Baby Shower Cookies

Cookies for Baby Ivy's Baby Shower...for my sweet niece Jennifer!

My niece, Jennifer, is having a baby!!!  She's having a late-life baby and it always seems extra special to get one of these little gifts from Heaven when you aren't expecting any more.  My sister and her wife are giving her a baby shower this week-end...and while I will be in town, I had already made other plans before I knew about the shower...and no way can I fit two things in one time frame.  Since I'm going to miss Baby Ivy's Shower, I decided to make some cookies and leave them for the party.  That way I'll be there in "cookie spirit".

I tried my hand at stenciling for the first time with royal icing.  I learned a lot during the 3 day endeavor!  I had watched some YouTube videos on the subject but I would have been a wiser baker/decorator if I had reviewed them prior to getting started!  All I could focus on was trying to get a flat layer of base for the stencil.  Then I ran out of pink icing and decided to try stenciling on a bare cookie.  Might have gone okay if I'd not used flood icing.  Duh.  Way too thin.  Still, it was a good learning opportunity and they weren't intended to be "the good cookies" anyway.  I also learned USE THE 1.5 TIP for writing ding dong (and thicker icing)!!!  Anything larger and looser just spread in a most unattractive manner!

I baked late Tuesday night, laid down the base coats and the ones I wanted to do wet-on-wet Wednesday, and then MADE myself wait for Thursday morning to ensure a good dry base to use the last of my 20 second icing to use for the stencils.  I saved back 6 cookies, thinking I'd just freeze them when I came to realize I wasn't going to have enough pink to base coat them...then I had the bright idea to do the bare cookies.  As I said above - learning experience!

All-in-all, it was a good lesson.  I stopped and looked at  Sweetopia's video (which I'm linking here) which helped me realize what I'd done wrong and which gave me a good hint for adding some 3-D effect by piping on top of the stenciled design.

Of course, I wanted to use an ivy stencil because the little sweetie will be named Ivy...no cookie stencils of that type to be found but I discovered a really long stencil meant for borders at Hobby Lobby for a reasonable price.  I grabbed it and cut out a small piece that worked nicely for the large cookies.  I used an Ateco Double-sided Square Cutter Set.  I decided on the second largest size...and then made a few of the smallest size as well for some bite size cookies.

I'm happy with the cookies - and know I learned a lot from the process.  I'm eager to utilize some of the other stencils I have on hand and maybe acquire some more.  This was quite fun once I got the hang of it!

As usual, I used the World's Best Sugar Cookie recipe and Royal Icing recipe I obtained from a class at Central Market in Austin many years ago.  I flavored the icing with both Pure Vanilla Extract and a bit of Almond Extract.  I didn't really intend to decorate with white, so I used real vanilla...maybe not the purest white, but it was okay.  I'm really liking that combination of flavors these days.

Below are photos of the various stages of the process...including the good and the less-than-stellar!

base coats and some wet on wet

The small bite-sized cookies before highlighting with disco dust

These are the ones I tried first - not so great...

I tried some highlighting and decorative accents...helped a bit.

These were done with properly thickened 20-second icing.
Much more crisp outline and only needed
a bit of embellishment to get the look I was going for!

I think I had been scared of my new PME 1.5 and 1.0 tips I got from Karen's Cookies... but after this experience, I'm loving them!  Getting even dots and controlled writing were soooo much easier with these awesome tips.  Thanks for reading!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

Photos from Lana Stokes snatched from Facebook.  Wish I had been there - the food and decorations were awesome.

The cookie and cake table - I love the decor!

The cookie plate

The food table - isn't this cute!
I love the baby buggy watermelon display for a centerpiece

I don't know who made this adorable display of
fruit skewers interspersed with profiteroles and
homemade chocolate sauce for dipping.
I'm truly sorry I missed trying those!!!