Decorating Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing (Post #3- Polka-dotted teacups, teapots, and umbrellas): Wet on wet icing detailing

Claire Andreski
Period 5
Post #3

Hi everyone! Just last week, I created another batch of sugar cookies which I decorated with royal icing. I feel that so far my attempts have been pretty successful and so I decided to try a different method of piping, which is slightly more difficult, as detailed by my book. I decided to kind of do "rainy day" themed cookies by decorating teacup, teapot, and umbrella shaped cookies with blue, white, and gray/brown royal icing. Keep reading to see the results!

So first I baked my sugar cookies after creating the dough and using cookie cutters to cut out the desired shapes. I set them on a drying rack to cool and the next night was when I decorated them. So yet again, I made a big batch of royal icing and once it was the right consistency (as described by my book and as I detailed in my first post), I stopped mixing it and began to separate it into different bowls to create the different colors. I decided to go with a blue/turquoise background for the cookies, so I put a majority of the frosting in a bowl and used drops of blue, yellow, and brown food coloring until the color was how I wanted it. I then took some of that icing and thinned it out with water, so that I had both piping and flooding icing for the cookies, as the background and main shape would be blue. I left the white icing as it was, but I did create a bowl of thinned out (flooding) icing that was white so that I could use that to create the polka dot pattern later on. I also tinted some of the white flooding icing light brown to be the "tea" in the teacups.

Once I had all my icings ready, I put them into piping bags and squeeze bottles as usual. I outlined most of the teacup cookies with turquoise piping icing, then regarded the book on which steps to take next. I would be using a new technique called "Wet-on-Wet Detailing", which the author defined as, "When you add details or a design in a different color on top of wet icing..." (Hession 28). With this definition in mind, I proceeded.

 

Many of the teacup cookies outlined and ready to be filled in. 

After many of the cookies were outlined, I began to work with one at a time to flood the main part of the cookie with turquoise icing and then pipe white polka dots on top of that icing. I had to work quickly and on just one cookie at a time because the book mentioned that the technique (wet on wet detailing) only works while the base layer of frosting is still wet (Hession 28). I used both turquoise and white flooding icings to create the polka dot design as the book said. Some tips to creating polka dots that were mentioned were in a section named "Wet-on-Wet Detailing". Two of the most relevant and important tips stated by the author regarding this technique was, "It is best to use two-step icing or flooding icing for a wet-on-wet design, as piping icing is generally too thick for the design to settle correctly. If you are adding a polka-dot design, hold your squeeze bottle straight up and down over the cookie instead of at an angle" (Hession 28). This information really helped my technique and I was able to create what I think is a pretty good polka dot design. I found that it was also important to try to squeeze the icing out with the same amount of pressure and the same amount of time to ensure polka dots of about the same size. It definitely wasn't perfect, but I had success when I really took the time to pipe on the polka dots. 

The "wet-on-wet detailing" technique used to pipe the polka dots. It was important that the icing was still wet while the details were piped on.

I continued using this technique to create polka dots on all the cookies, then used the pipe and flood method to pipe the plate below the teacup, the handles of the umbrellas, and the "tea" in the teacups. 

Outlining the teapots and the umbrellas, while regarding the book. 

The finished cookies drying on the drying rack. 

I am really pleased with how these cookies turned out and I feel that this new technique I learned will be really useful in future cookie designs and that it looks very cool! How do you think these cookies turned out? Would you try this technique? Do you think a different pattern such as stripes would have looked better or do you like the polka dots? 

Citation: Hession, Julie Ann. 100 Best Decorated Cookies: Featuring 750 Step-by-Step Photos. Robert Rose, 2013.