After all my cookies were baked, it was time to make them look cute :) Since youtube is a highly reliable source, I watched a few videos on cookie icing technique. Although I could tell it was difficult, I figured it wasn’t impossible. To be fair, I’m cheap and I don’t plan on doing this again. Well at least not anytime soon. Anyway, it didn’t make sense to go all out and purchase any tips or fancy bags or things like that. I honestly whipped up some royal icing, dumped it in a ziplock bag, cut the edge off and voila: icing bag.
Due to my lack of experience, limit on product, and amateur tools, I was met with a few issues. I had planned to ice the square part of the cookie in white and then do the “1” in blue (per my neighbor’s request). The first batch of icing was REALLY watery mostly cause I just poured the suggested amount from the recipe. LESSON LEARNED: add water slowly to powdered sugar/merengue until desired consistency is reached!! Anyway, here are my cookies after the first round of icing:
Kind of messy…I know.
Next I outlined the “1:”
After I filled them in, I was…dissatisfied. They were “okay” but just looked a little haphazard; as though I’d let my *10-year-old niece do the decorating.
So I got a little creative and made them more “me.” When it comes to my “art,” I don’t like to follow the rules or be very detail oriented. I’m more a free-spirit if you will. I like to create impressions instead of specific images. I used the extra icing to do this:
Here’s a close-up
Just a nice personalizing touch I like to do when I seal the bags (also tip #3 from ms.-baker-extraordinaire). I used the font “Jokerman” and printed these on address labels.
Ready to be delivered!
And the final verdict? The family loved them! They were very pleased and my sister, boyfriend and mother all approved. My dad just wanted to eat them. I made about a dozen extra so he did get to taste them and I got a thumbs up for that!
In conclusion, cookie decorating is very fun albeit very stressful. A lot depends on timing and just doing it right the first time. I think I prefer to eat them instead :) My sister can be the pastry chef and I’ll stick to teaching!
On a side note, I cut my hair today and donated 10” to Pantene Beautiful Lengths. My hair feels sooo short right now—it stops right above my shoulders, but I LOVE it. Another bonus is the ease of styling it which will come in handy this fall. One less thing to worry about in the midst of student teaching!
*disclaimer: I do not have a niece.
No comments:
Post a Comment