Frosting your cookies

I use a #2 tip for the outline and a #3 tip to flood in the icing.

When icing the cookies you want to do one color at a time, one section at a time. Let each section dry for 30 minutes or so before moving on.

Pipe an outline of each section and quickly fill that section in with frosting. You can jiggle the cookie softly to get the icing to settle into the outline smoothly without running over. You can do sections that are not going to flow into the first section you've decorated (For the Mario cookies I did all of the white dots first and then filled in the red or green sections once those had dried for 30 minutes).

Cookies need to sit for 24 hours before they can be stacked without disturbing the icing.

Royal Icing Recipe

Ingredients:

6 tbs warm water

3 tbs meringue powder (you can buy this at Michaels or Hobby Lobby. Walmart has it in the decorating section near the crafts)

1 tsp cream of tartar

4 cups (1 lbs) powdered sugar (confectioners' sugar)

1 tsp clear vanilla extract (regular will tint your frosting off white)

1 tsp almond extract

Directions:

in mixer bowl, pour in the warm water and the meringue powder. Using the paddle attachment, mix on low until it is frothy and thickened...about 30 seconds.

Add the cream of tartar and mix for 30 seconds more.

Pour in all the icing sugar at once. (if you're not careful the powdered sugar will go EVERYWHERE when you turn on the mixer. I hold a damp towel around the mixer while doing this step)

Mix on low for a full 10 minutes. The icing will get thick and creamy.

Cover the bowl with a dampened tea-towel to prevent crusting and drying out while storing.

Separate and tint with coloring as desired.

Once colored, thin with small amounts of warm water (I use a spray bottle to ensure that I'm only adding a little water at a time) until you reach the desired consistency.

For flooding work on a cookie you want to be able to use a knife to slice a line through your frosting and have it close in 15 seconds. I find that somewhere between 15 and 20 seconds is ideal to insure that you can smoothly flood your cookie.

Decorator Sugar Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter softened

1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

1 egg

2-3 tsp flavoring (pick what you like, I prefer almond)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour (add 1/4 cup more if your dough is too sticky)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

Directions:

Cream together softened butter and confectioner's sugar.

Crack the egg into a separate bowl and add the flavouring.

Add egg and flavouring mixture to the butter and sugar mixture and mix until the egg is thoroughly incorporated.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add little by little to the wet mixture.

I can tell the dough is ready when most of it sticks to the paddle. When I touch it, it has a little give, but does not stick to my fingers.

Allow to rest for 5 minutes.

Roll out on parchment to about 1/4 an inch thick, use flour for dusting as necessary and cut cookies as desired.

Bake at 400 degrees for 7-8 minutes.

makes 2 - 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

Notes about her recipe:

• The dough does not need to be refrigerated.
• The recipe doubles well
• Baking times are approximate. You must know your oven. Watch them the first few times you bake them. If the cookies are browning you've gone too far.
• This dough can be flavored any way you'd like.
• The cookies freeze well.
• There is a lot of leavener in these cookies. This is not a typo. The general rule is less leavener so they don't spread.
• This recipe does spread a little. If you don't like that add a little flour.
• If you don't like salt, leave it out altogether.
• If you only have salted butter, use that and don't add salt.
• I prefer decorating day-old cookies. They are less likely to leach oil back into your icing if they have had a day or two to "dry out". They are still soft however.

I got this recipe here and she has a nice photo tutorial to go along with the recipe. This is nearly her exact posting with a little variance based upon my own preferences.

Candy Corn Cookies

Tis the season and I hate candy corn so I thought I'd make some that I would enjoy.

I used a heart cookie cutter and bent it into the desired shape. There was still a bit of a scalloped edge on the top so I used a pastry cutter to trim that edge. It's buttercream frosting so it's meant to look a little more messy.

Soft Sugar Cookie Recipe

I found this same recipe over and over again so I don't know who to attribute it to. I'll just point out that it's not my own creation...

Ingredients:

1 cup shortening

2 cups sugar

1 cup sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp almond extract

2 eggs

5 cups all purpose flour

pinch of salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

Directions:

Mix shortening, sugar, sour cream, vanilla, almond extract and eggs together.

Stir flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder together in a separate bowl.

Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients mixing until incorporated.

Cover and refrigerate dough for 1 hour.

Cover flat surface with confectioners sugar.

Roll dough into a ball and pat with confectioners sugar to ensure it won't stick to your rolling pin. Roll out cookies and cut as desired.

Bake for 5-6 minutes at 400 degrees. (Remove from the oven before the cookies begin to brown. You will notice the surface of the cookie will just begin to take on a cracked texture.) Cool for 2 minutes before removing to cooling rack.

Cool fully before frosting.

Soft sugar cookies with buttercream frosting...

I had a dream about making soft sugar cookies last weekend, but was too sick to do so. I've really wanted to try this for a while...

I chose shades of the season and decided to stick with simple frosted cookies. I'll post the recipe I used tomorrow and I used my buttercream recipe for the frosting.

They're delicious, but I'm limiting myself to eating only one item from anything I bake at this point as it's starting to get out of hand.

Baking for the weekend...

I'm planning to work on at least two different baking projects this weekend. Due to stress, illness, and lack of time I just haven't been able to make anything for a couple weeks.

Here's to hoping nothing unexpected occurs.

Dot Cookies

The dot cookies are some of my favorites!

I mentioned that my friend wanted to learn to make cookies. She made me promise that none of the ugly cookies would be seen by anyone so I picked out the prettier ones to photograph.

It was a lot of fun and she did great for her first time!

My baking closet

This is a glimpse inside my baking closet.

I've been gathering items for the past year or so and am getting pretty comfortable with the items I enjoy using and the things that don't work as well as I'd hoped. From time to time I'll try to showcase some of my favorite things.

As you can see, as far as the cookies go, this is a hobby that I'm starting to take very seriously.

Cupcake cookies

While I was making the flower cookies I made these mini cupcake cookies.

I know I've seen other people make cupcake cookies on their blogs and likely took the design from someone, but can't remember which one. If you find something that looks like this somewhere else let me know.

Sorry for the crummy photo quality, they were taken with my phone and it doesn't evaluate lighting very well.

Flower Cookies

My friend wanted to learn to make cookies and she mentioned she'd always wanted to try to make flower cookies like someone she knew. I had a lot of mini flower cutters so I thought I'd give it a shot before I tried to teach her anything.

In the end I made about a billion of these little suckers considering they were mini cookies and I couldn't stand the thought of making any more for a while. Maybe she can try these on her own and give me some pointers!

Heart cookies

This is my try on The Decorated Cookie's idea and recipe. The link to the tutorial and recipes can be found here.

I didn't have a cutter as small as she did for the inner heart so I used my heart cutouts to make mini cookies. These cookies are really simple and tasty!

Mario Cookies

I come from a long line of gamers starting with my grandpa. I remember Frogger and Burger Time on Atari followed by the game that can tie most of us back to the earliest days, Super Mario Brothers on the original NES.

I saw pictures of a Mario cake one time and always thought I'd love to make that. Instead I took on the cookies. Maybe someday I will do the cake.

In shaping the cookies I used a circle and an egg shape for the mushrooms and shaped them by hand. They were actually my first attempt at royal icing decorating and I imagine I could make them look much better if I tried them again, but I was pretty happy with the overall result at the time.

I miss sweets!

I haven't had any time to bake or work on my blog over the past couple weeks. Work along with classes has turned out to be a bit more stressful than I had anticipated. In light of that fact I'm currently suffering a horrible cold and don't dare bake anything at all until I've recovered.

I am getting a lot of good ideas. All of my dreams are full of baking.

Planning to get back to cookies next and feature some of my favorite tips, tricks, and tools.

Stay tuned...

Inside the fondant cake

The portion of this cake that was the biggest pain was the actual cake itself. Due to lack of proper planning on my part it was much more complicated than it should have been.

A tutorial on this technique can be found here.

It's actually really straight forward, just make sure you follow all of her steps fully. I ended up losing an outer ring because it crumbled to pieces. Not sure why, but it did.

I did taste the cake and the fondant isn't half bad! I still don't like the texture, but it is otherwise ok.

Fondant cake

I'm finally done with this horrible little experiment. It seems sad that it took so long to make something I don't even want to eat lol.

Not likely that I'll be making any more fondant covered cakes for a while, but I'll definitely keep playing with fondant decorations. Those are quite fun.

Fondant continued...

Fondant is made and cakes are made.

So far I've experienced nothing but disaster in doing this so I think I'll be switching back to cookies for a while.

Fondant

I'm playing with fondant today. I've never made anything with fondant so this should be interesting...

My sister only decorates in fondant and I only decorate in frosting so I think it's only fair she gives frosting a try! The recipes for the fondant came from her so she'll have to give me the go ahead before I can post them.

To be continued...

Shopping for supplies

For those of you who are new to this or who wish to add to your own existing collections, I thought I'd add a few links to sign up for coupon offers.

What you're looking for is something like "subscribe to weekly savings" with an entry blank for your email.

Both Hobby Lobby and Michaels regularly email a weekly 40% off coupon for any regularly priced item in the store.

Take a friend or two, print them a coupon, and make them buy you something as well. Before too long you'll build up a pretty nice stash of supplies at nearly half the price.

Another thing of note, You can also purchase supplies from online retailers. I love Karen's Cookies as cookies are what I enjoy creating most.

You can sign up for the newsletter on their page or "like" them on facebook. They typically have a 20% off coupon code posted on facebook. I haven't seen a coupon code for the month of september yet, but I'll keep an eye out.

Amazon is another good place to look for discount items. If you have a special offers Kindle there's a good chance you'll receive coupon codes at some point that can be used for baking supplies. Hint Hint Jenna...

Wherever you shop, the key is to shop for a deal. I've waited for a deal to buy most everything I own for baking. Luckily my Kitchen Aid mixer was on clearance at Target or I wouldn't own one...

Happy Birthday Minny Kakes!

In the beginning we got along very well...

It must have sunk in quickly that I was no longer the baby of the family...

I got over it and began showing you the ways of the world...

Mom always said we played so well together...

I couldn't find any pictures where they captured how we didn't play well together on camera...

However, I recall reactions to this picture as being, "They're so sweet to each other when they're asleep!" indicating it must not have been a secret...

Being the genius of the family I taught you to ride a bike...

Of course you had to one up me...

I may have taken credit for your hard work a time or two...

Which one of these angels were they going to believe?!

I'm still ornery and you're still a turd, but I love you now more than ever and want to wish you a Happy 29th Birthday.

I will share some insight into your 29th birthday: You are old.

When I mentioned to my coworkers that it was my little sister's birthday today they asked me how old you are and I said "29!". They're like... "that's your little sister?" YES thank you for pointing out that I too am old.

So, to always bring you joy, no matter how OLD you get, you'll always be my LITTLE sister.