I have a really special set of cookies to share today. These were part of a wedding gift to my brother and new sister-in-law, who were married in July (hi, newlyweds!). I made wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, bow ties, wedding shoes, with a few hearts thrown in, just for good measure. To make these extra special and personal, I thought the cookies should look like the actual wedding attire. I wanted these cookies to be a surprise so I tried to avoid directly asking the couple questions about their attire. I already knew what the wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses looked like. With the help of the bride’s sister, I was able to find out the color of the bow tie and color of the wedding shoes, as well.
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| Dress style is Maggie Sottero's "Nora" |
Likewise, the bridesmaid dresses looked like this:
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| Dress style is Bill Levkoff 338. |
And the corresponding cookies looked like this:
On the day before the wedding, I gave these to my sister-in-law, and we all (bride + bridesmaids) enjoyed snacking on them while getting ready for the big day. What could be more festive than eating wedding cookies on a wedding day? As you can see in the close ups, I still have lots of room for improvement in my decorating techniques. But the good thing about cookies is that they will be delicious and fun, even if they don't look quite perfect.
Lesson 1: Your piping icing must be the the right consistency
With my third set of cookies, I struggled with piping icing that was too thin. With this fourth set, I had the opposite problem: the eggplant piping icing was much too thick. The result of too-thick icing is that I needed to apply more pressure to the piping bag, which made it more difficult (for me, at least) to keep my hand steady. Here are a few pictures of the piping icing, before I filled the cookies with flood icing. As you can see, I was able to pipe the white icing in nice, smooth lines. The same is not true for the eggplant piping.
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| See how smooth the white piping looked? |
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| With the eggplant piping, I was applying so much pressure to the piping bag that I had difficulty holding my hand steady. These particular cookies were designated as "ugly ducklings" - sample cookies for my husband to taste test. |
Lesson 2: Thoroughly incorporate food coloring into icing
I also learned the importance of ensuring that your food coloring is fully incorporated into the icing. Bad things can happen if you don't mix it well enough. See how much lighter the dresses are by the hem? That wasn't what I was going for...
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| More "ugly duckling" cookies that didn't pass quality control. |
Lesson 3: You Don't Always Need a Cookie Cutter
I didn't have a bow tie cookie cutter. Rather than buying one, I just found an image online and created a template by tracing this image onto a piece of cardboard. I used this cardboard as a guide, and, with a paring knife, cut around the cardboard template.
Lesson 4: Some icing colors darken when they dry
My sister-in-law chose a lovely eggplant color for our bridesmaid dresses. When I mixed the icing, it seemed to match the dress perfectly (I kept bringing bowls of icing into the bedroom, where my dress was hanging, to compare the colors). Once the icing dried, however, the color deepened and almost looked black. From what I understand, this is common with icing colors that use red food coloring. I used a combination of violet, red, and black to create this icing, so it makes sense that I had this problem. 
Lesson 5: Use Sprinkles to Create a Variety of Textures
One of my goals was to replicate the texture on my sister-in-law's dress. The dress had a beaded floral lace bodice with a full tulle skirt. Gorgeous, right? Theoretically, I could have used piping icing to create the illusion of lace (like these cookies from Sweet Sugar Belle). But I suspect that it will be quite some time before my piping skills are that advanced. Something to aspire to, right?
For the time being, I used a selection of sprinkles to create the desired texture. Silver sparkling sugar, clear sparkling sugar, white nonpareils, and white flower-shaped sprinkles were used to accent the bodice. For the tulle skirt, I used a combination of clear sparkling sugar and Wilton's clear cake sparkles. The cake sparkles are fantastic -- they look just like glitter, but they're edible. It's hard to tell in these pictures, but I think the cake sparkles gave the skirt a light, flowy texture similar to tulle.
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I gained lots of useful tips for future sugar cookies batches. For the time being, here are a few more detail shots:
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