FOR THE LOVE OF PIES

November is here, and we march towards chilly nights and Thanksgiving. To embrace this new chapter in a year that is flying by way too fast, I bring you cookies decorated as pies. Let me start with a real special composition designed and taught by Amber, the artist behind sweetambs. I was a bit intimidated by the complexity of the platter, but it actually ended up as a pretty smooth adventure. Isn’t that amazing?

Once again, I cannot divulge details of a project that is part of her private cookie decorating club (click here to join). The plaid motif of the runner over the “wooden board” was all made by wet-on-wet. It is a large cookie cut by hand. I made a little grid in the computer to help me guide the piping of all the different sections.

Three colors were used, red, burgundy (mine was more a reddish brown), and forest green. Because it is a very large cookie, you need to work reasonably fast so that the lines settle into the background smoothly. Once the tassels were dry, they were painted with gold luster powder mixed with vodka. It is such an elegant design!

The little pies and the pie plate were round cookies measuring 1 and 1.5 inches. The little fork, a Royal icing transfer. So many details, I fell in love with both the process and the outcome.

You could keep the cookies loose or make the whole thing even more special by glueing them to the platter, as Amber suggested.

To make a full set of cookies with the pie theme in mind, I added a few extras, using cutters from Brighton Cutters. These were inspired by the Graceful Baker.

Those were pretty straightforward, just flooded the pie dish with blue, let it set overnight and sprinkled white gel food color with a brush. Flooded all other sections and added the crust with thick consistency icing. Once that set completely, I painted with luster powder brown to mimic the darkening during baking.

The pie slice cookie cutter can also be used to form a full pie, placing six cookies together. In this case, I decorated using three different designs, all pretty simple. The chocolate slice got a light covering with white sanding sugar right after flooding.