Easter Cookies

TUNDE’S PLAYFUL EASTER COOKIES

sallybrLeave a comment

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


Talk about an adorable set of cookies that would make any kid (or adult) smile? This is definitely it. Not terribly complicated to make, but challenging enough to make you feel accomplished once they are done. You will need a plaque cookie cutter (preferably large), a bunny, a large butterfly and a 6-petal flower cutter.

Starting with my favorite…

What a sweet, elegant cookie Tunde designed here! You make it in stages, the center part gets flooded and covered with sanding sugar first. Then the flooding on the adjacent area, once that sets, the details are incorporated. Tunde piped the roses with Royal icing in her tutorial, I went with fondant, and piped only the leaves. I just love this cookie so much!

These flowers open up a world of possible designs. I flooded the cookies the day before, then just needed white Royal icing in piping consistency and a tip #2. Fondant flowers for the centers.

How cute are those bunnies? You tell me! Very simple to decorate, flood, cover with sanding sugar and add the details. Once again I used fondant flowers and piped the leaves with icing. I had the eyes from a project last year, and put them to use for these babies, as Royal icing transfers. It’s always a good idea to save leftover transfers, you never know when they can come in handy.

The butterfly used brush embroidery, and I feel I could have done a better job, but I am still happy with it. The whole set goes so well together, it screams Easter and Spring!

Tunde, thank you so much for this super fun adventure! You style is so unique, and your videos are perfect for anyone to follow…

ONE YEAR AGO: Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

HAPPY EASTER!

sallybr2 Comments
I am already a bit sad that Easter is going to be over… As far as cookie decorating goes, it is hard to beat the diversity and cuteness level that this holiday brings. Sadly, I still have some cookie cutters that were left unused, and must wait for next year to make their appearance. Today I share a few designs, my favorite is Marlyn’s Bunny Head, crowned with flowers. So so cute! But there is more: a bunny carrying a basket of flowers, a few Easter eggs, and a naughty bunny stealing a fancy Easter egg to run away with it.

Marlyn has a super detailed tutorial available in YouTube for the bunny head (click here). If you are a member of her Patreon site, you’ll find the stencil file to make decorating the cookie easier (click here).

I opted for a chocolate cookie, so I air-brushed the design in white over the naked cookie as a starting point. The stencil is used again over the iced cookie to add the final details.

Marlyn piped the floral design on the cookie, I made my life a bit easier by using fondant decorations, and the piped small leaves to tie the design together.

MOVING ON…

For the bunny with a basket, I followed a tutorial available in Cookie-a-thon by Lauren Jacobs, aka The Cheerful Baker (click here for her IG page). Some of the steps are shown below…

I modified a few details in the basket and added a little facial feature. I love this cookie shape!

To go along with it, I used a similar technique for florals to make Easter eggs.

I could not help but make a Zentangle design, so it all starts with dots equally spaced on the iced cookie, and then a little drawing with a food safe pen. PME pearl luster spray gives the cookie a shine I really like.

So here is my little Easter collection…

I close this post with the Naughty Bunny, made after a tutorial from Timbo Sullivan during a Facebook live. It is mostly fondant, so if you don’t like the taste, consider the cookie just as a decoration. Lots of different techniques were explained in his tutorial, and the take home message for me is that I need a lot of practice to make eyes. His work is flawless! But I still like my little Naughty Bunny… Everything is fondant, except the pink details on ears and paws, and the grass the bunny is sitting on.

FLORAL BUNNY EARS

sallybrLeave a comment

This was another super fun project, following a detailed tutorial from Amber. Her work is always so elegant and whimsical, I love it. She shared two different variations for the ear decoration, one with plaid wet-on-wet,the other piping a square pattern, which is what I decided to do, as it was new to me. I am so in love with these cookies!

Two basic components to decorate the cookie: the Royal icing plaid motif for the ears, and Royal icing transfers + piped leaves for the lower half. The composite below shows the overall steps. Amber demonstrates one version in a recent Facebook live. You can watch it here, starting at 4 min.

The grid pattern is drawn with a light food pen on the baked, cooled cookie. Then the two colors of squares are piped, one color at a time, so that the edges don’t touch. No need to wait for a long time, just pipe the second color when the first is starting to crust. The lines can be added right away or if you prefer some more definition, they can be added later. Once that is set, I piped a thin border and added rose gold sanding sugar to it.

The flowers were made the day before, then the edges painted with silver luster powder + vodka. Once they were glued to the cookie, I piped leaves with stiff royal icing, and that helps set the whole arrangement in place.

It is a little labor-intensive, but not that bad. Once you have the royal icing transfer flowers ready, the piping of the ears is straightforward. You can also simplify and make it plain, or with little dots wet-on-wet. The plaid is a nice touch, and once you master this technique, you can use it in many different cookie shapes and designs.

Amber, thank you for yet another great tutorial!

FOR THE LOVE OF BUNNIES

sallybrLeave a comment

Easter is just a few days away, so I better share some of my latest cookie bakes that celebrate the occasion… I love the shape of this bunny (cutter available here), standing up to sniff some flowers. To decorate, I went with a gray background and pink flowers piped wet-on-wet, along the same lines of a batch I made last year. I also love the set of Easter stick cookies I ordered recently (available here).

For the bunnies, it all start with the white areas, that are iced first and allowed to set for a little while, 15 minutes or so. Then the gray larger area is piped and immediately decorated with the white and pink details, wet-on-wet. The outline of white on flowers, face and ears was added the following day, as well as the little luster powder in pink for the cheeks, and the eye details. For the stick cookies, two kept the scheme of gray, pink and white…

The other two cookies in the stick set begged for more color, so that’s what I chose to do…

I love this series of cookies, the standing bunny is adorable, I caved and ordered it after watching Amy decorating some in one of her Facebook live events. Resistance was futile.

Stay tuned for more Easter-inspired cookies…

COLORED COOKIE DOUGH

sallybrLeave a comment

Along the same lines of last post, today I share one more technique to decorate cookies using different colors of dough. Again, a method that will please those who, for one reason or another, prefer not to have Royal icing. When you couple a chocolate base with the colorful dough, the effect can be quite striking. Marlyn, from Montreal Confections, is once again behind the idea (all details are demonstrated in her youtube video). Dough can also be molded or cut with small cookie cutters and used to decorate a larger cookie. So let’s get to work!

I baked several egg-shaped chocolate cookies and used them in different designs on the same day. For the stripes, you need to roll dyed cookie dough super thin and freeze the stripes, as Marlyn demonstrates in her video. Then, the frozen stripes are placed on your room temperature cookie, gently rolled to press, and cut. Using a plastic wrap between the cutter and the cookie gives a very nice rounded shape. Marlyn comes up with details that are simply brilliant!

Whenever we make cookies, there is always some small amount of dough left, not enough to roll again and cut. That is a perfect source for adding color and saving in the freezer. Just dye each leftover bath a different color, and wait for the right opportunity to bring them out, roll, cut stripes – or different shapes – and add to cookies.

Another simple way to decorate is adding fondant shapes, and a little border with Royal icing and sprinkles. The smaller oval around the head of the bunny is made with a smaller cookie cutter gently pressed in the raw dough right before baking.

The final technique I used that day was cutting a little piece of dough with a very small cutter (using the plastic wrap trick), and placing on the cookie. For contrast, I brushed the surface with Americolor white food dye, to give that cracked effect I like a lot.

A few details around the edge, and here it is, together with the fondant bunnies…

Since my mind cannot get too far from Ukraine these days, I made a couple of cookies inspired by that amazing country.

This post reflects my approach to baking cookies. I don’t sell them, so I never need to worry about making many cookies with the same design as part of a set. Each set of cookies I bake, I can take in different directions to practice new techniques. Below you see all the cookies I made that afternoon. One cookie dough, one shape, several designs.

AMY’S EASTER COOKIE DECORATING

sallybrLeave a comment

One more online event accomplished, this was quite an amazing class taught by Amy, from Seriously Sweet at Davis St… Please, consider following  her Facebook group, so you can join the fun next time. The class was classified as “advanced” because there were quite a few techniques involved, mainly making fondant decorations in advance and piping leaves and a woven basket. The class centered around one silicone mold with multiple Easter-inspired designs in it (available here). I had that mold for a long time sitting in our basement, so it was a great opportunity to bring it out to play. We used a single shape cookie cutter (basket from this set), and decorated them with assorted fondant pieces, tying it all together with piped leaves and sprinkles. Here are the four babies made during the class.

It all starts with fondant decorations. Those are best made the day before, as you’ll need to paint the fondant pieces and allow that to dry too. The trickiest was the basket handle, very fragile. I ended up using only one, and piping the handle on the other cookies.

Also the day before, flood the cookies either in two colors (I used green and baby blue), or a solid background, I went with yellow. Gather your icing, sprinkles, and let the fun begin!

These four I made during the class, that lasted less than 2 hours… By the way, you don’t need to join in real time, you can sign up and watch the class later, if more convenient, decorating on your own.

You may have noticed that the mold had tiny chick’s heads, but I did not have a chance to use them during class. So, next day I made another cookie, this time with a crackled background (paint Americolor white before baking over the surface). The white over the chocolate cookie gave it a blue-ish tone I really liked.

I loved Amy’s technique to pipe the handle. Very very cool. Pretty useful in many cookie designs, I am sure.

I hope you enjoyed this little set of Easter-inspired cookies…
Amy, thank you again for a great class!

FOUR LITTLE CHICKS

sallybrLeave a comment

Every Tuesday and Friday at noon (Central Time), Marlyn and Haniela go live on Facebook and spend one hour decorating cookies, explaining techniques, and chit-chatting about all things sweet. Last month they came up with a very cool idea: have viewers participate decorating cookies at the same time. Of course, they shared all the needed materials – cookies to be baked and flooded before, Royal icing transfers, and icing colors. It was cool beyond words… Without further ado, these are my four little ladies, born from that adventure… I made two during the live, and two right when it ended.

I am totally in love with them! To get ready for the live, we had to get some items prepared, and the composite photo below shows them all. If you don’t have a stencil cutter, you can just draw the lines by hand, no need to be super precise.

The eggs were flooded in light blue, and I used a darker shade of blue to air-brush the design. We made three kinds of Royal icing transfers, wings, eggs, and flowers. Then the fun started, using wet-on-wet, and piping details with thick consistency in white. The pace was perfect. I would not say this was a beginner’s level decorating, but if you have a little experience working with Royal icing, you would be totally fine.

If you would like to join or simply watch the lives, check Marlyn’s Facebook page with a click here. I learn so much just by watching them, but decorating together was a ton of fun. I look forward to the next adventure, which will be hosted by Haniela on March 25th. We will make a mini-gingerbread house!

EGGSCELLENT EGG HUNT: ONLINE CLASS WITH AMY

sallybrLeave a comment

Today I share the outcome of yet another zoom event organized by Amy, from Seriously Sweet at Davis St… This time the whole set was Easter-inspired, and I am absolutely smitten by this collection… Several different techniques were used to make them. We finished the six cookies in under 2 hours, they went by so fast. Yes, we had fun! I invite you to join her Facebook group, so you consider joining us next time.

Before class, we were supposed to bake the cookies, have two of the Easter eggs iced in white and fully set, and make a few Royal icing transfers using the templates that Amy designed and shared earlier. A few more details as fondant decorations, and we were all set!

Below you see some of the steps involved for a few of the cookies.

The lamb used thick icing pressure-piped to make the wool appearance. And the eyes were Royal icing transfers, super cute… The watercolor egg used a technique new to me, coupling luster powder with everclear sprayed with a little atomizer. So cool! The wooden sign used royal icing sculpting, and the egg a nice wet-on-wet pulled with a needle.

To me, the trickiest technique once again was using the stencil coupled with thick royal icing. The present version was a little more complex than the one we made for Christmas cookies because we now used three different colors at the same time. I barely managed to get the design to show, as you can see in the photo below, on the left.

I loved them all, and everybody did well in the class, even those who were just beginning to decorate cookies, because Amy goes at a nice pace, and explains everything in great detail.

It is hard to pick favorites, but my heart flips between the two below…

And to add my own interpretation to my favorite cookie of this series, I made a batch of chocolate dough and used it for the sheep, in a way that considerably reduces the amount of Royal icing. It does not have the same dramatic look of Amy’s version, but if thick icing is a concern for those enjoying your cookies, this version might please you.

All you need is to ice the body in white, wait 20 minutes or so and add texture with a fondant ball…

Once that is done, pipe and/or glue your decorations and you are done!

Amy, thank you for another great class, I can hardly wait for the next!