Royal Icing Consistency

Decorating sugar cookies is more than having the right recipe.  Your icing needs to have the correct consistency as this is what gives it a perfect smooth, hard finish.

Icing that is too thick will...
-Be too difficult to work with
-Take longer to dry
-May slide off of your cookie

Icing that is too thick will...
-Dry quickly
-Dry lumpy

To avoid this I use the '10 second rule'.  Upon dragging a knife through your icing you want the line to disappear by around 10 seconds.   The sooner your line disappears the thinner icing you'll have.  I like to use this icing consistency for outlining and flooding as it is fast to work with.  When I am working with smaller detail, I will make my icing thicker.  In this case I will want the icing to come back together in 15 or maybe even 20 seconds depending on the detail I'm doing.  Furthermore, if I am doing large cookies with one colour, I will outline with a 10 second icing, and flood with a thinner (5-7 seconds) icing.

Icing consistency takes lots of practice.  I am still nowhere near perfect!!  This is the general rule I follow when I am making lots of cookies.

Upon making my icing, it always tend to be too thick.  I will add a teaspoon of water at a time to my mixer until my icing is around 10 seconds.  If you add too much water you can thicken the icing back up by mixing it longer or adding more icing sugar.  I definitely suggest mixing as a first step before reaching for the sugar straight away.

This is probably the most time consuming part when decorating cookies.  And I have to think if I need various thickness of icing in the same colour.  It can take a long time, it can hurt my brain and I don't like doing it.  But! If I do it correctly the cookie decorating process is a lot faster and easier.

This may sound more complicated than it is, but the more you do it the easier it will be.  There are many AMAZING cookie gurus out there (sweetsugarbelle to name one) who explain this process in greater detail.  Sweetopia even has a video explaining it! 

I hope this helps you in your cookie decorating!  Even if you're making the most simple cookies, a smooth finish will make your cookies look that much better. 

Happy decorating!

Octopus and Beer Sugar Cookies

When I am asked to do cookies, it is almost always for children or baby related events.  I absolutely love doing this, but it is fun to switch it up once and awhile! My most recent cookie request was favours for an annual "Beerfest" party.  It was a very detailed order with many inside jokes.  For that reason I am only going to share 2 of the cookies designs in order not to confuse or offend anyone.  ;)

Purple Octopus and Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer Sugar Cookies   

My first step was to flood the cookies with white icing.  Once they set (a few hours later), I used my Kopykake to project images on to my cookies.  I do often freehand cookies, but when I am working with small detail, or want them all to look the same, I love my kopykake!

With the octopus I added small detail once the purple layer had dried.  Because I am working with the same colour, I did not have to wait long as you don't need to worry about colours bleeding into each other.  I've learned that less detail is more when doing a second layer.  Instead of outlining the entire octopus, I simply highlighted the tentacles.  To finish I added white icing for the eyes, and the next day drew black pupils with my edible food marker.

The PBR Beer sugar cookies I should have used a thicker white icing, but I am still happy with how they turned out.  To get the feathered effect I dragged a damp food paint brush through the wet icing.  It's small details like these that really make the cookie pop!

Thanks for stopping by!  My portfolio is slowly starting to grow.  To take a look a past creations click here.  Happy Monday!

Tiffany

Pretty in Pink Birthday Party

Party Time!

When I throw a birthday party for one of my children, I love a good character theme.  I like to choose whatever they are currently obsessed with and will translate well into cupcakes and cookies.   Not only is it fun for me to create something new, but it's their reaction which makes me want to do it over and over again.

That said, I've never done a character theme for a 1st birthday party.  I just don't believe in it.   At this age they don't care, and I rather make it simple and pretty.  This is exactly what I did with my daughters first birthday party and I loved the finished product!

Though I have many years of experience with cupcakes, decorating cakes is still fairly new to me.   This is the second cake I have ever made using fondant.  When covering cakes, I actually prefer to use marshmallow fondant.  It's much cheaper, easier to colour, easy to work with and tastes better! (In my opinion).  Recipe on how to make marshmallow coming soon!  For fondant details I use to regular fondant purchased at Michael's with a coupon.  Never shop at Michael's without a coupon.  There is always a coupon.

To accompany my cake, I stuck with my classic vanilla cupcakes with buttercream. Mmmm. While other people enjoyed them, my daughter thought it would be more fun to put it in my hair :)

And while no party is complete without my sugar cookies.  I very quickly whipped this batch up to be given out as favours.  Not my best work, but tasted good none the less. 

Looking forward to the many future birthday parties I'll get to create for!  Thanks for stopping by!
Tiffany

Monster's Inc Birthday Party

As mentioned in my Mickey Mouse post,  I have done the cupcakes for my friend's children's birthdays every year.  As their birthdays are so close, she's started combining them for one big party.  This year's theme was Monster's Inc and is probably my favourite to date!  We're big disney fans in this house, so it was fun doing something I knew my children would also love.

For the sugar cookie favours, I made the Monsters Inc logo.  I love how they turned out!  The secret to making them all look the same is my kopycake projector.

Couldn't resist taking a few photos as I just love looking at them.

 I started with flooding the cookie white.  Waited a few hours then added the blue layer.  Then, I waited over night to add the black eye (as dark icing on light icing can sometimes cause bleeding). They tasted as good as they looked, and you would never know they spent a week in the freezer.

Next... the Monster's Inc Cupcakes

Usually I do fondant toppers for my cupcakes, but this time my friend requested to use buttercream and I loved the idea!

To start, I dyed the batter the colours of Mike and Sulley to get the full monster effect.

To make these cupcakes I used the following tips.

For the Mike Wazowski cupcake I used the larger tip (809) to do the green swirl, then the smaller (806) for the white eye.  I topped it off with a black fondant circle.

I should have waited till the party to add the black fondant, as you can see it melted a bit with the moisture. (They were covered overnight).

The Sulley Cupcake was a little more time consuming.  I made the horns out of fondant ahead of time, and then proceeded with the icing.  Using the 233 tip, I started with the blue leaving spaces to later add the purple.  In the future I would likely just buy another tip.  Once I did the purple I added the fondant horns.  I was little afraid the horns would fall over over night (due to the moisture of being covered) but they didn't.

It was an awesome party, and as usual, my favourite part of my baking is seeing people's reactions.  Thanks for stopping by!

Vanilla Cupcake recipe here.
Buttercream icing recipe here.