Marbled Cookies

For my fifth and final blog post I decided to improvise a little. Early in the book Edwards discusses marbling cookies and I just took that idea and ran with it.  Instead of marbling on the cookie I did it directly in the bowl of tinted icing but besides that I followed all her directions.

               To marble Edwards suggests to “drag a toothpick through the lines to create swirls or zig zags” and I did just that (Edwards 18). Using white icing as the base of the cookies I used light pink, dark pink, and yellow as accent colors. I used plain vanilla sugar cookies as a base and dipped the cookies directly into the icing. Instead of the more precise look Edwards debuts in her book, mixing the colors directly into the icing gave more of a water color look which I actually liked better. While the cookies were drying I left them on a rack so the excess icing could drip down.

               The next day they were dried and tasted pretty good as well. I think out of all of the cookies I had made for this project these turned out the best looking and most aesthetically pleasing.

What colors would you guys do if you recreated this?

Daffodil Cookies

               In today’s installment of my struggle with sugar cookies I try to master the skill of daffodil sugar cookies. I decided that I was ready for a more intricate design but after attempting them I really regret that decision.

               The author, Bridget Edwards, describes these cookies as “a great go-to project when you want to make cookies and can’t decide on a design” which happened to be my case exactly (Edwards 30). As I was flipping through the book I came across these and though that they would be a good transition cookie for moving on to more detailed designs.

               I began by making the basic Vanilla-Almond Sugar cookies, leaving out the almond extract due to the fact that it is very expensive and I didn’t think it would be that necessary. I had something that resembled a daisy shape so I cut it out and then realized that the petals of these flowers would be very close together. This presented a challenge that I was not able to overcome.

I then separated the icing to tint a pastel yellow shade while leaving the other plain white. Another difficulty I encountered was the fact that I had happened to misplace all of my icing tips and was forced to use sandwich bags which made the outcome a little messier than I would have liked it to be.

 

While I was icing them I made many errors. The use of sandwich bags in the place of squeeze bottles and icing bags led me to not have as much control over when the icing came out which then caused me to have very messy lines. So much for an intricate design.

Do you guys have any ideas on how to make sandwich bags easier to handle?

Bitesize Heart Cookies

For my third blog post, I decided to up the ante and move onto some more complicated designs, and by complicated I mean more than a basic circle. Since the cookies are relatively small, “bite-sized” as referred to as the author I thought it would make it somewhat easier (Edwards 31).

               I started by combining the dough as I normally would and since I have now mastered the sugar cookie recipe it only took a matter of minutes. I then rolled the dough out then baked them for ten minutes. As the cookies were baking I was I worked on the icing which is where things started to go downhill

                                            

The part that really got me was the icing. The consistency turned out a lot different than I wanted it to but it still worked out relatively fine. I separated the icing into two different bowls and tinted them different shades of pink.

After creating a giant sticky mess, I was satisfied with how only two the cookies turned out. These are definitely the best out of the bunch which is rather disappointing. However, they definitely tasted better so all of the hard work wasn’t in vain.

               Cookies like these are pretty good gifts whether it be to a neighbor, friend, or even a loved one so this skill isn’t completely useless no matter how much you might hate them after attempting any of these recipes. Meringue powder is very hard to come by, which is one of the most important ingredients. The author says, “Royal icing can be made with egg, whites……I use meringue powder. It’s always in my pantry…” which might have been where I went wrong (13). I failed to accommodate the recipe to the substitution which pretty much set this whole thing off balance but I’m still pretty happy with how they turned out.

               Have you guys ever had an ingredient which was seemingly nonexistent?

Icing The Cookies

               I realized my mistake with the dough of the sugar cookies of my first post and fixed them. I used the wrong type of flour. This was due to me not reading the labeling of the flour containers. The next thing I’ll work on is getting the cookies to maintain a shape.

               “This time I focused on icing but even that didn’t turn out how it should ideally. It was a bit waterier than I thought it would look. However, it did turn out better than I was expecting and I failed to use common sense to come to the conclusion that adding more dry ingredients would make the icing more solid. The recipe goes as follows.

-2 pounds powdered sugar

               -1/2 cup meringue powder

               -1 cup water

               -2 tablespoon corn syrup

              

               The steps basically consisted of mixing all the ingredients together so there wasn’t any way to mess that up.  I mixed in some food coloring and lined the outside of the cookie to create a barrier that would hold the other icing that I thinned out with water. As she talks about icing techniques on page 16, she also adds that “the stiff icing is perfect for outlining…”.

               I then waited over night for the frosting to dry. The cookie was very sugary but then again I didn’t really know how else I would expect it to taste. Making sugar cookies doesn’t seem like such a good idea in hindsight but I will continue to struggle through and make them even better.

               Any ideas for potential designs to include in my next blog post?

Attempting Sugar Cookies

For my IRP Q2 Book project I decided to try my hand at making and decorating cookies. Based on the author of the book I’ve chosen, Decorating Cookies, she has included her “go-to, never-fail, cut-out cookie recipe…” (Edwards, 6). Intrigued by the sound of a supposedly “never-fail” recipe I went forward wholeheartedly, excited to try a recipe that not even I could mess up. The recipe goes as follows:

-3 cups of unbleached, all-purpose flour

-2 teaspoons baking powder

-1 cup salted butter, cold and cut into chunks

-1 cup sugar

-1 egg

-3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

First I started by following the directions that were explicitly written out in sizable paragraphs. However, I only made it past the first few. After I attempted combining the ingredients according to how the instructions explained, everything started going downhill. The ingredients never really formed into a cohesive structure, aka the dough that the author placed in the book, maybe only to mock my failure. The author suggested to keep kneading the dough until it all came together but an hour later there was no discernible difference. Which led to both me and the dough looking like the picture below.

I used to consider myself to be pretty average at baking, but that was before I colossally messed up this seemingly fail proof recipe. To ensure that this doesn’t happen again, what would you recommend for myself to do differently?