It's for a reason.
My creative skills (when not prefabricated into a stamp)...are questionable at best. But I will give anything a shot! (Almost, anyway.) So my friend Angi asked if I'd like to go with her to a cookie decorating class at Country Kitchen SweetArt in Ft. Wayne. Well, sure! So Tuesday night, after the big book signing, we headed north to learn all about decorating cookies. (I should add here that Angi is a cake decorator - and a good one, at that. I'm a cake consumer. And a good one, at that.)
It was a really cool class. Three hours, sixteen things to bring home! Even though my results are a little on the embarrassing side...I thought I'd share them with you.
All the cookies had been made for us before we arrived. These two had also been iced with what we learned was "Run Sugar" icing. So we had this blank white canvas to work with. I had to draw Santa's face on him...which was laughable at best because I can't draw. I tried to copy off her cookie, but my pen (we used pens inked with food coloring) had a much fatter tip than the one she had used, so my Santa looked weird. I tried coloring his face peach (to separate it from his white beard) but he ended up looking sunburned with a bit of black outline mixed in. Woops. Oh well. And the ornament was painted with food coloring and water...and the silver part at the top was done with some edible powder mixed with lemon oil.
These were fun. We tried our hand at fondant icing. It was all pre-made and pre-colored for us. We just rolled it out and cut it in the shape of the cookie. We also used big plastic sheets that were embossed with patterns. If you rolled it over the fondant on one side, it impressed down into the fondant (which is what I did on the tree). If you rolled it using the other side, it pulled the pattern out of the fondant (which is what I did on the mitten and snowflake). These cookies were extra thick!!
Up close...the snowflake and the tree. I also used a gold dusting powder over the tree.
The mitten was my favorite. I used a little decorating tip to fluff up the white part to look like fur.
This was my favorite part, I think. We used a run sugar glaze, and it was about my most successful adventure. I was too chicken to try to mix up the glaze, but I used what other people had made to decorate these cookies. I did the white dots on the purple candy cane while the purple was still wet, so it all melded. If I'd had more time and could have let the purple dry before I did the white, the white would have given an extra dimension to the cookie.
I would just like to offer a disclaimer on my gingerbread people. When we decorated the cookies, there were all these different stations to visit and I went to this one last. By that time, most of the chocolate (the features were made using melted chocolate in tubes, not icing) was gone, so I didn't have a lot of options on colors. Plus...the chocolate had started to harden up a bit in the tubes from being out of the heat so long...and the tips were thick, so detail wasn't easy.
The mitten was my favorite. I used a little decorating tip to fluff up the white part to look like fur.
This was my favorite part, I think. We used a run sugar glaze, and it was about my most successful adventure. I was too chicken to try to mix up the glaze, but I used what other people had made to decorate these cookies. I did the white dots on the purple candy cane while the purple was still wet, so it all melded. If I'd had more time and could have let the purple dry before I did the white, the white would have given an extra dimension to the cookie.
I would just like to offer a disclaimer on my gingerbread people. When we decorated the cookies, there were all these different stations to visit and I went to this one last. By that time, most of the chocolate (the features were made using melted chocolate in tubes, not icing) was gone, so I didn't have a lot of options on colors. Plus...the chocolate had started to harden up a bit in the tubes from being out of the heat so long...and the tips were thick, so detail wasn't easy.
As a result...my girl looks like she's wearing meat. Even the instructor agreed. She said it looked like Lady Gaga's meat dress.
Yep.
We also tried our hand at using buttercream frosting...which I think I could perhaps come to sort of master...if I could try again. But alas...it was my first time with the decorating tips and bags...so...um....
The tree looked like something out of Monster's Inc.
The snowman crossed the line into inappropriate in a couple of ways.
And my poinsettia looks like a fire.
We dipped Ritz crackers in chocolate and then placed these little squares of plastic over them. They had some sort of edible design on one side and after the chocolate hardened, we pulled off the plastic and the design was on the cracker!
CUTEST project ever. These were snowflake cookies on sucker sticks that we dipped in blue chocolate. After it hardened, we piped white chocolate on it to make the detail. After THAT hardened, we dusted it with silver dust and stuck it down in a flower pot and covered the sticks with blue and white M&M's.
Yep.
We also tried our hand at using buttercream frosting...which I think I could perhaps come to sort of master...if I could try again. But alas...it was my first time with the decorating tips and bags...so...um....
The tree looked like something out of Monster's Inc.
The snowman crossed the line into inappropriate in a couple of ways.
And my poinsettia looks like a fire.
We dipped Ritz crackers in chocolate and then placed these little squares of plastic over them. They had some sort of edible design on one side and after the chocolate hardened, we pulled off the plastic and the design was on the cracker!
CUTEST project ever. These were snowflake cookies on sucker sticks that we dipped in blue chocolate. After it hardened, we piped white chocolate on it to make the detail. After THAT hardened, we dusted it with silver dust and stuck it down in a flower pot and covered the sticks with blue and white M&M's.
I think I might just try one or two new things at the Christmas baking festivities this year!!
6 comments:
Hey Bekah, you did much better than I would have! They all looked scrumptious...but some of them were to nice to eat, I think! Such a quandry! (sigh)
To solve it, I consulted with Cookie Monster who replied "COOOOKIE!!!!!" and tried to eat my monitor.
Apart from the attempt at monitor consumption, I have to agree! :-)
I'm jealous of your santa cookie and ornament...I think they look fantastic. I couldn't do that in a million years!
Now, by the time you got to the buttercream icing....well, that looks like what I attempt to do. I tried to use that grass tip this summer on cupcakes for Ethan's b-day. It's a lot harder than it looks!
Sounds like you had fun and that's the most important part.
Delta - They WERE too pretty to eat - until my sweet tooth took over. Then I just dove in!!! :)
Christina - I'm just glad you didn't see HER santa cookie. :) Mine looks much better when not sitting beside hers!!
The buttercream is my favorite. It's the yummiest. (Is that a word?)
I'm impressed with the mad googling skills you used to come up with a pic of Lady Gaga in her meat dress.
The cookies looked great too!
My advice: Don't eat the fondant cookies. Just admire them (they're fabulous!). I've tasted fondant before, and it's horrible. They apparently don't even TRY to make it palatable.
Buttercream frosting, however, is definitely the yummiest!
Kristin - I was channeling my inner Kristin. Look what you've done to me! :)
Skyepuppy - I agree - the fondant isn't nearly as tasty. Too bad I ate all the buttercream ones already!
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