For the Love of Cookies

Normally I would be super excited to share this cookie design because I planned it on my own. I knew what I wanted it to look like but did not know quite how to make it happen. I’ve tried a few things and this final approach worked great. However, the outcome was a bit tragic. First things first, these are the cookie components I offered as a little gift to a beautiful 4 year old boy.

The idea was that he could play with it to form a phrase, like the Wheel of Fortune game…

But the cookie arrived in pieces inside the box, so badly crumbled that they could not even tell what it could be. I’ve had disasters with shipping cookies before, particularly macarons which I vowed never ever to mail again, but this one hit me particularly hard. Still, if you ever want to make this set and offer to someone – in person! – here is how to make it.

First bake the board, large enough to hold all the letters – which you will make as squares using mini cookie cutters.

The squares should be removed and then you should paint the board with Americolor White to get a wooden effect. Make sure the rolled out dough is super cold so that distortion during handling is minimized.

Now you put a few squares back, choosing the letters you want to show as “hints” for the Happy Birthday phrase.

Bake the board with those letters in it, and the removed squares at the same time. Make sure you bake the squares for a shorter time, as they are super small and will burn if they stay in the oven too long.

Now the fun part begins, ice the squares in different colors – I repeated colors for the same letters. Before you ice them, you must make sure they can go in and out of the holes. During baking they expand, so each square needs to be filed (I used a Microplane) until they fit nicely. Do not omit this step or your design might be compromised.

Now you are ready to add details to the board. I used Royal icing balloon transfers.

And that is almost it! All that is left to do is piping the letters and the strings for the balloons using piping consistency black icing.

I really loved planning and making this big cookie… Still makes me terribly sad that it was badly damaged. I had a few other cookies for the Bday boy, which I hope compensated for the disaster. Here they are:

THE ATOM

.

THE GALAXY

THE BIRTHDAY HAT

ONE YEAR AGO:  Hearts, Simply

TWO YEARS AGO: Valentine’s Cookies by Tunde Dugantsi

THREE YEARS AGO: Following my Heart