakes I used a puncher thingie (similar to this one) to cut wafer paper, then glued a silver nonpareil in the center.

I intend to go for the tree design that Marlyn shared before this season is over, so stay tuned.

Brush embroidery is also a very easy way to decorate this type of cookie, sanding sugar giving it a nice, snowy look.

But of course I must close the post with my obsession of 2021…

I hope I’ve inspired you to bake some Christmas trees cookies for your family and friends. I saved a design from Marlyn for a post that should be published the day after tomorrow, as I consider it a work in progress. Stay tuned!

CHRISTMAS TIME MACARONS

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My default recipe, used to pipe macarons in three different shapes, or if you consider two slightly different shapes for the trees, that would make four… I confess that the tree shape was not easy for me at all. After piping a few, I decided that “modernizing” the concept would be acceptable. And my mental sanity was preserved. Kind of .

Most of the macaron batter was dyed green, and a small amount red for the details. They need to be added right after piping the basic shape, so they will blend into it. The filling was a simple peppermint buttercream, which I think goes well this time of the year. In the composite picture below, you can see the two different takes on the Christmas tree concept. The simple triangle is a lot more forgiving, especially considering you will need to pair two shells and they need to match as precisely as possible.

I also made some in a wreath format, and maybe that ended up as my favorite…

LET THE HOLIDAY BAKES BEGIN!

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I admit that I’m always finding little boo-boos in my cookie projects, but every once in a while a batch makes me totally happy… This was definitely one. A million thanks go to Haniela, I slightly adapted one of her recent productions shared during a Facebook live. You can check the full tutorial for her version here (starts at 7 min 30 sec).

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!

So there you have it, my favorite cookie project in the past few months…

First thing to do is get the Royal icing transfer decorations ready. They can be made days, weeks in advance. Basically you pipe little rounds with yellow icing, let that set and add a band of same color in the middle. The little balls must fully set before the next step, which is drawing with a food pen the little decorations. Hani shows exactly how to do them in the video (link in the initial paragraph of this post). I used gold luster powder mixed with vodka to highlight the central ribbon. The hexagon cookie is iced with white, and after overnight drying the plaid design was air-brushed using a stencil. After that, the branches and red ribbon are piped, and the jingle bells glued. I really love these cookies!

Stay tuned for more Holiday bakes coming your way!