Pizza Box Cookies – For the Love of Cookies

A BOUQUET OF FLOWERS

January 14, 2022January 16, 2023sallybr6 Comments

For a little IG video on this pizza box concoction, click here
(I am still learning my way through the reels)

We need something to counteract winter. Valentine’s is just around the corner. Two reasons to make a flower bouquet composition. There is a little story behind it, though. Marlyn, Cookie-Guru-Extraordinaire, asked members of her group what they would like to learn in 2022. Several of us (yours truly included) said that creating our own stuff was a big issue. Unless I see a cookie design to follow, I get paralyzed. A couple of days later Marlyn posted a pizza-box cookie sketch, and suggested we used that as a starting point to come up with our own design. I will share her sketch at the end of the post. In a way, this blog post is like a homework assignment…

For the cookies, I used this recipe (I omitted the black cocoa, used the full amount of Dutch processed). Following Marlyn’s sketch, I used my Cricut to cut a piece of cardboard to use as a template for the cookies (base and little card). Regular mini-cookie cutters were used to make flowers. Everything was baked and then the real adventure began…

From this point, I worked on the pieces of the base and the little card, as they needed to fully set before continuing. The wrap was iced with Chefmaster Gold + Cork, then a piece of crumbled parchment was placed on the still wet surface. The paper is removed next day, revealing the structure underneath. Next, I lightly brushed some copper luster powder in a few spots of the wrap.

The lateral cookies were iced with Laurel green, then air-brushed with gold. I also air-brushed the central base, without any icing. The little card was painted with food safe pen, using a stencil to guide the writing. Then the flowers were decorated, and a little heart added just because… The whole process is shown below.

This was challenging but fun… I now share the initial sketch planned by Marlyn so you can see the starting point.

It was fun to put to use several different techniques to make this box. I debated whether to add leaves, but I like the look with the flowers only. If I used royal icing to pipe leaves, it would be messy to eat the cookies, as I would have to pipe them in between the pieces. So there you have it, a little shout-out for Spring, with romance in the background.

Huge thank you to Marlyn for taking the time to devise this challenge…

A FAIRY COTTAGE COOKIE COMPOSITION

October 2, 2021January 16, 2023sallybrLeave a comment

If you are serious about cookie decorating, I am sure you follow Amber, from @sweetambs. A while ago she posted a very special tutorial (exclusive to Patreon supporters) to make a Fairy Cottage cookie composition. A real masterpiece with quite a few steps. The thing that fascinated me the most was the pebble work on the surface of the house. You pipe each pebble individually as a Royal icing transfer, and then glue them to the cookie right after brushing some thick icing as a base. Each pebble is also painted with luster powder and vodka in black and brown, to make the final product even more realistic. I wanted to turn that into a pizza box concoction, so I reduced the dimensions of the house to fit inside the 7 x 7 inch box, and simplified the details a bit.

The two large cookies for the house were cut by hand, and I did the same for the small mushrooms, as I did not have any cookie cutter that would be compatible with the final dimension of the composition. Just make sure to keep an eye during baking because the small cookies will bake a lot faster.

The prep steps start with piping the pebbles with gray icing and letting them dry overnight. Paint them while still glued to the paper. Ice the walls and chimney, glue the pebbles. The hard work is done! The window panels were simple white icing painted later in yellow. The door was made with slightly thicker icing, to get some texture with a brush. Amber’s video is very detailed and you will have no issues following it. My favorite part was perhaps the roof, made with brush embroidery. Since the method allows the background to show, it is a nice touch to paint it brown with luster powder before proceeding with the embroidery step. Amber does a lot more to her fairy cottage in terms of details under the windows, and around the house, so make sure to check it out and be amazed. Here is the short version of her video, as posted on IG.

I hope you liked my Little Cottage, I am quite smitten with the pizza box format, which I find perfect to offer as a gift. That reminds me… I need to place another order at amazon for those boxes, because how could I risk running out of them?