Batch 1: Flower- and Cake-Shaped Sugar Cookies

In the pursuit of improving my pastry-rolling skills, I decided to start with decorated sugar cookies.  I considered starting with various fruit pies since I’d had such an epic failure in the past.  But to be honest, making sugar cookies seemed like more fun.  Plus, I could think of several upcoming occasions for which some jazzed-up sugar cookies would be just the thing: a bridal shower, a wedding, Fourth of July, vacation, birthdays, etc.      

The first of these events was my sister-in-law’s bridal shower.  It was to be a garden-themed party, so flower cookies would fit the bill.  I consulted with the other bridesmaids and offered to make the favors.  I was excited for the challenge.  I knew there would be a steep learning curve, but I thought I could handle it. 

 

Until this time, I had never actually decorated sugar cookies.  Not really.  Sure, I had once mixed powdered sugar with water and called it icing.  I drizzled this “icing” artistically over some cookies using the back of a teaspoon.  But that doesn’t really count.  According to my research, the real deal involved piping bags, metal decorating tips, couplers, and gel food coloring.  I would need something called “meringue powder” to make the icing.  And apparently I would need icing in two different consistencies: piping icing for outlining, and flood icing for everything else.  I felt like I was learning an entirely new language.  This was starting to seem complicated.   

 

A few weeks before the shower, I made a sample batch of flower cookies. I also made a few tiered cake cookies so that I could experiment with cutting and decorating another shape.  Making this very first set was akin to a fact-finding mission: I needed to get a feel for rolling and cutting cookie dough.  I needed to learn how to use meringue power and test the various icing consistencies.  I wanted to gauge how long it would take to cut, bake, decorate, and dry a batch of cookies.  I wondered how sprinkles and decorative sugars would work with royal icing.  And, I needed to evaluate what I could and couldn't accomplish with those metal decorating tips.   



Eventually, I'll learn how to prevent air bubbles on my piping icing





 

These cookies are far from perfect.  There's always room for improvement, right?

 

This is what I used:

*Flower- and cake-shaped cookie cutters
 

*batch of sugar cookie dough

*batch of royal icing

         Piping icing: two colors (bubblegum pink and lavender)

        Flood icing: two colors (bubblegum pink and lavender)

         Coloring: these were no-fuss colors.  I used Wilton’s pink for the bubblegum pink and Wilton’s violet for the lavender color.   That’s it.  I didn’t even mix the two colors with each other. 

*Assorted sprinkles

*Two each of #2 decorating tips, disposable piping bags, couplers, squeeze bottles

*Toothpicks and paper towels (lots!)
 

 

 

 

This is what I learned:

 

 Piping:

1). Before decorating any cookies, pipe a small amount of icing onto a paper towel to test the consistency. This may prevent a few “oops” moments.   

2). Slow and steady – don’t rush!  Applying consistent pressure is the key to keeping the lines neat.

3). Be careful not to move the cookies before the piping has set. I crushed the piping on a few cookies, as you can see above.

 Flooding:

4). Squeeze bottles make flooding a breeze!  Just be certain to have toothpicks on hand to spread the flood icing to the edges of the cookie. 

Embellishments:

5). Flood icing + sprinkles = super cute.  Piping icing + sprinkles = sloppy. 

Rolling and cutting the sugar cookies wasn’t nearly as disastrous as the pie dough incident had been.  Rest assured, no dough was flung against the wall this time around.  In general, I didn’t have issues with the dough sticking to the table or rolling pin since I’d sprinkled flour liberally on both the kitchen table and the rolling pin.  However, I need to work on rolling the dough to a consistent thickness.  I had a few cookies that were noticeably thicker on one side than the other and didn’t bake evenly.  Using a rolling pin spacer would create a uniform thickness, but I’d like to try on my own, first.   

Surprisingly, the cookies turned out better than I expected for a first attempt.  My samples weren’t perfect, but they didn’t look like Play-Doh creations either.  Well, a few of them didn’t look so great.  Care to see?

These cookies went straight to our bellies.  Tasty, but not the prettiest of sugar cookies.