Lace Cookies for Christmas

This Christmas, I wanted to make something special for some wonderful women I know.

I found a design for intricate lace cookies at http://cakecreationsforyou.blogspot.com/. Nadia is the decorator from the site, and she creates beautiful cookies.

I'm really happy with how the cookies turned out!

To make the lace pattern, I first outlined the heart shape with royal icing. Using the same icing, I made 14 straight lines running diagonally across the cookie.

Then, I added perpendicular lines to create a grid.

I used glace icing (in a flood consistency), to fill in the larger spaces of the heart.

Then, I added dots of icing into the grid, creating a pattern I liked. There are so many patterns you could make using this technique. Have fun and get creative! 

I noticed that you get a very different look in the lace if you allow the grid to dry before adding the dots of icing. In this photo, I piped the dots while the icing of the grid was still wet. You can see how the design has sort of "melted" together.

On this cookie, I allowed the grid to dry before piping the dots. The dots stayed separate and are quite distinct. Honestly, I think both techniques made a pretty cookie, and I can't decide which I like better.

For the gold lettering, I mixed a little brown food coloring into the royal icing to get a tan color. I piped the words with the tan royal icing and allowed it to dry. Then, I mixed gold luster dust with a little vanilla extract and used that to "paint" the words. You can see the difference the luster dust makes here, where I only used luster dust on the letter "o" in "world."

I used zip-top baggies with the corners cut off as the icing bags for this entire project. If you would like to use piping bags and tips, I would suggest using a #1 or #2 writing tip.

I loved making these cookies and thinking about the women I'd be giving them to. I hope they know how much they are loved. 

STATS:

Nadia's Video: "How to Make a Lace Cookie" Tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKjM7Wm845w

Chocolate Roll-Out Cookies
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chocolate-Roll-Out-Cookies-240668

How to "flood" a cookie with icing
http://www.sweetsugarbelle.com/blog/2011/07/outlining-and-filling-cookies-with-royal-icing/

Royal Icing
http://letsgetcaking.blogspot.com/2012/12/royal-icing-recipe.html

Glacé Icing
http://www.thatreallyfrostsme.com/2010/05/glace-icing.html

Baby Shoes and Pink Flowers

I made this cake for my wonderful friend, Kristi. She just had a beautiful baby girl.

Everything on the cake is edible, except for the pink ribbons around the bottom. The cake is covered in homemade fondant mixed with white modeling chocolate. Yum!

Here's a closeup of the flower, which is made out of fondant and sugar pearls.

And a closeup of the little baby shoes. I'll include a link to the template I used to make the shoes in the STATS section.

Congratulations, Josh and Kristi!

STATS:

Rhonda's Ultimate Marshmallow Fondant
http://cakecentral.com/recipes/3183/rhondas-ultimate-mmf

Modeling Chocolate
http://sugarsweetcakesandtreats.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-make-modeling-chocolate.html

Baby Shoes Template
http://cakecentral.com/tutorial/gumpaste-baby-shoes

Christian and Amber's Wedding

I made these cookies for my brother's wedding reception. I loved being able to make the cookies for my brother and his new wife. Congratulations, Christian and Amber!

They decided on green as their wedding color, with just a touch of purple. They asked for rectangular monogrammed cookies and brush embroidered cookies.

My sister Melanni used her amazing photography skills to take this beautiful picture of the cookies at the reception.



On to my "point and shoot" pictures.


"A" is for Amber!



"C" is for Christian!



Lots of cookies!



These sugar cookies were first covered with green glacé icing. After the glacé icing dried, I used royal icing to pipe the monograms and the other decorations.

I used dark brown royal icing for the monogram and brushed it with gold luster dust mixed with a little water to get the shiny bronze look. The cookie on the left has been brushed with the luster dust and the one on the right has not. I really like the difference the luster dust makes.



For the brush embroidered cookies, I used green fondant for the base and white royal icing for the flowers. Click on the link below (in the STATS section) to watch a video on brush embroidery.



STATS:

Brush Embroidery Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqbDTaauGO0

Rhonda's Ultimate Marshmallow Fondant
http://cakecentral.com/recipes/3183/rhondas-ultimate-mmf

Glacé Icing

Mix the following ingredients together:
1 cup confectioner's sugar : 1 Tbsp. light corn syrup : 1 Tbsp. milk

Adjust amount of milk to achieve desired consistency in icing. I usually end up adding 3 or 4 extra Tbsp. of milk to get a thinner flooding consistency.

Flower Cookies

These are white cake mix cookies, covered in melted white chocolate and decorated with fondant flowers. To ruffle the edges of the flowers, I rolled a toothpick along the edges to thin them. Then, I used extra balls of fondant to prop up the frilled edges while the fondant dried.



For the blue flower, I wanted an ombre effect, so I colored three small pieces of fondant different shades of blue. Then I layered them, darkest to lightest. I used sugar pearls for the centers of the flowers. Here is the royal icing piping before adding adding luster dust.



Here it is after. I used a tiny paintbrush to paint the writing with gold luster dust mixed with a little water.



STATS:

Cake Mix Cookies
http://letsgetcaking.blogspot.com/2009/10/cake-mix-cookies-recipe.html

Rhonda's Ultimate Marshmallow Fondant
http://cakecentral.com/recipes/3183/rhondas-ultimate-mmf

Happy Birthday, Twilla!

I made some cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting to celebrate my friend Twilla's birthday. I wanted to make Twilla's cupcake extra special, so I used gold luster dust mixed with a little water to paint the edges of the fondant flower and to make her name sparkle.



STATS:

Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting
http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/cream-cheese-frosting/b8566164-81e0-44e0-872c-b0fbe53c3280
(I substituted 1 tsp. of coconut extract for the vanilla in this Betty Crocker recipe)

Rhonda's Ultimate Marshmallow Fondant
http://cakecentral.com/recipes/3183/rhondas-ultimate-mmf

Creative Pumpkins

This month's theme for the Cake Central Cookie Club is "non-Halloween cookies you can make using Halloween cutters." I decided to make a wedding cookie shaped like Cinderella's pumpkin carriage.

The tricky part was getting the wheels to stay on. I used thick glace icing to attach the wheels to the carriage and some folded up napkins to hold them in place until the icing dried.



The cookie is decorated with glace icing, fondant, sugar pearls, and gold luster dust. I used my parents' initials for the monogram. I wish I hadn't added the luster dust...I think it looked prettier without it. Sometimes simpler is better.



I made this cookie for my sister's birthday, using her initials piped down the center.



STATS:

Rhonda's Ultimate Marshmallow Fondant
http://cakecentral.com/recipes/3183/rhondas-ultimate-mmf

Glace Icing
1 cup confectioner's sugar : 1 Tbsp. light corn syrup : 1 Tbsp. milk
(Adjust amount of milk to achieve desired consistency in icing.)

Pumpkin Cut Out Cookies
http://www.suite101.com/content/pumpkin-cut-out-cookies-a160005#ixzz0zF5vLGwd

Luggage Cake

*** UPDATE: He's going to México! ***

Time to knead some sugar into homemade fondant. This gets really messy, but it's fun!



I baked two 9x13 yellow cakes and placed them next to each other before frosting them with chocolate chip cookie dough frosting. Yum!



I covered the cake in 3 sections of fondant (instead of one big piece like I normally would). I layed the sections down slightly overlapping each other to create the raised seams.



I used a toothpick to poke little holes in the fondant for the stitching. Yes, it was tedious and I'm sure there is a faster way or better tool to use, but it worked.



I printed out my brother's initials in a font I liked. Then I taped plastic wrap over that and piped over the letters using royal icing. I let the icing dry and then painted it with gold luster dust. Once it dried again, I peeled the plastic wrap off and used the royal icing letters for the monogram.



I printed off images of a passport, name tag, and flags at home and used the printout to order a frosting sheet printed with edible ink from a bakery. I cut the images out of the frosting sheet and attached them to fondant with white piping gel.



Everything you see is edible. Ta-dah!



I can't wait to find out where my brother is going on his mission!


STATS:

Rhonda's Ultimate Marshmallow Fondant
http://cakecentral.com/recipes/3183/rhondas-ultimate-mmf

Rhonda's Ultimate Chocolate Marshmallow Fondant:
http://cakecentral.com/recipes/3193/rhondas-ultimate-chocolate-mmf

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Frosting:
http://cakecentral.com/recipes/7600/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-icingfilling

Royal Icing:
http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Royal-Icing-1