April 2023 – For the Love of Cookies

TUNDE’S SIMPLE ELEGANCE

April 29, 2023April 28, 2023sallybrLeave a comment

This is a delicate and beautiful set of cookies designed by Tunde Dugantsi, tutorial available once you join her Club Cookie Academy (totally worth it!). Visit her site (click here) for details and to come and play with us. As I told you in my previous post, cookie decorating is all about challenging yourself, and with this set I definitely pushed my limits a bit. The trickiest part of course, piping the central grid for the largest cookie. I found myself holding my breath and quite nervous, but I am glad I accepted the challenge!

Some of the steps to make the cookies are shown below… Tunde’s tutorial is very detailed and she makes it seem easy and straightforward to do, as if she is gently holding your hand. Her grid ends up with closer lines and a lot more finesse, but it is the kind of piping work that the more you do, the easier it gets. Pretty much like all in life, right?

What I love about this set is the use of a minimal number of colors: two tones of green, and ivory. That is all you need. The rest is patient piping of the details that do take the cookies to a higher level. If piping the grid feels like too much, you can use Sugarveil and make the grid that way, then glue to the cookie and pipe the design.

They would be perfect for Easter, for a Birthday party, a wedding set, or just to let someone know they are special to you!

Tunde has countless tutorials available for you once you become a member of her club, and she uploads new tutorial often, so come on over and be ready for some amazing cookie adventures!

ONE YEAR AGO: Dream Catcher Floral

TWO YEARS AGO: Fun with the Mini-Projector

MY COOKIE BLOG TURNS TWO YEARS OLD!

April 27, 2023April 26, 2023sallybr2 Comments

Time does fly when you are having so much fun! Two years, 221 posts published, and so many new techniques tried! My views on cookie decorating have not changed, I will refer you to last year’s post if you missed my thoughts on the subject. For my third year I guess the idea is to keep challenging myself because that’s how we improve. Today I share two macarons, same exact background, but the decorations take them into quite different directions.

The macaron batter was divided in four portions and dyed teal, pink, orange, one portion left without any color. They were added to a bag and shells were piped. After baking, some got a little flower piped with Royal icing, and some got a design with a food safe black pen. They were all filled with Lemon Meyer buttercream.

So there you have it. Two years, two macs. And let’s now start the road to the third year of cookie adventures!

ONE YEAR AGO: My Cookie Blog Turns One Year Old!

WHEN BREAD AND COOKIES COLLIDE

April 25, 2023April 25, 2023sallybr1 Comment

Have you heard of the Uzbek bread stamp? It is a very nice gadget used to create a design on flatbreads. I’ve had mine for many years, you can get it at etsy (click here). Many other patterns available, just do a search on the main site. I decided to use it to decorate cookies, and my adventures ended with a delicious recipe that I shared today on my main food blog (visit the post with a click here). So, for the first time I have two articles published on the same day, as I really wanted to share the recipe for this set.

It was important to come up with a recipe that would bake without any distortions, or the tiny holes would be closed. It is a little tricky to get the design to work well on the first attempts, you’ll need to play with the amount of flour on the stamp and on the cookie dough itself. But once you get the gist of it, I think it is a wonderful way to decorate with no icing, just food colors such as Sugarprism or luster powder diluted with vodka. Here I show a few examples…

The cookies look great even without any painting, but in the picture above I used Sugarprism watercolor (click here for the product).

In the versions above the top left was painted with metallic colors (luster powder diluted with vodka), and the other two with Sugarprism watercolor, adding a light spray of PME luster once the colors were dry.

The cookies above used both acrylic color from Sugarprism (click here for the product) and luster gold powder.

For these cookies I used once again Sugarprism acrylic colors, they blend very nicely even on a naked cookie!

I have not tried yet, but will soon make the pattern on chocolate cookies, I think they will look great painted with metallic gold or copper. Also, I intend to fill the pattern with Royal icing, using the tiny holes as a guide. Stay tuned, I am super excited about all the possibilities…

ONE YEAR AGO: Happy International Macaron Day!

FOR THE LOVE OF ROCKS

April 23, 2023April 22, 2023sallybr4 Comments

My Dad would love these cookies! He collected this type of rocks, I remember having a bunch of them around, of all sizes and colors, although I think he was partial to the amethyst and its gorgeous purple. Some were really big and extremely heavy, so they stayed in the same place in the living room, and were dusted from time to time. I can still picture them in my mind.

These cookies are really easy to make. All you need is rock sugar, available online or maybe you can even find it at your grocery store. I ordered this one. You will need to place some in a bag and crush it a bit so that you’ll have smaller pieces. Then all you need is to flood your cookies with white Royal icing, immediately place the sugar crystals on top in any pattern you like. Wait at least 6 hours to paint with diluted gel color (I used vodka to dilute). Finally, a little gold luster and that’s all! I also added gold luster in a fine splatter all over the cookie, but that is optional. It does make a bit of a mess on the countertop!

These would be great in many colors, but I am partial to purple. They will always bring memories of my Dad.

ONE YEAR AGO: Happy International Macaron Day!

INSPIRATION FOR APRIL: PINATA COOKIES

April 17, 2023April 16, 2023sallybr2 Comments

For this month, Marlyn kept her instructions super simple. Make a piñata cookie. The idea is to enclose goodies inside a cookie, and make them visible through a window. I went with a Mexican theme, and here’s my homework!

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To make these cookies, decide on a shape, and then bake THREE cookies of that shape. The bottom one will be a solid cookie. The middle and the top will have an opening that you can do using a small cookie cutter. It is best if you refrigerate the rolled out dough so that once you cut the shapes there is no distortion.

As to the transparent window, instead of adding candy during baking, I prefer to make a sugar syrup. The recipe I use can be found in this post. Just make sure you are super careful, it is going to be hot!

Little M&Ms are ideal to fill the opening, as long as you don’t roll your cookies too thin, so that you have enough space to play. If you don’t have a large space, adding sprinkles can be a good, festive option also.

I think piñata cookies are great additions to a cookie gift package, and you can imagine a ton of different shapes as your starting point. I close the post thanking Marlyn for yet another cool challenge!

ONE YEAR AGO: Floral Bunny Ears

AMY’S GNOME AND FLORAL FOR APRIL

April 14, 2023April 11, 2023sallybr1 Comment

To join Amy’s series (you can join now and have access to past and future tutorials), click here.

In perfect synchrony with the season, this month’s series matches a Bunny Gnome (!!!!) and a Carrot composition… how is THAT for creativity and cuteness?

Quite a few details went into the Bunny Gnome, I love the shoes, the beard and the little carrot he is holding tight…

It all starts by making the shoes (and if you want, also the nose) using fondant. The shoes are made with Easter egg molds that are cut at the base to fit well on the shape of the cookie. Once that is made and painted, you can start drawing the sections to be flooded. It all goes by super fast.

For the Floral Carrot, Amy used a cool method to add the background, to preserve some texture. Then the carrots and the green tops are added with thick consistency Royal icing, and tipless bags cut with scissors. Simple and straightforward.

The carrot piping is a great skill to have, but as Amy points out in the video, the main thing to pay attention to is – keep them looking as carrots. There is a danger zone in there (cough, cough, cough). I say no more. Very important to keep that in mind when piping the single carrot on the Bunny Gnome…

This was a very unusual and fun set to put together, and I am hoping whoever got these cookies when I donated them last week, got a smile with their sweets!

Before I leave, make sure to think about joiningAmy’s Gnome and Floral Adenture, by clicking on the link on top of this post. It is wonderful to see the productions everyone else comes up with, little variations in colors, and because the videos are available full-time, you can decide when to make any of the sets from past months, and wait for her next tutorial, usually available on the first day of the month.

ONE YEAR AGO: For the Love of Bunnies

BUNNIES BY THE WINDOW

April 11, 2023April 10, 2023sallybr3 Comments

I wanted to make them last year when I first watched Marlyn on a Facebook live, but time passed, and I missed that chance. You know how it goes. Summer arrives, bunnies take a secondary seat, pretty soon it is Fall and all you can think about are golden leaves and pumpkins. But, 2023 was not going to fool me. Here are my little bunnies, very curious creatures, looking for carrots to munch on.

To watch Marlyn demonstrating these cookies, click here (starts around the 12 minute mark).

Each of these cookies is actually a double, as you can see below when they are open… They are actually not glued together, just placed on top. I guess you could conceivably glue the two parts together, if you prefer. The bottom cookie has just the head of the bunny and a little decorative border. One thing to make sure is to pay attention to the space you have for the bunny’s head. I did not take in account the length of the ears and almost made a couple of them too big to fit in the window opening….

Below some of the steps to make them. Use pastel colors, and don’t be shy mixing and matching them for the details.

This was one super fun project for a Saturday morning. If you are insecure about piping the bunny over the cookie, you can use fondant molds or you can make them as Royal icing transfers. I was a bit worried about cratering, but the Gods of Icing were smiling at me that day. I am forever grateful!

As Marlyn pointed out in her video, these cookies will fit nicely in a small pizza box. No matter how you intend to package them, they will definitely make your friends smile!

ONE YEAR AGO: Colored Cookie Dough

METAMORPHOSIS, THE COOKIE

April 7, 2023April 5, 2023sallybr4 Comments

This cookie was quite a labor of love, and I actually made it twice because I was not very happy with my first attempt. The cookie was designed by Adriana Alvera and a very detailed tutorial published in the March issue of the online magazine D’licious (click here to see all issues available). Originally, it is a very large cookie, but I reduced the template in my computer a little bit.

I fell in love with the whole concept, and could not wait to try and make it. Basically, one side of the butterfly is decorated as a stained-glass component, and the other is piped with Royal icing and painted. Below, some of the steps involved. The cookie as shown in the magazine started with both sides flooded white, but later the background of one side was painted in light blue. I decided to just flood in a very light blue-green pastel tone so I would not have to paint the background.

I used the projector to draw the images on both sides, and then piped the outline in black with an icing tip PME 1. The other side I used a pipeless bag and medium consistency icing, in white. Once that was all set, I painted all features, the stained glass side using a mixture of 50:50 Everclear and honey to dilute the gel dye.

My first attempt had a few boo-boos, the main one was not centering the body of the butterfly correctly, and also messing up a bit the design because I could not adjust the size of the image correctly with the projector (long story, I fixed that on my second attempt). As you can see below, the body did not end symmetrical. My main advice is to pipe the body first, and then make sure both wings are placed symmetrically on each side.

This basic design of two different styles in the same cookie is very cool, and can be applied to many different images. I intend to explore that in the future.

It is definitely not a cookie you can make a dozen of to share, but let’s suppose you want to gift a special Spring-inspired cookie box, this could be included as a centerpiece.

Many thanks to Adriana Alvera for writing such a detailed tutorial and providing all templates to bring this cookie to life!

ONE YEAR AGO: Marbled Cookie Dough

SPRINGTIME SPRINGERLE

April 3, 2023April 2, 2023sallybr2 Comments

A few weeks ago Amy from @seriouslysweet invited her followers to do a collaboration cookie project for Easter. We could do anything we wanted, keeping pastel colors and the overall Easter-spring atmosphere. She suggested that I contributed with Springerle, as not very many people in the group bake that type of cookie. I went to work, and made a small batch, then selected my favorite shape, the butterfly, as my contribution. You can see all the entries in this super cool video Amy assembled, clicking here. Sit back and enjoy the show!

The butterfly mold can be found here. I bought mine in 2020, and used it many times. For this project, I kept the colors very simple and light, but of course the butterfly is the type of image that you can take in many different directions as far as colors go.

All cookies were painted with luster powder and vodka, some were finished with a light spray of PME pearl.

Another great mold that is the little bee over the flower. I bought this one in 2021, but it is sold out at the present time.

My most recent acquisition is the mold Eva’s Lace (available here). I think it is super elegant, and even without any painting will make gorgeous cookies.

Not exactly springerle, but my favorite chocolate cookie dough, worked well with a very unusual mold that I fell in love with recently, the grasshopper. Grasshopper mold & cutter can be found here.

I was worried that the mold would be hard to use, with so many details and very unusual shape for the cutter, but as all molds I own from KitchenVixen, this one worked super well!

Amy, thank you for organizing this cool collaboration event, I look forward to the next!

ONE YEAR AGO: Haniela’s Mini Bird House

For the Love of Cookies

because cookies make the world better…

Month: April 2023