More Cookie Fun

I have been having way too much fun with my new cookie books: Cookie Craft and The Flour Pot Cookie Book. Of course, this meant I got cookie cutter fever, so here's my new cookie cutters!

Most of my ideas came from Cookie Craft, although I did try some cookies with fondant. Thomas & I both agree that we prefer the taste of royal icing to fondant with the cookies, but there are some neat things you can do with fondant. Here's a link to my Picasa Album with the rest of my cookie pictures.

Peanuts Cookies

First bake your cookies. I used my Chocolate Cutout Recipe.

Next, I put a sheet of wax paper over my Peanuts template and traced the outlines with a tip 1 and royal icing.

Once the outlines are dry, you can fill them with thinned royal icing. If there are any holes you can use a toothpick to fill in the hole. Just make sure to do it quickly because royal icing dries pretty fast.

Let the characters dry overnight. If it's humid, you may need to let them dry for a day or two. Once the characters are dry, you can use food safe markers to add faces and details.

Once the details have dried, you can start icing your cookies. Since royal icing dries quickly, you'll want to do one cookie at a time. I find it's easier to put the royal icing in a piping bag and draw an outline, then fill it in.


Next, peel off your character from the wax paper and place it on your cookie. Since the are a little delicate, it's safest to use the edge of a table to pull the paper away.


Enjoy!

Snail Cake

Yesterday, I took a cake sculpting class at All In One Bake Shop and it was a lot of fun! Mostly because I love cake and snails so the combination is pretty awesome.

This is my first sculpted cake. I was glad to find that it's not as hard as it looks!

Tom's Bee-Day Cake

Here is the cake that I made for my father-in-law's birthday. I found a bee and bee hive cookie cutter that I thought might be nice to use for his birthday cake but realized it would be much cuter in 3D:

I made the bees out of gum paste and put them on wire so they could fly.

Here's their bee hive. It's made out of fondant and I added African violets made out of royal icing.

I used the bee cookie cutter to add bees to the side of the cake.

This is my first attempt at painting on a cake so I think it turned out reasonably well.

Easter Cupcakes

I made some cupcakes to bring into work. I used the Wilton mini-egg cupcake pan and had fun trying out some different techniques decorating them. They are just chocolate cupcakes with buttercream.

James Bond Cookies

We went to a James Bond themed birthday party last weekend and I was asked to make cookies so here's what I came up with:

Chocolate Cutout Recipe
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup baking cocoa (cocoa powder)
1 teaspoon baking soda

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars until fluffy. Beat in egg & vanilla. Combine flour, cocoa & baking soda; add to creamed mixture and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Cut out and bake at 375 degrees for 8-9 minutes.

Royal Icing
3 tablespoons meringue powder
1 pound powdered sugar (about 4 cups)
5-6 tablespoons of water
1 teaspoon almond extract (or any other alcohol or water-based flavoring, NOT oil-based)

Using the beater/paddle mixer attachment, mix together the meringue powder and the powdered sugar, then add the extract and water, a tablespoon at a time until you reach your desired consistency.

For cookies, use a thin consistency and make sure to use a disposable piping bag. Reusable piping bags will have oil from buttercream icing, which will thin down royal icing as you pipe, which is not fun. Once the icing is dry, you can use food-safe markers to decorate as well. I used them to add a face and spots on the octopus and the lemon peel on the martini glasses. For the decorations, I made them ahead of time. Here is my template. I piped them on wax paper, let them dry, and then put them on the iced cookies before the icing dried.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Fergie!

Today was Fergie's 7th birthday and what better to celebrate with than a puppy birthday cake? Well, I'm sure Fergie would have preferred a cheeseburger but she made do with the cake. I made her Peanut Butter Carrot Cake for dogs. Fergie made quick work of her birthday cake and made sure to lick up all the crumbs!