Sunday, March 27, 2011

CamoPlane

I bought this cookie cutter many many months ago and figured, with spring break giving me the extra time and all, now was the time to break it out! I iced outlined all the cookies with a light brown royal icing using the Wilton round tip #4. My biggest challenge right now is icing consistency, and I think I either should have used a smaller tip and/or a slightly thicker icing. Something to think about for next time. I mixed two more colours, kelly green with a touch of black to dirty it up, and grey (which came out looking a little pale-purply). I tried to make sure these ones were fairly runny. I used the plastic bottles to create random shapes. The icing was runny enough that the different colours smoothed over nicely. I'm hoping these cookies will be going to Chris, and since he doesn't have a huge sweet tooth (unlike myself), I figured he might take them to SAE (I can't remember what the letters stand for, but basically, he's designing an RC plane with a bunch of aerospace engineers for competition). I'm assuming they could use a little fuel. When I took the previous picture, I noticed little bumps on the otherwise smooth icing. At first I thought I hadn't mixed it up properly, but then I remembered reading about air bubbles...sure enough, when I poked them with a toothpick, they released and the icing smoothed over. The problem is, the bubbles continued to rise even when the icing had started to crust, creating bumps in the finish. I'm not sure if this is a sign of over-mixing, making the icing too thick, or...? I guess I'll have to experiment with this one. The finished product:

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Pilze!


So I got into a bunch of cookie decorating blogs, and this is the result! (Sweetopia is one of them...I've got her bookmarked now.) I had a lot of fun, didn't have to buy (too many) new tools, and made a few discoveries along the way.

In case you're wondering why I chose poisonous mushrooms as a motif, they feature prominently in German kids' books' drawings, along with adorable hedgehogs and gnomes. Plus, I figured it was a simple way to start.

Notes to self:

  • Wilton's Christmas Red makes a sickly pink colour. (Thank goodness for Picnik's photo editing capabilities!)
  • I could have thinned the flow icing a wee bit more.
  • If you shake a cookie hard enough, icing will fly off (instead of settling in nicely)


P.S. Annelore, this one's for you! :)