Sand Dollar Cookies - not my best work

How hard should it be to pipe a basic 5-petal "flower" with a dot in the middle?  I can pipe outlines, I can now pipe a decent stripe (after much practice)...but the centers of my Sand Dollar cookies nearly undid me!

These are the last of my most recent batch of shell cookies and I was happy with everything...except the sand dollars. 

My thought was "oh these will be super simple" and that is probably what cursed me.  I got the 5 "holes" piped...and they were irregular. 

I had a real sand dollar I was looking at...longer "top" hole (or maybe bottom, I'm not sure) and then four more evenly spaced holes.  My piping icing was not stiff enough, despite it being a 25-30 second icing.  I used a 1.5 PME tip.  Still, it spread on some of the cookies. Then, I allowed them to dry and flooded and smoothed...working hard to get it really smooth since there wasn't much to these.  After they dried a bit, I added a bit of white disco dust. 

In the continuation of my apparent curse...this new disco dust tasted "grittier" than most.  Who knows why...but it was.  Same brand - brand new container.  I didn't use much and dusted off the excess when they were all the way dry.  Still, when I bit into them I tasted grit. (sigh)

To make it even worse, the next morning, before having coffee, I head straight for the table and start finalizing these cookies.  My hands were shaking.  The icing was too thin (ANOTHER batch) and I was piping like a drunken sailor...all wobbly and cock-eyed.  I reverted to dots... I was pleased with the dots.  I wish I had done all dots.  I really wish I'd had coffee and a steady hand!  What you see is what I ended up with AFTER using the boo boo stick...these are the better ones, believe it or not!

The pitiful attempts at piping a five petal flower (in essence)
on top of the dried sand dollar cookie.  Waaahhhhh...

The dots were much better.  These I could be happy with.

I guess I'm really glad I didn't make a lot of these!



So, the moral of the story is never assume something will be easy and don't decorate before coffee first thing in the morning :-)

I gave all of these cookies away.  Sorry my friends if they look wonky and taste gritty.  No one has complained...I'm not sure if they would actually.  Onward thru the fog (as we said in the 70s)!

BON APPETIT, Y'ALL!!!