For the Love of Cookies

No more holding back! The holiday season is here to stay, at least for a while, because truth is, we will blink our eyes twice and Valentine’s will be peeking from the corner. Today I share three cookie shapes very popular for the season.

HOLIDAY GOLDEN BELLS

This beautiful design comes from a recent Facebook live from Marlyn. You can watch it with a click here. I want to repeat these cookies making a composite like she suggested, and also using the same spray she did to get the golden coverage. I ordered a can, but it has not arrived yet. For this batch I used my air-brush but the gold is not very strong. I painted the details with luster powder to make the gold more evident.

I love everything about this design, if you make it, try to get a bigger curvature at the bottom, so that the inside of the bell is more evident. Every detail you pay attention to can make the cookie look better in the end. I just find it hard to cover all the details on the first time, it is hard for me to see the “bigger picture.”

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GINGERBREAD BELLS

These are my own design. All details of these cookies are made with piping consistency icing, either over a naked cookie, or on a fully set background of icing in the color of your choice. The light shine on the cookies is a coating with PME pearl spray, which I think does a nice job particularly on the naked cookie. I also played with a different color combination, using black piping consistency for the details.

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DIPPED MARBLED HOLIDAY CANES

These cookies, like the golden bells, also come from Marlyn. For a quick tutorial to see exactly how to make them, check this video. These are fun and simple to make. Marbling in many cases calls for drops of food gel on the surface of runny icing, but that method has some drawbacks. The density of the dye and the icing is different, if there is accumulation of dye in some spots it won’t look very smooth. The trick that Marlyn uses is to make royal icing in the colors to be marbled and add that to the surface instead. Works like a charm! Once you do that marbling, the cookies already look pretty cute, and you can be done. But of course, if you have time and want to add the further embellishment, go for it. You’ll need piping consistency icing. I used Gold from Americolor and then painted with luster powder, exactly as demonstrated in the video.

ACORNS

Definitely the simplest of all designs, all you need is flooding with brown, same color of icing in piping consistency for the details. Once it is all set, I brushed some copper luster powder on the piped area, and called it a day!

I hope you enjoyed this small set of holiday-inspired cookies. I have many things planned and looking at the calendar, I am not sure I’ll be able to get to them all this year. Way too many cookies, way too little time!

ONE YEAR AGO: Let the Holiday Bakes Begin!