Scallop Sea Shell Cookies

Yesterday I showed how I completed the Conch Sea Shell cookies.  Info regarding the dough recipe and the royal icing recipe are included there. Today is a tutorial for the very simple Scallop Shells.  Even a novice decorator can do these.  They are very easy.  I used the same icing to pipe and flood.  I used a #2 tip to outline and a #4 to flood.  I used squeeze bottles for all of the various sea shell cookies.  Sometimes I use piping bags, but I was in the "keep it simple" mode for the past few days and bottles are an easy way to do this.  You can actually do all of these without the tips and just use squeeze bottles made by companies like Wilton.  I bought some bottles from Karen's Cookies that have a coupler which allows you to change tips.  They come in an 8 ounce size and a 2 ounce size.  They fit all standard decorating tips (Wilton, PME, etc.)  Karen is a wonderful resource for cookie decorating products and techniques...great tutorials!  You'll notice from previous blog posts that I love to feather wet on wet.  There's a reason for this.  I have trouble piping straight lines :-)  You can hide a plethora of boo boos with feathering.  See the next picture for an example (I reaaaaallllly can't pipe straight lines consistently).

Let's get to it!  You'll see how easy it is!!!

This is such an easy shape to do.  Outline the outside of the scallop but leave the bottom of the cookie un-iced for now.  Flood the center with white flood icing, pipe some alternating curved lines from the top of the cookie to the bottom.  Start the feathering, either up or down, in the center.  Use a toothpick and drag it from the bottom (or top - it doesn't matter which direction) and wipe the toothpick after completing the pass.  On either side of the center line, drag the toothpick the opposite direction of the line next to it.  Remember to wipe your toothpick (I use my alternate hand for wiping because it is quick) after each pass.

Here you can see the wet on wet stripes as they are turned into pretty feathering.  Next we fill the bottom portion - again, just outline and flood - with either of the two colors from the lines.  I then carefully place, using craft tweezers, five pink sugar pearls at the bottom of each scallop.  Do that while the icing is wet and they will stay put after drying.

Finish all the cookies and leave them to dry on a rack or tray.  Be very careful if moving.  That is one of the reasons I like to decorate on a rack in a baking sheet.  I just switch out racks and don't have to physically move the cookies.  I tend to run the a/c a little colder (it's humid here) when decorating as well as run a fan on the table with the cookies.  It helps my cookies not to pit and not to take days to dry to a point where they can be handled and packaged for "sharing".

I only made a dozen of these, and two got eaten, so I'm left with ten :-)  Easy and cute...you should try them!  I'm still deciding if I want to embarrass myself and write about the sand dollar cookies.  My piping sucked.  Some days it's good and some days...well, like I said, it's embarrassing!

I'll see how I feel about it tomorrow.  I've done scalloped cookies before...but never the conch or sand dollars.  I thought the sand dollars would be easy peasy.  Unfortunately, the devil is in the detail...and that is what tripped me up.  We'll see...we'll see!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

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