Last week I shared a few Zentangle-inspired cookies that contained a little simple flower in their design. Today I use that pattern and another simple flower sketch as the base for this set of cookies.
All designs were demonstrated in the youtube channel 15 minutes of Zen, that I discussed in my previous post. I used a food pen to draw the flower over white or red cookies, but you can also use different colors of pen over white or other backgrounds.
The exact pattern can be applied with piping consistency icing over a naked cookie, so that those who prefer less sugar will be happy.
I sprayed PME pearl luster over the whole cookie to give it a little shine…
I also used black piping consistency icing to incorporate this flower on pastel purple iced cookies… And the additional flower pattern was made using a fine tip food safe pen. Piping that one would be a bit tricky, I think…
Drawing these motifs is really easy and relaxing, and as I mentioned before, it always looks ok in the end, no matter what happens…
I hope you give the 15 minutes of Zen youtube a try, even if you are not into cookie decorating. Just a blank small piece of paper, a pencil, and a nice relaxing break for your mind…
For the month of May, Marlyn proposed the task of making a bouquet out of cookies. She demonstrated two ways of doing it in her Patreon site, and her versions are amazing, large flowers, two different ways to attach the sticks to the cookie. I decided to make very small cookies and use them to top chocolate cupcakes with a green buttercream icing to look like grass. What do you think?
This is really a great way to present cookies. You don’t need to couple them with cupcakes, they stand well alone, imagine them in the center of a dessert table for a kid’s Birthday table… Or a Spring-Summer get together.
It all start baking the cookies with a stick (Wilton makes paper sticks that are pretty sturdy and stand baking), that you should cut small, so the cookies fit nicely in a baking sheet. That stick is then removed (you can save the small sticks for future adventures), and a larger stick with the size appropriate for your design, is placed, then iced all over to glue it together with the baked cookie. Steps shown below.
You can use any colors and designs to the flowers, just make sure to mix and match so that your final composition is as cheerful as it can be…
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I hope you consider making cookie sticks – imagine butterflies, a little sun, even animal heads, anything looks cute on a stick! And it is quite easy to do, just make sure you handle the cookie by the cookie part when you first ice the back to glue the stick. It will be very fragile until fully set.
One more great Sugarprism painting adventure, under the guiding hands of Michelle. Her Facebook group is one fun virtual spot, with free online lessons for anyone who wants to join. Here is the link to her Sugarprism site and to her Facebook group.
It is very hard for me to believe that I painted that image free hand, just following her instructions. Such a great way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon! The Sugarprism product, which I have raved about plenty in the past, behaves just like acrylic paint. It is very forgiving if you make boo-boos, and the colors blend like a dream. My main issue is working with fine lines. I wear mono-vision contact lenses and that makes it very hard to focus correctly. Fine lines are a big challenge for me. But I try my best. Below, some photos of the different stages, as Michelle tells exactly how to paint each line, fill the image and make it sexy with all the shading. She is incredibly talented!
If I could do it again, I would change just two things: lighter background and brighter, maybe yellow flowers. Sometimes when you are following things online and you need to keep the pace, it is hard to visualize the bigger picture. Knowing how the image turned out, I think my background could have been lighter. But it is a minor thing. I am absolutely thrilled with my baby!
Michelle, thank you once more for the instructions and for the effort you put to teach anyone, no matter their skill level… it is just a total thrill!
Springtime, Mother’s Day, they both beg for floral cookies. A small sample of different styles to celebrate this special week. Below the cookies just a few words to describe the technique used.
Royal ice in white. Painted with Sugarprism (click here for the product) using watercolor techniques. I sat down with some youtube videos showing how to paint simple flowers, and went to work. A brush accent with gold because I cannot help it.
Same basic technique but using luster powder diluted with vodka instead of Sugarprism. You don’t get the same effect, the paint dries super quickly so there is less room to play with density or mix colors together. It goes fast, though, and you get the metallic aspect of it, which can be nice too.
This is a fun and easy technique. Apply dry luster powder loosely in the shape of flowers. Then just do the outlines with a black pen, fine tip to make the design pop. You can use a Q-tip to apply the powder or get a specific brush to do the job, like the one below.
For the plaque shape cookies, I used the same approach as the dry dust but instead diluted the powder with vodka and loosely painted the petals.
Going for a modern take on flowers. The outline was done first, using a single line, so I started at the bottom, went up drawing the leaves, and all the way up to the petals, without lifting the pen. I used to doodle this type of shapes a lot when I was a teenager, so why not put it to use in cookies, right? Once the pen lines dried, I used a food safe pen to paint.
Same modern approach, single line drawing but over a painted background (I used food pen for that).
I enjoyed making them all, but maybe the ones below are my favorites…
If you are fond of painting, I hope you give these designs a try. Sugarprism is the best to get the watercolor/acrylic feel of painting, but you can definitely make florals using many different techniques. Just have fun with it!
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!
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!
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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…
A small collection of cookies from the past few weeks, all using molds, either made of wood or silicone. Most of them I’ve had for a very long time, but you can find a lot available at etsy.com. Just search for fondant or cookie molds, or springerle molds and grab what screams your name. The advantage of molded cookies is that they need no icing. Painting is also optional but how can I avoid so much fun?
FLORALS
Normally I use this type of molds for Springerle cookies, but this time I just made sugar cookies flavored with hazelnut and orange. They were painted with luster powder + vodka.
BEE IN LOVE
These were painted with Sugarprism and the details of the hive painted with gold. Some steps shown below…
ELEPHANT LOVE
I just adore this mold (from Gingerhaus), a bit hard to find, it is now unavailable again. I had been flirting with it for the longest time, checking the store at etsy, until one day I got lucky and there were a couple for sale. It works well with any type of cookie, in this case I used strawberry flavored cookie dough with a touch of red dye. Details with luster gold and a spray with PME pearl. But even plain they are quite adorable, in my opinion.
I HEART YOU
Chocolate Dough + luster powders &vodka. Mold available here.
Super simple, just a brush with gold over naked chocolate cookies.
Silicone molds sold for fondant, but also work well to mold cookies, if your recipe is firm enough ad has no leavening agent, as the mold haste many details.
SPRINGERLESTYLE
Molds are a lot of fun to play with, and make decorating so easy. Even plain the cookies will look great. I hope you could find some inspiration in this post.
It is time to bring a new design by Amy from @seriouslysweet, in her cool series of matching gnome with flowers. In perfect tune with the month of March, here are my babies! Visit her site to join the fun, and get access to all the gnome-florals of 2023, past and future.
So many details in these cookies! I am particularly smitten by the shoes – what a clever way to make them! Same mold as the clover leaf, but cut in individual pieces and dyed black. And the a little golden coin on top. Kill me with cuteness, Amy! The other amazing detail is the beard, and finally the piping of the white roses branching down from the floral composition. Super cool. Below you see some of the steps in the preparation of this set.
All things considered, this is not a difficult cookie to make, and as Amy said in her tutorial video, it goes really fast, especially if you make the fondant pieces in advance. Not that many colors involved either, in fact for the gnome you only need black, green, and then a little terracota in thick consistency for the beard. The trickiest part was piping the white spiky bits to make the flowers, my hand was hurting a bit. But it was worth it!
Can you tell how much I loved this little project?
Remember my previous post on this subject? It is time to bring a new design by Amy from @seriouslysweet, one more online tutorial completed. At the risk of repeating myself, I have to say these were loads of fun to make! I had to make the floral version twice, because at first I did not have the correct fondant mold to make the hearts. I thought the design was a bit compromised, and looked much better with the correct mold.
You know what I love the most about them? The gloved hands… those were made with fondant but Amy also said we could pipe with Royal icing on the cookie or even do a Royal icing transfer. But the fondant has the perfect texture and allows for that little sculpting, the extra touch. In typical Amy’s fashion, the cookies involved many different techniques, including my favorite (used for the beard). For this set, I used the heart molds I had around, and they were a bit too small. Not for the gnome, I thought those were ok, but definitely for the floral.
The hearts were a little lost in the middle of the greenery and roses (those by the way are called cabbage roses and super easy to pipe).
As soon as the right mold was delivered to our door (thank you, amazon.com), I re-made them… On my second time around I used a Strawberry Sugar Cookie Dough which I am quite in love with. I will at some point blog about it with the full recipe.
I love the way the new floral looks, the hearts are very prominent and plump, just like Amy designed them to be…
I think one cannot have too many gnomes in a cookie blog. That’s why I am already excited for the month of March, who knows what Amy will come up with next?
To join her adventures online, visit her siteand come on play with us!
If you’ve been following my cookie blog, you are familiar with all the online classes taught by Amy from Seriouslysweet. For the new year, she came up with a very fun series: each month we get to make two cookies, one gnome and one floral, with a similar color scheme so that they go together like a perfect match. January started with Frosty Gnome and his blue-tone flower. I cannot tell you how much fun it was to bring these cookies to life, and you can do it too! Just join her site (link below) and sign up for the whole series. You will need the cookie cutters also, although you could conceivably cut them by hand or use a similar cutter you already own. The videos are all pre-recorded and the classes follow her usual format, so you will also receive a little card with all the specific things you need for each cookie.
To join Amy’s online tutorials, visit her site clicking here.
I love when cookies make me smile, and these gnomes do it, big time! So many details… First, you need to make the nose with fondant or modeling chocolate, once that is ready you can start piping the different sections and adding all the bells and whistles.
Apart from the fondant noses, you’ll need little snowflakes made with wafer paper and a small punch type cutter, but if you don’t have that, you can add snow-shaped sprinkles. The paper creates a nice lift, though. The gloves get some texture with the needle, and the beard is made using one of Amy’s favorite techniques, which I don’t feel it is right to share, as the class is a paid event. The final touch is a large snowflake made with fondant, and spray painted with Wilton pearl Color Mist. I made a little heart to go with that set also… Aren’t the gnomes the cutest?
The matching flowers are much simpler to make, even if they seem complicated. All you need is Royal icing in the right consistency (thick), a petal and a leaf piping tips. I added some sprinkles to the center and once the icing was fully set I painted the edges with luster powder, white for the petals and copper for the leaves.
I’ve enjoyed every single online class from Amy, but this one has got to be one of my favorites of all times! It was wonderful to see that little gnome taking shape, and although it is not a class for beginners – you need to be comfortable making and handling Royal icing in several different consistencies – it is not over the top advanced.
If you’d like to challenge your cookie decorating a bit, I urge you to join Amy’s site and sign up for the upcoming classes. Her group on Facebook keeps getting bigger and bigger, it is great to see everybody making progress in their own path of decorating cookies.
Amy, I look forward to February and its set of gnome and floral!
For the Love of Cookies 