Beach Cookies

The Beach Cookie created following
tutorial from Marlyn of Montreal Confections

I know it is February and many folks North of the equator are having a nippy week...but where I live, it's pretty nice weather!  I live on the Gulf Coast ...right on the water... and this week-end, I'm driving up the coast a few hours to spend time...at the coast.  Yep, weirdly enough, it's true.  My flip flops are happy to be in the sand, wherever the sand may be.

So, cookies were requested by the traveling companions ...apple butter cookies specifically.  Ask and ye shall receive!  I made 30 cookies and got them all decorated in one day via carefully scheduled fan drying of layers and starting early in the day.  I used a different method for making royal icing this time...from the wonderful Jaci at Ali's Sweet Tooth.  We both live in a land of great humidity.  Her method worked beautifully.  Not a bit of separation all day long...and a good thick base to work from with my handy dandy spray bottle. Yay!

My favorite cookies were a "beach" with waves I meticulously created using the YouTube tutorial from Marlyn at Montreal Confections.  I am slightly addicted to her tutorials...she is such a good teacher.  I saw it earlier last year and knew I would eventually get around to trying it out.  Today was the day!  Mine doesn't look as sharp as hers... but I'm pleased with the result for a first effort.  I didn't make fondant sea shells, I used some white and milk chocolate instead in a Wilton silicon mold I bought from Amazon.  I'm not fond of fondant...but I surely do love chocolate.  They came out sort of cute, so I'm glad I took that turn.

I didn't have the cool sanding sugar Marlyn used.
I used turbinado sugar instead.

I also used, for the first time, my air brush.  I carefully covered my table and used a 3-part science poster board to protect over spray as recommended by the talented Melissa at The Baked Equation .  I was so joyful to spray the shades of blue and then pearl the waves.  I am laughing myself silly now, though.  Guess what I didn't protect?  The inside of my nose!  I blew blue icky stuff this evening (OK - blue boogers - I'll just say it).  Good grief!  I'm thinking a mask may be in order next time.  Now that I see how cool the airbrush is, I know I'm going to try to find ways to add more depth to future cookies.

Since I didn't take photos during the process (and you can see Marlyn's online tutorial here) I'll just post these photos of the finished products.  Dolphins, sand dollars, star fish, and some scallop shells add to the beach theme.  The teen informed me "uh, those shells look a little different", in reference to the colors of the scallops.  Heck, I needed to use up some of the blue and peach icing from other cookies...so we have "different" scallop shells.  Leave it to the teen to point out the obvious!

Happy dolphins, funky scallops...it's all good when it gets in the belly!

The sand dollars are much better than my last attempt!  Still
a few issues to work out.  Still, better!
 

Slowly but surely, I'm trying to get back to enthusiasm for baking.  I have some more stencils I want to use as well as quite a few new cookie cutters.  I need to start sketching out some ideas.  I'll keep you posted!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

I airbrushed pearl on the center starfish and used sugar pearls to accent.
The rest of the starfish were just piped dots and no pearl.
I think I like the pearl best...and I like the dots better than the sugar pearls.
Next time :-)

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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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