Flamingo Cookies

It's only twice a year that I make multiples of a cookie design (for each of my children's parties), and every time I do, I'm grateful that its only about 25 of them. I don't know how bakers/ decorators make dozens and dozens of a particular cookie and still maintain their creative passion (and not develop a serious case of the cookie-crazies!)

So when I do make multiples, I try to come up with ways to make it as easy as possible.
Like keeping the design and colour palette simple, using royal icing transfers, or a using a template like I did with this design.

 It looks like multiple steps (and it is!) but the guess work and fiddle-factor is taken out of it by having an outline to follow. The background icing (green and airbrushed gold dots) were done on one day, and the flamingos the next.  No cookie-craziness required!

 ... Well, no more than usual!


Happy decorating!

xxM

Tropical Flower Cookies

My timing of classes over the past few months has been a little off.
I distinctly remember thinking that I should do a monster cookie class for halloween this year, and yet I scheduled it for August. (?!?)
And all these summery, holiday mood classes (Florida Fun Cookies, and More Florida Fun Cupcakes) have been taking place on decidedly un-summery days. I'd take a picture to prove it to you - but just look at a piece of soggy cotton wool, and you'll get an idea of the misty damp conditions outside my window. Nice weather for reading and hot chocolate. Not for sugar work. Grrr!

So, we'll just have to get our rays from a happy sun cookie instead!
:o)

Here's how I made those hibiscus flower cookies:

I don't have a tropical flower cutter, so I just used a normal 5-petal cutter and

a small leaf cutter to change the shape of the petals (any gently curved edge would do). 

Once the cookies were baked and cool, I outlined with royal icing,

then flooded them;

immediately piped a white splodge onto the still wet icing (wet-on-wet); 

added a bit of yellow (wet-on-wet, with flood-consistency icing) 

and used a cocktail stick / scribe tool to drag the white and yellow icing outwards 

Once that background layer was dry, I added another outline and a stamen, using detail-consistency royal icing.

Allow to dry completely before packaging. 

You'll find a recipe for royal icing, and details about consistency here http://teacakeandcreate.blogspot.co.za/2012/07/royal-icing.html

Happy baking!

xxM

Easter Cookies 2016

 I had great intentions to bake and decorate a cake for Easter this year, but we've just come home from a couple of days in the 'Berg and the humidity back here in Durban has made the thought of any baking and decorating, well... unthinkable!
So, this is all I have to offer:  this year's decorated Easter cookies.

Last year's Easter colours were bright and bold, with teal and brown dominating (teal was definitely my go-to colour for 2015). This year it was time to revert back to pretty pastels.

Actually, back in January when I'd scheduled the classes,  I'd had a very clear idea of using a particular combination of purples and greens for these cookies, but by the time March arrived that clarity had disappeared and pastels were the fall-back option. But now looking at these pinks and greens together, I'm quite pleased I forgot about the purples.
What do you think?

Here's how I did the "Hoppy Easter" plaque:

Sketch bunny on cookie (I use a non-toxic graphite pencil)

Outline plaque and fill in a couple of white areas 

Once the white icing has dried, outline the pink head and body and flood the body 

Once the body has dried, fill in the surrounding green with flood consistency royal icing, 

                                                   and add wet-on-wet white dots.

Once the background has dried, flood the bunny's head with pink.        Doing it in this order makes the bunny's head stand slightly proud of the background cookie.

Once the icing of the face and body has dried, use SweetAmbs's teddy tutorial to create the fur texture on the bunny. 

And... of course I forgot to take pictures of  how to pipe on the rest of the bunny's face. Yes, really - again! Sorry... 

So baaaa-d! 

But I think you can figure it out - if you can't,  leave me a comment after this post. 

That grassy look is created using this cookie moss technique. Which you'll find is a very comprehensive tutorial ... with photo's of every step....! 

Happy Easter! 

xxM 

Penguins of Madagascar Cookies

Here are some cookies from our Penguins of Madagascar themed party. ('Cause I'm already totally over these critters and ready to move on...!) 

I made royal icing transfers for the penguins, because that seemed easier than sketching each character onto the cookies. And it was a very easy process. So easy that I managed to do them during the school holidays with yells for Mom interrupting me every 5 seconds.

To make transfers, print out appropriately sized images. Tape them to your work surface and tape a sheet of clear acetate on top. You'll be piping your royal icing onto the acetate.

 These are shadowy, bad-angled photos, but basically I outlined and filled in the black areas first.

Allowed those to dry, then outlined the white areas and filled those in.

When the white areas were set, I filled in the orange beaks and added the feet.

Last were the eyes - blue dots with black pupils.

The penguins were left to dry for 24 hours before I lifted them with a palette knife and transferred to freshly flooded cookies.
A few of the feet broke off in the process, but they were easy enough to pipe onto the dried cookie.

Enough of the Penguins now. If you want to see the cake pops, they're on the Tea, Cake and Create Facebook page. 

;o) 

xxM 

Fun in the Sun Cookies

I'm having one of those days. I have a list of things to work on, but they're all with fondant and it's turning into goop in the humidity. So I gave up. Went shopping, baked brownies, had some chai tea and now I'm talking to you.
 Ah, that's better!


It's been a while since I did a cookie pictorial tutorial, so I took a few snapshots while I was working on the Fun in the Sun cookies earlier this week. I tend to get caught up in the cookie-ing and not the cataloging, though - so you'll notice that there are a couple of gaps. Sorry!

Here's a two-fer - 2 for the price of 1  ; )  

Beach Ball Cookie

Mark out where you want your wedges to go on the cookie (it's helpful to look at images of beach balls when you do this, but if you sketch it incorrectly - no problem, try again; it'll be covered by your icing. Just make sure you know which lines you're following for the final product!)

Pipe the central spot. (Flooding consistency royal icing) Leave it to dry for approx 20min.

Outline non-adjacent wedges

…and flood. Then leave to dry for 20min.

Now, this is where the pictures are a little lacking…
Fill in the other areas, leave to dry for 20min again; then add white lines to define the outline of the wedges.

 Watermelon Slice Cookie

Pretty self explanatory, huh?

Ok, thanks for listening - I really do feel better now : )

xxM 

Spring Cookies and Royal Icing

It is Friday the 13th.
So far, so good. *Touch wood*. Not that I'm superstitious or anything!
We had a lovely "Bugs and Butterflies" Cookies class this morning, and the mischievous Spring weather didn't  play any tricks on us.

Actually, the number 13 always conjures up the phrase "a baker's dozen" in my one-baking-track-minded brain. And that's about the extent of the significance of 13 for me!

Anyway... It's been a while since I posted anything about cookie decorating and royal icing.
So I thought I'd go back to the basics. Apologies if you've heard this a baker's dozen times at my classes : )

Getting good results with royal icing is all about consistencies and various layering techniques. And practice and patience!
Once you've made a batch of icing (recipe here), you need to water it down, literally teaspoon by teaspoon (slowly - because you know what icing sugar is like with liquids: a drop or two too much, and you go from too thick to too thin faster than you can say drat-darn-it!) until you reach the desired thickness. I generally work with two consistencies - 15second icing and - to use a highly technical term - "peanut butter" thickness ; )

I use the 15s icing for both flooding and general outlining, and the thicker peanut-butter icing - let's call it medium-consistency icing for short : ) - for some detailed work, finer outlines and stenciling.
If I'm doing very fine detailed lacework, piping royal icing roses or ruffles, etc then I use a stiffer icing. But generally, I prefer using the medium-consistency icing because it doesn't peak or "break" as much.

I use tiny Ateco 00 or PME 1.5 nozzles for fine detail work.

So, here's an example - a simply decorated blossom biscuit.

1st step
Outline and flood the centre with 15s icing (and Ateco 01 or 02 tips).
Allow to dry partially (anything from 10 minutes to an hour, depending on the humidity)
This allows the icing to "set" a little, so that there will be a textural difference between the centre of the blossom and the surrounding icing.

2nd step
Outline and flood the petals with 15s icing

(It looks about as appealing as a rubbery fried egg at this stage, doesn't it?!)

Leave to dry partially -again, anything from 10minutes to 1 hr.

3rd step
Layer on a few details:

Outline petals

and use a contrasting colour to pipe small dots around the centre of the flower - see how these layers now add interest and 'life' to the cookie?
(Piped with small Ateco 00 nozzles and medium- consistency icing.)

Allow to dry completely - 24 hours - before serving or packaging.

For a few more tips on cookie decorating basics, see this post


Happy decorating!

xxM

Christmas Colours and Royal Icing

Wow, it's been a super-busy week! And another one's coming!!

So here's a super-quick share:
Cookie baking and decorating season has arrived with a bang (and the occasional fizzle as our royal icing virtually melts in this humidity!)

For Christmas, I've been using the following gel colours (good for royal icing, buttercream, and tylose paste and fondant):
For red: a mix of Super Red and Tulip Red - the tulip red isn't bitter like other reds.
For green: Forest Green

I've included a Teal / Sky Blue mix in the icing we've been using in the classes, too. It's a beautiful blue that complements the other Christmas colours so well.

A word of caution with Sky Blue, though. Despite its name, there isn't much subtlety about this colour - even a small drop can result in a lot more blue than sky! Use restraint, only a tiny amount is needed to get a pretty, light blue.


And remember to add some Bright White to your white, to get that clean crisp snow-white appearance.





For brown royal icing I always add cocoa powder as well as brown gel colour.
I do this for a few reasons: To minimize the amount of chemical ("E-number") colourants we're consuming; to enrich the colour; and very importantly: for me if it's brown it needs to taste like chocolate!

So I add a tablespoon of sifted cocoa powder to 250g of royal icing, and varying amounts of gel colour to get the desired brown. Adding purely cocoa powder - without food coloring - seems to make the icing heavy and sticky. Which is manageable if you are using it on its own, but it doesn't work well in conjunction with the other non-cocoa icing.

Happy creating!

xxM