For the Love of Cookies

To find all classes offered by Megan, check her IG page with a click here.

I have mentioned before that piping fine lines is probably the trickiest frontier to be conquered in cookie decorating. Everything needs to be perfect: consistency of the icing, opening of the piping bag, pressure and flow of the icing as you move it along. Let’s not forget also the distance of the icing tip from the cookie itself as you pipe each straight or curved line. It all matters, and might make or break your design. I won’t lie to you, it is maddening. The only way to deal with it is practice. When I saw the advertisement for a megaclass on linework by Megan – a total pro at the technique – I booked it right away. And today I share the cookies I made during that event.

I am quite happy with these cookies, but I must tell you that the class involved 9 cookies. Each style (butterfly, planter and pineapple) could be made in three different levels. I had to stop at level 1. The other levels had finer lines and quite a few more of them, particularly on the highest level (#3). They were breathtakingly beautiful, but I simply could not quite get there this time. My goal is to practice some more and try again in the near future. Below I show you the prep work that had to be done before class. Cookies flooded and a little outline of each image made with a food safe pen. All that was needed for class was royal icing that she demonstrated how to dilute to the precise consistency for piping each type of line.

I learned A LOT in class, but it was just not possible to get the lines to cooperate when I needed them to be very very thin. One of the issues is my eyes and wearing mono-vision contact lenses. They make it tricky to focus and cut the piping bag precisely, so I need to change my approach and maybe do all the piping bag preparation wearing reading or magnifying glasses, then put the contact lenses to pipe.

That was my favorite cookie of the three I made… After the class was over, I decided to work on fine lines on my own to get better and then try the more complex levels again. Tomorrow I will have a blog post to share those adventures, so stay tuned!

ONE YEAR AGO: Summertime, Decorating is Easy

TWO YEARS AGO: Puppy Love