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!!!

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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Sea Shell Cookies

This week-end I decided to pull the sugar cookie dough out of the freezer and bake some of the shapes from new cookie cutters... some of which I won in a "Giveaway" from Sweet Art Factory!  I elected to work with a conch shell cutter, a sand dollar cutter, as well as a scallop shell I already had on hand.

I used some of the vanilla and almond sugar cookie dough recipe I found on Lila Loa's blog and had stored for future use in the freezer.  I took out two slabs of pre-made, well-wrapped, and frozen dough and put it in the fridge.  Saturday evening I rolled and baked (after allowing them to sit out for 15 minutes before starting).  I have only used the World's Best Sugar Cookie Dough from the class I took at Central Market in Austin...so I was leery.  However, the chocolate recipe was so good, I went ahead and made the vanilla too.  So glad I did.  I really enjoyed how easy it was to roll and cut and it didn't seem to crack as much as my generally favored dough does. 

So, onward I went the next morning, prepping my royal icing... I kept it simple - lots of white, a little bottle of warm brown (was more like tan) and a little bottle of mauve (more like a light pink).  I used AmeriColor squeeze gel paste.

I started with the conch shells.

I am not much of an artist but it really helps me plan my icing and the project if I draw it out.  To do that, I just trace the cookie cutter and write out my idea.  I find I can make more consistent cookies if I do that.  Sometimes, like when I make Easter egg cookies, I don't want consistent cookies...they are all happily different.  No drawings required for those projects!

Step 1 - set up your decorating area.  I like to decorate on a rack over a baking sheet.
Step 2 - I outlined the parts that needed a white outline, with piping icing.
Step 3 - I filled the bottom portion of the shell with flood icing.
Step 4 - I gently nudged the icing to the edges and gave the cookie a shake.  Since I knew I was going to feather, I didn't worry overly about getting it perfectly flat or ridding myself of bubbles.

Step 5 - I piped horizontal lines of light brown icing while the white icing was still wet.  Feathering requires a "wet on wet" procedure.
Step 6 - Using a round toothpick (or you can use a boo boo stick from Karen's Cookies), draw the toothpick down through the line - I start slightly above the line, end before the beginning of the next line, raise the toothpick, wipe it on the palm of my left hand (OK - it's messy - but efficient) and move on down the line.  I keep a damp cloth handy as well as a bowl of water for wiping my hands and cleaning my fingertips.

Step 7:  Pipe the mauve that looks like pink icing on the inner lip of the shell.
Step 8:  Again, using wet on wet, pipe a stripe of the brown next to the white, but on top of the pink.
Step 9:  Using the toothpick again, drag the brown into the pink, and, as I was going for a shaded effect I didn't clean the toothpick between every swipe.  These were fast light pulls through the icing, all the way to the bottom of the brown line.  That method sort of shoved the pink icing higher on the edge, which gave it some dimension.
Step 10: Using some of the thicker piping icing, I filled the dome outlines which gave them a puffy effect.  Use a clean toothpick to drag it to the edge if it doesn't get there by itself.  Take care not to go over the "dam" you created or you will lose the puffy effect.
Step 11:  After the pink and brown edge has dried for about 5-10 minutes or so, lightly sprinkle with some pink disco dust (also available at Karen's Cookies) just on the pink portion.  My original intention was to let it dry completely and then paint on some wet pink lustre dust (mixed with clear extract or alcohol).  I decided I didn't want to wait :-)

Always challenging to see the sparkly disco dust in a photo
and I don't have a light box so I got reflection on the white.
Oh well - I'll try to do better.

I worked on the other cookies as well...but will write a post on those tomorrow.  I've got to get up and get going on something other than decorating cookies today!!!  Here's what will be coming tomorrow. (And, yes, I know...my sand dollars are not all that great.  I piped the centers today before coffee...major mistake.  AND, my holes didn't stay open correctly.) (BIG SIGH)

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

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Lighthouse and Starfish Cookies

I only decorated three lighthouses ...so I don't have a lot to show.  It was hard to get them cut out and transferred...anything with a small tip tends to be a challenge, especially in a warm kitchen.  Mostly, I was focused on patriotic cookies, however, I managed to get 4 lighthouses cut out successfully, unfortunately breaking one after it was baked.

The starfish tale has already been told.  It's pretty straight forward. 

Pipe the outline, flood, dry for a couple of hours, pipe large dot in the middle, then progressively smaller dots down the legs, add sugar pearls to the center and immediate surrounding slightly larger dots, dry overnight before stacking.  Ta da! 

Simple and I really love them.  This time I did use a different color - I mixed peach and yellow to get a color that could be used for the light in the lighthouse as well as the starfish.  Worked great!

My instructions for decorating this basic lighthouse are below each photo.  The Port Isabel lighthouse is a simple white lighthouse...and it sits on a grassy knoll. That's where the similarity between reality and cookie ends.  I should have checked a photo for details if I wanted it to be accurate, but I didn't...left off little windows, the top should have been black...and there's a staircase by the door I could have added.  Oh well... next time!

I piped and filled the crown, outlined the circles at
top and bottom, and filled the middle .
Left to dry overnight

The intent of the line piped across the top "circle"
was to make it look like the walk-around section
at the top of the lighthouse.
The under color of the dark cookie was to
represent the railing (in my mind).
I filled the base "circle" to give it some
dimension and then I filled in the
area representing the light shining in
the lantern room with the
blend of icing I made for the starfish.

After everything was thoroughly dry I piped some dark gray
vertical lines to create windows in the lantern room area. 
Outlined below the cap, above and below the top railing,
and along the top and bottom of the base. 
I piped a door above the base.
The grass was supposed to look more like grass.  I used a Wilton tip #233
that supposedly was for making grass.
I guess my icing wasn't thick enough because it
ended up looking like fancy stars.  Oh well. 
From a distance it looks like grass.
Sort of.

That's it for phase two of the tropical cookies on chocolate sugar cookie bases.  Remember to check out LilaLoa's blog for that yummy recipe.  I have more dough to bake - both chocolate (just a bit left) and vanilla (an entire recipe).  It may need to be sent to the freezer.  I have more coastal cookie cutters sitting out waiting for my attention as well....  Unfortunately, I have a lot going on for the next 10 days...so I might be disappearing again!  You may be assured, however, I always show up again!

The jellyfish post can be found via this link

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

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