Haniela

HANIELA’S LOVE STATUE COOKIES

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To learn all you need about these cookies, check this post from Hani’s blog.

If you are skeptical about Royal icing transfers, these cookies will convince you that they are a great way to embellish many designs. Haniela provides the template so you can pipe the LOVE motif either over parchment, wax paper, or acetate. I usually go for acetate, but in this particular case they worked better when I used parchment paper. They peeled off easier, I had several piped over acetate break. One important thing is to pipe them “puffy” – you need Royal icing with good structure, otherwise they will be way too fragile. Check the pink at the lower right to see what I mean. Outline first so you can get more to food inside and stay contained.

You can choose any color to pipe and also leave the transfer plain, or cover with sanding sugar. The ones in the bottom left I sprayed with pink luster from Wilton, and that gave an interesting tone over the gray letters. Once the transfers are fully set (I recommend patience and waiting overnight), all you need to do is flood a basic square cookie and place the designs on top, I made an extra cookie with brush embroidery as a companion to the love set. I really like the combination of gray with tulip red.

These transfers are very delicate, so my advice is to make a few more than you will need. And also make sure your base cookie is large enough to accommodate the transfer. I felt I played with danger a bit, mine were almost too small…

The bead border is of course optional, but if you follow this little blog of mine, you know that I am quite fond of them… You can find a lot to inspire you online as far as written messages go. Just pick what is calling your name, and have fun with it!

Before I leave, a note on red food color. Often red has a bitter after taste. One way to avoid that is using “Tulip Red” from Americolor. It is made from a different type of pigment and does not have any taste. It also colors well, so you won’t need to use half a bottle to get the red you want.

ONE YEAR AGO: Cardinals in a Tree, a Pizza Box Set

A PRINCESS CARRIAGE

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How adorable is this cookie? I won’t sugar coat the pill (I only sugar coat cookies), this one is a labor of love. I cannot imagine making a dozen of them, but it is a cookie that you can include in a set of simpler ones to make it special. The design has Haniela’s name written all over it. You can see the video of her recent live clicking here, and to get all the templates for the decoration you can visit her ko-fi shop here.

To make the cookie base, Haniela used the larger heart of the Wilton 101 cookie cutter set. It is going to be a two day process. First, flood with blue, add the grass and clouds with wet-on-wet Royal icing. Then, once the base is fully set, draw the design (I used a yellow food pen), and flood the carriage part in stages, and pipe the wheels. Once that sets – no need for a long time, maybe a couple of hours, add the final details with thick consistency icing (I used gold color), and a small star tip and a number 3 piping tip. Later those details can be painted in gold.

I also painted the pink carriage with luster powder in Rose Gold just to give it more dimension. I just adore this little cookie!

ONE YEAR AGO: A Christmas Tree Party

EMBROIDERY SUNFLOWER COOKIES

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I am beyond excited about these cookies! Huge thank you to Haniela for her very detailed tutorial on Patreon – this one available only for her supporters. If you are serious about cookie decorating, consider joining that crowd. Totally worth it. Many techniques were involved, and you need to be able to work with fine lines, the finer the better to get the best effect of embroidery. They are a bit labor intensive, but the whole process is a lot of fun.

Haniela put a lot of thought into the design. The base is made to mimic an embroidery frame, and you do that by etching lines on a fully set flooded cookie. I am not going to share all the details, as this is part of a paid tutorial, so below I show some steps of the process. Her video is very helpful and explains every single step.

She also provides a template for the flower design, to make it even easier to bring this cookie to life.

I should have made the fine lines a little more delicate, but my piping consistency was just a little off. Still, they ended with a slightly more “rustic” appearance. No major harm done.

The same technique will work for many different shapes and colors, so keep that in mind if you want to give it a try.

ONE YEAR AGO: Amy’s Pineapple Cookies

MARBLED ICING

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As far as a high-impact design requiring very basic piping skills, you cannot beat marbled icing. These cookies were all made with this technique designed by Haniela. You can use anywhere from five to seven colors, but I made some using only four. The marbling is not as dramatic in the end, but the cookies are still quite beautiful. You can use one single color and simply vary the intensity, or add two different colors, each in two or three shades. It all starts with piping the outline (using the darkest color), then some horizontal guide lines to separate the blocks of repeating tones. Working quickly, pipe lines of each color and marble them in two directions using a needle. Piping the border is optional, but it does make the cookie more elegant.

Below, some of the steps to make this type of cookie…

The piping of the stripes does not have to be perfect, as everything will get mixed up by marbling. The only thing to keep in mind is working reasonably fast, otherwise the icing will start to set and it won’t pull smoothly, the surface will be all bumpy.

The same design using brown-orange-red tones…

Some of the borders I left white, some I painted with bronze…

For these cookies I used 6 different colors, including white. In some cookies I omitted the white, using just the other colors.

Finally, a blue series, with border in gold luster.

I love this cookie shape. It is perfect for marbling, but works with many different designs also.

ONE YEAR AGO: Sugar Cookies, Black and White Series

FUN WITH PAPER STRIPS

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A couple of months ago Haniela showcased in one of the Facebook lives a cool idea she had to decorate sugar cookies. She used thin strips of parchment paper that are laid on top of wet Royal icing. Then the cookies are decorated either with wet-on-wet, or other painting techniques. The final step is pulling off the paper strips, which of course only happens next day, when the icing if fully set. I know that it’s not easy to visualize the technique from this description, but once you see the step by step, it will become clear. Her full video tutorial is available here. I was so excited about the technique, that I made a few cookies a couple of days later. Today’s post is a series of cookies made in March and April with variations of her basic method.

For this tile-cookie, it started with white Royal icing to flood the entire surface, and then the paper stripes were placed in a geometric pattern.

The composite below shows the steps – I let the icing set and used luster powder to paint, with the strips of paper still glued. Then, pulling the paper reveals the white underneath.

As you can imagine, the possibilities of colors and designs are endless, and so much fun to play with!

It all starts with making the strips of paper. Using a very thin blade, cut strips on parchment paper, try to do them of equal width, but some variation is ok, you can even incorporate that in the design. Once you have plenty of strips available, you can start flooding the cookies and coming up with ways to decorate.

The ones below were made following her tutorial a little more closely, starting with hexagons and using wet-on-wet to create the design.

Some of the steps you can see below (but keep in mind Haniela’s tutorial on Facebook is the best way to follow the technique).

Another thing she demonstrated in the video was using a special type of scissors (available here) to cut the strips, so that the edges get wavy. I love the end result! Using the scissors is a little more involved, but not too bad.

To make this Ukraine-inspired cookie, I cut the strips a little larger, added to turquoise Royal icing, and next day painted some areas with gold. The sunflower is a fondant addition. The picture below show this cookie in its initial stage.

I hope this post gave you some ideas to play in the future. There are so many ways to incorporate the paper strips into designs, and once you have them all cut, the hard work is done. It’s all downhill from there.

Haniela, thank you for the tutorial, I had a ton of fun playing with your concept…

ONE YEAR AGO: For the Love of All Things Bees

PLAYING WITH LEAVES

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Inspired by a recent Facebook live from Haniela, this is a fun, unique way to decorate a simple leaf-shaped cookie. A mixture of textures, colors, and sprinkles come together to play with the basic design. Some cookies used the perforated mat as a component of the design, similar to what I shared in the latest online class by Amy (click here). Haniela used piped Royal icing flowers, I went with fondant decorations.

The cookie in the center is from the Mother’s Day Florals shared a couple of weeks ago (see post here).

For some of the cookies, the leaf was divided in two, the background painted with gold (or lightly brushed with a thin layer of green royal icing), and after flooding the other half, cookie crumbs dyed with green were added for textural contrast. Haniela’s tutorial goes over every detail of all these designs. Video available here.

Texture can also be added by laying a piece of crumpled parchment paper on wet Royal icing, and allowing that to set overnight. Once the paper is gently peeled off, the texture stays on the surface. Pretty cool technique. You see those in the picture below.

They can form a nice trio by coupling with a happy sun cookie, made with a spider-web cutter
(design by Marlyn, from Montreal Confections).

And the set below would be perfect for a Mother’s Day gift…

I love the use of the perforated mat to help decorate a cookie, and have some ideas for future projects using this approach. Stay tuned!

HANIELA’S MINI-BIRDHOUSE

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This was the second Facebook-live cookie decorating session with the duo Marlyn-Hani (video available here). Last time, Marlyn was in charge of the party, when we made colorful hen cookies (see my post here). In this month’s session, Haniela had us decorate and assemble a super cute birdhouse. Here is mine…

I cannot tell you how much I love this cute house. Because it is small, you don’t need to use construction type gingerbread. A sturdy sugar cookie will do, make sure to bake it until the edges are getting dark, so that is holds better. I used my default recipe as published in my food blog here. These were flavored with honey and orange.

A few things had to be prepared in advance, like the adorable Royal icing transfers butterflies. Hani has a tutorial on youtube with all the details, you can see it here. Some of the steps are shown below.

Also, apart from baking the cookie components (using the templates provided by Hani), the house panels needed to be covered with a very light brushing of gray Royal icing and allowed to fully dry for 24 hours.

With all that ready, during the live event we moved on to decorating the front and back panels… and also the sides with Royal icing transfers for the windows (I did not take a picture of those). I loved the technique to give a wood-like texture. Finally, we piped stems, flowers, and leaves.

The house was then assembled with very thick Royal icing (that brought me horrific memories of my catastrophic performance in front of Paul Hollywood, Sherry Yard, and all my tent-baking friends), but thankfully those demons were exorcized and my bird house stood the challenge. Literally.

The roof is added last, and decorated with medium consistency icing, using two different icing tips, a petal 104 and a closed star. The final touch was adding the butterflies, as if they gently landed on the birdhouse…

All in all, a lovely little project! Of course, you can do many different color schemes to decorate, add different types of flowers, lady bugs, little birds, whatever you feel like it.

Funny tangent: Marlyn was decorating along… when we were perhaps 25 minutes into the live, her house was done. Ready. With all bells and whistles. She used a different style for the panels, to give the house a more woodland appearance, in tones of brown. And different types of flowers. It was gorgeous, and you can see it in the video, available HERE.

Huge thank you to Hani and Marlyn for organizing these events!

FOUR LITTLE CHICKS

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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!

OF GNOMES AND UNICORNS

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To open the month of February, I bring two mythical creatures I am quite fond of. The gnomes were adaptations from a recent tutorial during a Facebook live with Hani (click here to watch, it starts at 21 minutes). The unicorn was my own design, using a stencil made with Cricut. I have a rocky relationship with my Cricut, he’s been mean to me a few times, and deeply hurt my feelings. But then, the unicorn happened, and we are in good terms again. Until next storm. Which may or may not be already brewing…

DESIGN #1
HANI’S GNOMES

These were designed by Haniela, she used a cute little envelope as decoration, made with royal icing transfers. I had some fondant hearts hanging around, and decided to put them to use. The noses are made with Royal icing transfers, or you can pipe after the base is set, which is what I did for the feet and hands.

His name is Felix…
He is the guardian of measuring spoons…

DESIGN #2
SALLY’S UNICORN

This is a large cookie, because I wanted to have enough space to pipe the design. After flooding in white and allowing the base to fully set, I used my stencil to air-brush in a sheen, light gold color, just to guide the piping.

Next, the lines were piped in gray using a Wilton 3 icing tip so that they would end up thick and form a solid margin to flood in colors later. The eyebrows were painted black with a food safe pen.

So here they are, my mythical little creatures ready to celebrate a season of love!

LET THE HOLIDAY BAKES BEGIN!

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I admit that I’m always finding little boo-boos in my cookie projects, but every once in a while a batch makes me totally happy… This was definitely one. A million thanks go to Haniela, I slightly adapted one of her recent productions shared during a Facebook live. You can check the full tutorial for her version here (starts at 7 min 30 sec).

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!

So there you have it, my favorite cookie project in the past few months…

First thing to do is get the Royal icing transfer decorations ready. They can be made days, weeks in advance. Basically you pipe little rounds with yellow icing, let that set and add a band of same color in the middle. The little balls must fully set before the next step, which is drawing with a food pen the little decorations. Hani shows exactly how to do them in the video (link in the initial paragraph of this post). I used gold luster powder mixed with vodka to highlight the central ribbon. The hexagon cookie is iced with white, and after overnight drying the plaid design was air-brushed using a stencil. After that, the branches and red ribbon are piped, and the jingle bells glued. I really love these cookies!

Stay tuned for more Holiday bakes coming your way!