Wednesday 23 August 2017

Unicorn Cookies: Gold Lustre

Ever have those days when you're just not in the zone; when your cookie decorating is anything but magical?! 

The day I made this set of unicorn cookies I had to navigate leaking icing bags, breaking biscuits, and an oven temperature that was accidentally bumped up 100'C.  
All that, and about a dozen interruptions. *Sigh!*






So, I wasn't exactly feeling the magic that day.

I had to do some cosmetic surgery on the unicorns the following day.  

But my mood improved considerably when, for the first time,  I tried using lustre dust mixed with coconut oil. What a brilliant sheen!
We don't have a wide selection of edible lustres available to us here, and generally the effect once a lustre dust is mixed with alcohol or water and painted onto royal icing isn't as smooth or as solid as I'd like.
The mixture with coconut oil, though, is beautiful


On the cookie in the picture, the top stripe is the lustre dust mixed with water; followed by vodka in the middle, and the bottom stripe is with coconut oil: a lovely solid sheen.  

So that's what I used on the unicorns horns and hooves - only one coat necessary.

One downside is that the coconut oil isn't a liquid at room temperature. 
You have to heat it to get it to liquify initially, then keep it in a little hot water bath to stop it solidifying one you've mixed in the lustre. 

And the coconut oil mixture doesn't sink into the icing the way the other two solutions do, so it rubs off a little.
If your cookies need to be packaged and shipped off, rather use another solvent. But if they're for a display platter, give the coconut oil mixture a try.

Because it's oil-based, it'll be an good mixture to use on modelling chocolate and modelling chocolate / fondant blends, too. 




Happy decorating!

xxM 


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