painted cookies – For the Love of Cookies

FIFTEEN MINUTES OF ZEN

May 27, 2023May 26, 2023sallybr4 Comments

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If you’ve been around my cookie blog, you probably know that I am a huge fan of the Zentangle method of drawing. The amount of inspiration available in Instagram, Pinterest, and the number of tutorials in youtube is quite amazing, so I advise you to grab a cup of tea and browse around. Not too long ago I found this youtube channel and fell in love with it. Every day, Kelli demonstrates one “tile” (Zentangle drawings are called tiles as they are usually made in 2 inch or larger square sheets of paper) that takes no longer than 15 minutes to make. Keep in mind that when doing it on paper, you can add a lot of shading and details, when I do it in cookies it is simpler and therefore faster. But equally relaxing and rewarding. I share with you today just a few examples using her tutorials, and some departures I did on my own. All cookies must be flooded and fully set, and then you need a fine tip black pen. I often use PME pearl spray to give the cookie a final shine, but that is not mandatory.

This first cookie was made following this tutorial.…

Then I made a second one using only two zentangle motifs from the first one…

Next, one of my favorites, following this TULIP tutorial from Kelli.
It became one of my favorite designs!

The top right is a pattern called TAXI, and you can see her demonstrating it here…..

I love how changing the background color has a huge impact on the design, and even if you mess up something, it always ends up ok in the end. Or so I believe…

ONE YEAR AGO: May Inspiration, Character Cookie

TWO YEARS AGO: Out of this World Sugar Cookies

THE WATERING CAN FLORAL

May 12, 2023May 9, 2023sallybrLeave a comment

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!

ONE YEAR AGO: A Vintage Dress Set

TWO YEARS AGO: For the Love of a Golfer

FOR THE LOVE OF FLORALS

May 9, 2023May 8, 2023sallybrLeave a comment

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!

ONE YEAR AGO: Happy Mother’s Day!

TWO YEARS AGO: Stained Glass Sugar Cookies

WHEN BREAD AND COOKIES COLLIDE

April 25, 2023April 25, 2023sallybr1 Comment

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!

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…

ONE YEAR AGO: Happy International Macaron Day!

METAMORPHOSIS, THE COOKIE

April 7, 2023April 5, 2023sallybr4 Comments

This cookie was quite a labor of love, and I actually made it twice because I was not very happy with my first attempt. The cookie was designed by Adriana Alvera and a very detailed tutorial published in the March issue of the online magazine D’licious (click here to see all issues available). Originally, it is a very large cookie, but I reduced the template in my computer a little bit.

I fell in love with the whole concept, and could not wait to try and make it. Basically, one side of the butterfly is decorated as a stained-glass component, and the other is piped with Royal icing and painted. Below, some of the steps involved. The cookie as shown in the magazine started with both sides flooded white, but later the background of one side was painted in light blue. I decided to just flood in a very light blue-green pastel tone so I would not have to paint the background.

I used the projector to draw the images on both sides, and then piped the outline in black with an icing tip PME 1. The other side I used a pipeless bag and medium consistency icing, in white. Once that was all set, I painted all features, the stained glass side using a mixture of 50:50 Everclear and honey to dilute the gel dye.

My first attempt had a few boo-boos, the main one was not centering the body of the butterfly correctly, and also messing up a bit the design because I could not adjust the size of the image correctly with the projector (long story, I fixed that on my second attempt). As you can see below, the body did not end symmetrical. My main advice is to pipe the body first, and then make sure both wings are placed symmetrically on each side.

This basic design of two different styles in the same cookie is very cool, and can be applied to many different images. I intend to explore that in the future.

It is definitely not a cookie you can make a dozen of to share, but let’s suppose you want to gift a special Spring-inspired cookie box, this could be included as a centerpiece.

Many thanks to Adriana Alvera for writing such a detailed tutorial and providing all templates to bring this cookie to life!

ONE YEAR AGO: Marbled Cookie Dough

SPRINGTIME SPRINGERLE

April 3, 2023April 2, 2023sallybr2 Comments

A few weeks ago Amy from @seriouslysweet invited her followers to do a collaboration cookie project for Easter. We could do anything we wanted, keeping pastel colors and the overall Easter-spring atmosphere. She suggested that I contributed with Springerle, as not very many people in the group bake that type of cookie. I went to work, and made a small batch, then selected my favorite shape, the butterfly, as my contribution. You can see all the entries in this super cool video Amy assembled, clicking here. Sit back and enjoy the show!

The butterfly mold can be found here. I bought mine in 2020, and used it many times. For this project, I kept the colors very simple and light, but of course the butterfly is the type of image that you can take in many different directions as far as colors go.

All cookies were painted with luster powder and vodka, some were finished with a light spray of PME pearl.

Another great mold that is the little bee over the flower. I bought this one in 2021, but it is sold out at the present time.

My most recent acquisition is the mold Eva’s Lace (available here). I think it is super elegant, and even without any painting will make gorgeous cookies.

Not exactly springerle, but my favorite chocolate cookie dough, worked well with a very unusual mold that I fell in love with recently, the grasshopper. Grasshopper mold & cutter can be found here.

I was worried that the mold would be hard to use, with so many details and very unusual shape for the cutter, but as all molds I own from KitchenVixen, this one worked super well!

Amy, thank you for organizing this cool collaboration event, I look forward to the next!

ONE YEAR AGO: Haniela’s Mini Bird House

SPRINGERLE FOR LOVE

January 28, 2023January 27, 2023sallybrLeave a comment

Someone is getting married today!

I made these as party favors for my niece Camila’s wedding. Normally I don’t do large batches of cookies, but this was a special occasion, so twenty-five cookies of each style materialized in our kitchen. It was – I cannot lie – a labor of love, but totally worth it! Unfortunately I could not attend the ceremony, as we are back in the US, but I am definitely there, at least in cookie format…

It all starts with baking the cookies and allowing them to dry for 48 hours. I used my default recipe for Springerle, which you can find in my main food blog clicking here. Once they are baked, the fun begins. Yes, each one is painted by hand, I do one color at a time in all cookies to make the process easier and faster. You can find a video showing the whole process included in this post of my recent past. In this batch, the heart-shaped cookies were not painted, just sprayed with PME luster (pearl or a combination of pearl and pink).

I chose to make Springerle because they are supposed to last for a long time, and I had to make them 6 weeks before the big day. These are small cookies, and each guest received two in a small package. I hope they liked them…

Four colors were used for the floral cookies: pink, green, peacock blue, and gold for the edge. Some of them got an extra detail of pearl here and there just to add variety.

For the hearts, things happened a lot faster, as I used the spray to coat the surface. Some got white, some got pink mixed with white, as the pink alone would be a little too strong for what I had in mind. I wanted the to be delicate and subtle.

ONE YEAR AGO: Of Bears and Bunnies

FOR THE LOVE OF COFFEE

January 14, 2023January 16, 2023sallybr2 Comments

Coffee lovers, these are for you! Sugar cookies and macarons take the spotlight today. The sugar cookies were made quite some time ago, inspired by Amber (click here for her blog post about it). I love when a cookie requires very few colors to shine, and these are a perfect example. White, plus two shades of brown. Nothing else needed. The wet-on-wet design is simple by default, making these cookies a great option for beginners.

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It is a very simple design to make. Choose the background tone, flood, then make a very loose design with white Royal icing. Immediately outline with the second, darker tone of brown, and use a needle to pull the lines in or out, whichever way you like. For the flowers, just pipe concentric circles and pull with the needle. Quite relaxing to do, and no matter what happens, it will look nice in the end. A perfect cookie decorating adventure! A border with two tones of icing dots is optional, but it does make the cookie more festive.

And now, for Java Macarons! I made French meringue macarons with buttercream coffee in the filling. The shells were light beige, and I painted the coffee beans with luster powder + vodka. The outline is food safe pen (thick brush type), also used to write JAVA on the shells (but a pen with very fine tip). A little more time-consuming, but not too bad.

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To draw images on macarons, the only thing to worry about is having a reasonably smooth shell. If it gets too rough, the drawing won’t look very good. I like to go a little longer in the macaronage, just to make sure I get a smoother shell.

If you are a coffee lover, this post is dedicated to YOU!

ONE YEAR AGO: A Bouquet of Flowers

OUT OF THIS WORLD COOKIES

January 10, 2023January 16, 2023sallybr1 Comment

I’ve made this set almost a full year ago, but for some reason they never showed up on the blog. They were designed by Amber, and each one is painted by hand, so it’s not the type of cookie you want to rush or make a few dozen at a time. But if you enjoy painting, they are a nice way to spend a couple of hours of your weekend. To read Amber’s post and find her tutorial, click here

To make these cookies, you start from a flooded, fully set background with white Royal icing. Then you decide on the shape and size of your planet (or star) and paint a background trying to get the edges darker. Once that is done, have fun imagining colors and of course, aim for a Saturn-like entity with a nice ring around it.

A few white dots or luster gold sprinkles will make the design even better. Just have fun with it, I am not a talented painter as Amber, but I still had fun and liked my babies.

I also made a little batch of stars, these quite simple to do, you just marble the icing and then add sprinkles. Together, they form a nice group of cookies to give to a special friend or share with your family.

ONE YEAR AGO: Springerle Cookies