Month: February 2023

PLAYING WITH CHOCOLATE ROYAL ICING

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Chocolate Royal icing is a departure on the regular, white type, made by replacing some of the powdered sugar with cocoa powder. I used the recipe published in Amber’s new cookbook (which I recently reviewed here). If you don’t have the book, you can always use recipes found online. Cocoa powder contains up to 22% fat in its composition, so it can be tricky to use in items that are normally very low in fat. Macarons and Royal icing are two examples. I ended up ordering a special cocoa powder that is fat-free (available here) and it worked a lot better. The icing was smooth, dried without bubbles, and behaved a lot like regular white icing. Works amazingly well for macarons also, but that is another story to be told another time… Chocolate Icing has intense flavor and a beautiful brown color. One of the simplest ways to dress it up is coupling it with a stencil and gold air-brushing.


You can also use the air-brushed image to take it one step further and pipe the design to lift the image…

Going one step further, wait until the piping is fully set (preferably overnight) and then have some fun painting. Sugarprism is the ideal product because you can blend the colors very easily and it has excellent coverage, even on a dark background. For this technique, I followed the idea of Michelle, inventor of Sugarprism, in one of her many wonderful Facebook videos.

Opinions were a bit divided on these cookies. Some people loved the painted look, others preferred the more austere piping without colors. But everybody thought gold goes very well with the dark cocoa background, and I fully agree…

If you have never used Chocolate icing, consider doing so. It is a great alternative when all you need is a solid background, plus it adds a nice chocolate flavor to your base cookie.

ONE YEAR AGO: For the Love of Ukraine

HANIELA’S LOVE STATUE COOKIES

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To learn all you need about these cookies, check this post from Hani’s blog.

If you are skeptical about Royal icing transfers, these cookies will convince you that they are a great way to embellish many designs. Haniela provides the template so you can pipe the LOVE motif either over parchment, wax paper, or acetate. I usually go for acetate, but in this particular case they worked better when I used parchment paper. They peeled off easier, I had several piped over acetate break. One important thing is to pipe them “puffy” – you need Royal icing with good structure, otherwise they will be way too fragile. Check the pink at the lower right to see what I mean. Outline first so you can get more to food inside and stay contained.

You can choose any color to pipe and also leave the transfer plain, or cover with sanding sugar. The ones in the bottom left I sprayed with pink luster from Wilton, and that gave an interesting tone over the gray letters. Once the transfers are fully set (I recommend patience and waiting overnight), all you need to do is flood a basic square cookie and place the designs on top, I made an extra cookie with brush embroidery as a companion to the love set. I really like the combination of gray with tulip red.

These transfers are very delicate, so my advice is to make a few more than you will need. And also make sure your base cookie is large enough to accommodate the transfer. I felt I played with danger a bit, mine were almost too small…

The bead border is of course optional, but if you follow this little blog of mine, you know that I am quite fond of them… You can find a lot to inspire you online as far as written messages go. Just pick what is calling your name, and have fun with it!

Before I leave, a note on red food color. Often red has a bitter after taste. One way to avoid that is using “Tulip Red” from Americolor. It is made from a different type of pigment and does not have any taste. It also colors well, so you won’t need to use half a bottle to get the red you want.

ONE YEAR AGO: Cardinals in a Tree, a Pizza Box Set

INSPIRATION CHALLENGE FOR FEBRUARY

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Reporting for duty, here I am to share my take on this month’s adventure set up by Marlyn, from @montrealconfections: use small cookies to made a larger composition. I chose one of my favorite shapes for the composition, and as a starting point a design from Marlyn I had played with a couple of years ago, and was one of my favorites (click here for a flashback). I simplified that part quite a bit, to get a monochromatic look.

All cookies have the same basic shape but different sizes. The largest one is the peacock body, and the others flow from it as its tail. Then it was just a matter of playing with the designs, different shades of blue, coupled with black in piping consistency. The peacock body also got a very light spray with Wilton pearl. You can see it better with a closeup picture.

I loved making this set, the cookies remind me of our dear graduate student Aritri, who passed away a few years ago, way too early in her beautiful life journey. I took a ride in this design and made a batch of chocolate cookies the following day. They go well together in a circle.

I am also quite fond of the concept of yin and yang, so present in life… So I spent some time arranging these cookies together in ways that appealed to me. I just know Aritri would love them.

I had another idea for the composition of cookies. It would be a heart made of tiny little square bits. But it would require more than 40 cookies to complete the full picture, and I got tired just thinking about it… Maybe I will re-visit the idea some day.

ONE YEAR AGO: Eggscelent Egg Hunt

HUGS AND KISSES

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By now it is pretty clear I am not ready to drop the love theme… This set of cookies were demonstrated in a tutorial by Andi Kirkegaard. You can get all details and join her classes visiting her website with a click here. I have followed her classes before, these florals were favorites of my past. Once again, because those are part of a paid tutorial, I cannot share details or templates, but once you sign up, you will receive quite a bit of material to work from: cookie and icing recipes if you need them, and super detailed instructions as to how much icing to make in each of the needed consistencies. It is not a beginner’s level project, but if you have some experience decorating cookies and working with Royal icing, you will do great.

The full set involved 4 cookies, but I did not do a good job on cookie #4, so I am highlighting the other three. Many details and techniques are involved in the making of these cookies, you will be playing with piping consistency of very fine lines, and a very cool method to make the balloons with a puffy shape. You will also use a stencil, and air-brushing. A mini-projector, although not absolutely necessary, will be quite helpful. Some of the steps are shown below.

Andi is a very experienced instructor, and she will have you work on one particular cookie, then move to another one as the first sets, so it is all quite efficient. I cannot pick a favorite, I loved making this cute trio…

THE BALLOONS…


You will learn how to pipe the balloon component in stages to create lift in the icing. Fine lines will make the basket weave, but of course you could adapt using some other method – perhaps the same technique used for the wood in the kissing booth could work here. Or even use a stencil instead of piping.

THE LOVE JAR

So many details, but don’t you love the look? I think my favorite touch was the air brushing dark at the bottom and getting lighter as you move up on the jar. Just adorable! Maybe this was the simplest of the four in the set.

THE KISSING BOOTH

Well, this was maybe my favorite, after all… Lots of little details make this cookie shine, including the work with Royal icing to give the impression of wood. It was the most time-consuming cookie to make but also quite a lot of fun to see it materializing, little by little.

As to the cookie I could not make very well, here it is… I did not get the writing to work, so it would have been better to just make the background with the stencil, and the ruffled edge. But it is nice to try something challenging. I hope to do a better job next time.

This set of cookies, coupled with some simple hearts would be nice to offer as a special gift, don’t you think?

ONE YEAR AGO: Of Bears and Bunnies in Love

TUNDE’S COOKIE BOX ADVENTURE

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To join Tunde’s Cookie Club, visit her site with a click here.

Another great online tutorial hosted by Tunde Dugantsi, I would classify it as a more advanced project because some assembly is needed. As you might see from my write-up, the sizing of the panels can make or break the design. I urge you to do all the proper filing and adjusting BEFORE you decorate the panels, and also make sure the base is large enough to accommodate the sides, leaving enough space around it so all the nice piping will show well.

Tunde provided all the templates to cut the cookies by hand, and the base was made with a large cookie cutter, which I happened to have in my basement. She also provided the little templates to pipe the designs: envelope, birds, and cupcakes. Not many colors were needed, pink, red, white, and light brown, all in small amounts, as the cookies are not fully iced. Some colors are needed in piping and flooding consistencies.

Each panel has a different design, which I find absolutely adorable… Then comes the assembly adventure, and that’s when things did not work very well for me. I ended up with a box in which the four corners weren’t meeting together nicely, and it was not possible to do the beautiful piping Tunde planned for the corners and bottom. I also stuck my finger into the envelope, and was quite upset about it. The box, as I first made it, just did not look good. I tried to ice the base after assembly to hide the imperfect junction, and that was the outcome…

I was truly unhappy with it, so I did the only sensible thing to do. Took a deep breath, separated all the pieces, removed the icing from the base, flipped the cookie to use the other side facing up, and painted it gold. These are all the pieces, after filing them, re-adjusting and waiting to be re-assembled.


And that clumsy finger disaster? Was taken care of with a strategic placement of heart sprinkles…. Sneaky Sally strikes again!

So here are the four sides of my little box, once all the cosmetic surgery was done…

I guess the main lesson of this project is to not give up, and if you feel there is a way to improve what you did, go for it. Work around the boo-boos, and that will make you ready for a next time in which you won’t make the same mistakes.

You can adapt the box to any special celebration by using different designs on the side panels, and filling the box with different cookies, or you can just make your life easier and buy candy at the store.

I learned quite a bit through this cute box project, and will definitely make it again, perhaps at Easter…. Stay tuned!

Tunde, thank you once again for coming up with such gorgeous work!

ONE YEAR AGO: Gingerbread Heart Cookies

FEBRUARY GNOME & FLORAL ADVENTURE

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HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

Remember my previous post on this subject? It is time to bring a new design by Amy from @seriouslysweet, one more online tutorial completed. At the risk of repeating myself, I have to say these were loads of fun to make! I had to make the floral version twice, because at first I did not have the correct fondant mold to make the hearts. I thought the design was a bit compromised, and looked much better with the correct mold.

You know what I love the most about them? The gloved hands… those were made with fondant but Amy also said we could pipe with Royal icing on the cookie or even do a Royal icing transfer. But the fondant has the perfect texture and allows for that little sculpting, the extra touch. In typical Amy’s fashion, the cookies involved many different techniques, including my favorite (used for the beard). For this set, I used the heart molds I had around, and they were a bit too small. Not for the gnome, I thought those were ok, but definitely for the floral.

The hearts were a little lost in the middle of the greenery and roses (those by the way are called cabbage roses and super easy to pipe).

As soon as the right mold was delivered to our door (thank you, amazon.com), I re-made them… On my second time around I used a Strawberry Sugar Cookie Dough which I am quite in love with. I will at some point blog about it with the full recipe.

I love the way the new floral looks, the hearts are very prominent and plump, just like Amy designed them to be…

I think one cannot have too many gnomes in a cookie blog. That’s why I am already excited for the month of March, who knows what Amy will come up with next?

To join her adventures online, visit her site and come on play with us!

ONE YEAR AGO: Gingerbread Heart Cookies (one of my favorites ever!)

MY FIRST COOKIE DECORATING CLASS

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I was contacted a couple of months ago to offer a cookie decorating class at the Senior Center in town, on February 13th, the day before Valentine’s. After a lot of hyperventilation, monologues around the house, intense arguments with myself, I said yes… So here I am to share with you my plans for this adventure. Below, the designs I’ve settled on to demonstrate and have them do on their own.

Now let me go over the decision-making process… First thing that I had in mind was making it easier to get a polished look by adding a border with sprinkles. One of the tricky aspects of flooding a cookie when you are just starting is having a nice edge. By adding sprinkles this problem is for the most part solved. I tested sanding sugar as well as sprinkles, but to keep it simple in class, I might go with only one option. The sprinkles I used for my first test below are not the right colors, but it’s what I had at the time in my treasure chest. Later I ordered the mandatory white, pink and red.

Also with the idea of simplifying, every design will be made with only three icing colors: white, red and pink… They will be divided in groups, perhaps six different groups, so three bags per group is already quite a lot of work to prepare, especially considering I am a total rookie at this teaching thing… Well, teaching Biochemistry is a completely different adventure!

Finally, the designs will all be wet-on-wet because it is the simplest, most forgiving way to decorate. No need to master fine lines, no need for a dehydrator to speed up setting of a base layer. Even designs that seem complicated are in fact quite simple to do.


I hope they will enjoy what I planned, and of course, feel free to change the colors or placement of details.

One particular design will be finished with a fondant rose, I will make several in advance and take them with me…

That will teach them the marbling technique. All other designs rely on piping + pulling the color with a needle.

As this post gets published, I will have 42 heart-shaped cookies baked and ready for class. On the day of, early in the morning, I will make and bag all the colors, check my list of supplies to take (sprinkles, fondant roses, paper towels, paper plates, and other small things), and hope for the best!

Cross your fingers for me, will you?

ONE YEAR AGO: For the Love of Hearts

YODA ONE FOR ME

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You want to talk about cute? This breaks the Cuteness Scale by the longest shot… I remember when I first saw Marlyn demonstrate the making of this cookie, and it seemed totally out of my skill level. It makes me happy that I could do it now, although I will spare you of the list of self-criticism that it generated. It is hard to get all the details right, but at least I am happy with the outcome.

To watch Marlyn demonstrate all the basic steps for this cookie, click here. Make sure you use a very large heart-shaped cutter because the more space you have, the easier to decorate. I love everything about this cookie, starting with the sprinkle border, and ending with the written message. You cannot get any better! Of course, making a dozen of these would be quite time-consuming, but they would be perfect to include as a special item in a Valentine’s cookie box containing smaller, simpler cookies. Or to gift to that very special person in your life. Below, some of the steps…

You can make the arm, leg and face by piping on the cookie itself, once the base is fully set, but using Royal icing transfers is actually a lot easier and safer, as you can pipe several more and choose the best ones to use. Marlyn pipes the text and the facial features, but I was too terrified to do that, so I used food safe pens. Your kitchen, your rules, do whatever feels right to you.

I am totally smitten by my little Yoda!

ONE YEAR AGO: For the Love of Hearts

VALENTINE’S COOKIES BY TUNDE DUGANTSI

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For Tunde’s Cookie Club information, click here

If you are familiar with Tunde’s work, you know her cookies are the essence of elegance. They often rely on piping fine detail lines, so if you are beginning your cookie decorating adventures, they might be a bit tricky to get right. Still, the overall design will work without those details, in case you feel intimidated but still want to give them a try. It took me a long time to face the challenge of fine line piping, and there is still a lot of room for improvement, but at least I am a bit more confident now. This online tutorial had a set of six cookies, some large and some small. I honestly cannot pick a favorite, I love them all, but the three below could share the first prize…

To make the set of six cookies we needed Royal icing in red, two shades of pink and white. White icing was prepared in two consistencies, flood and piping for fine lines. I cannot share specific details as the tutorials are for members of her online club, but if you would like to join and have access to all past and future tutorials click here. Some of the steps are included in the composite picture below.

Tunde makes the whole process very efficient, as you work on the cookies sequentially, allowing a few areas to dry as you work on another cookie. The central details can be made as a Royal icing transfer or fondant. I opted for fondant, because I prefer the look of the rose when formed in a mold rather than piped. And it is such a small amount that even if someone does not care for the taste of fondant, it won’t ruin the cookie.

All cookies benefit from a beaded border. The more I decorate cookies, the more I enjoy the beaded border because they make the design quite a bit more polished. It does take a little practice to get not only the right consistency in the icing but also the size of the opening and the movement of the hand. A cookie turntable makes the process easier, and I recently bought a turntable I like a lot. Click here for details.

I had two extra cookies baked and decided to attempt my own design in two of them. First wet-on-wet… A yin-yang Valentine…

The second cookie I flooded in red and next day used a stencil and black air-brushing…

I still have a few Valentine’s designs waiting to be shared in this little blog of mine, so stay tuned!
Tunde, thank you for another great series, as usual I learn a ton from you!

ONE YEAR AGO: Following my Heart

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE

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This one is for all the Game of Thrones fans out there… I am channeling Amber from @sweetambs to bring you heart-shaped cookies that are total opposites, a kind of yin and yang design.

To join her site and have access to her huge collection of tutorials, click here

Starting with a frosty heart…

This is a fun wet-on-wet method, demonstrated by Amber in her recent tutorial. The frosty aspect is intensified by dabbing white luster paint around the edges. I did not have the exact product she used, so mine ended up a little too rough, but I don’t think it compromised the effect. Amber goes the extra mile by painting tiny snow flakes by hand once the icing is fully set, but I omitted that step. Below, some of the stages to bring this cookie to life…

This type of design is perfect to prove that with only TWO colors you can still do a lot… cannot beat the simplicity of wet-on-wet. Come to think of it, even if you did not pull the dots to make the snowflake, the cookie would look pretty cute with just dots, as modern flowers. I joined them with simple pink hearts decorated with a pearly white beaded border.

And now for something completely different, the Yin of my Yang…

Aren’t those super cool? Amber truly set the hearts on fire with them… The design is simple, but I have to say that getting the flames with a realistic shape is a little tricky. I failed at my first attempt and that cookie had to be sacrificed to the Cookie Gods. You will need black (or dark gray), orange, yellow and red. Some steps of the cookie decorating are shown below.

The cookie below was a little “happy accident” that happened because I ran out of black icing…

They formed a nice fiery team…

I hope you enjoyed this “opposites attract” series. Once again, my advice is to use a large cookie to play with wet-and-wet designs. It makes life easier, and especially for the Frosty Hearts, you’ll have more room to play.

ONE YEAR AGO: Of Gnomes and Unicorns