Below are a few of the tricks I've learned to make cookie baking and decorating easier and
more fun. Still, cookies are very time consuming. I find it easiest to bake my cookies one day and decorate them
the next. I hope the tips help you cut down on some of the mess and enjoy the process all the more!
Being prepared will get you off to a good start. Butter is best used at room temperature so lay it out in the morning;
the eggs too! If you forget, there's always the micro but be careful not to overdo it. A good idea for the
eggs if you forgot to lay them out, is to put them in a bowl and cover them in hot water to wait while you measure other ingrediants.
They'll be close to room temp when you're ready!
Measure everything carefully. Measure free of distractions.
Yes, I've thrown out a good batch of dough because I couldn't remember how much sugar I'd added. I was trying
to talk and measure at the same time - a no-no. Use fresh ingredients. Let the mixer do it's thing until
it cleans the sides of the bowl pretty well. Don't over mix - it will toughen the cookie.
Rolling out out the dough...
Put the flour away. No one needs the mess and too much of it toughens your cookie. Instead, roll the dough between
two sheets of parchment paper.
First, place a non-skid mat on your counter. I cut this mat a bit
smaller than my sheet of parchment paper. It works very well to keep the parchment from sliding all over the counter.
I buy my parchment in big sheet cake sizes and cut it in half to about 10x14. I lay a piece of the parchment
on top of the mat and place a handful of dough on top of that.
I also use dowels or my newer favorite,
cookie strips, on either side of my dough toward the edges of the parchment. I flatten the dough a bit on the parchment
paper with my hand, lay another piece of parchment on top of that, and start rolling away. The dowels or strips will
insure you achieve a level cookie. Keep rolling until your roller is rolling on the strips or dowels. Perfect!
Remove the top piece of parchment paper. If it sticks, your dough is a little soft. Chill the dough a few minutes.
Some swear by chilling the dough but it's not totally necessary. Do what works best for you. If your kitchen's
a little warm, you may want to do that. I'd roll it into rectangles and move the paper and rolled dough to the cookie
sheet together. 15-20 minutes may help the cutting process. Chilled dough also spreads less in the oven, but if
you use the No Fail Sugar Cookie (NFSC), you should have no problem with that. It is posted under the Recipe section.
Cut as many cookies as you like out of the rectangle. Carefully remove them from the parchment with a thin spatula -
Wilton's works well. It is easier to remove a chilled cookie than a room temp one. If you have trouble
removing the cookie easily, chill your dough a few minutes. Lay them about 2" apart on a cookie sheet
lined with another sheet of parchment paper. Can you tell? Parchment paper is really useful!
Baking the perfect cookie...
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Place the cookie sheet in the center of your oven. Bake for 9-15 minutes
depending on the size of your cookie and heat of your oven. Try to bake all the same size cookies on each cookie sheet.
Remove the cookie sheet at the first hint of browning on the cookie edges. Have a cooling rack waiting and slide the
parchment and cookies right on to it. The cookies will be soft until cooled so be careful. They can stay on the
parchment until totally cooled. Lay the hot cookie sheet somewhere to cool and keep rolling, cutting, and baking til
you you are done. I use 4 Wilton cookie sheets. That are perfectly flat and I try hard to keep them that way.
I take great care of them. I keep rotating them and never place my unbaked cookie on a warm cookie sheet (lined with
parchment, of course). If you have enough cookies for your project and dough is left over, it can be put in an airtight
container in the fridge for a week or so, and even longer in the freezer. I haven't frozen any unbaked dough so
I can't help there.
At this point when all the cookies are baked and cooled, I removed them from the
parchment and put them in a new "zip lock" bag from Reynolds. It comes with a "tool" that sucks
the air out of the bag. It's awesome! Be careful though. The first time I used it I was so thrilled,
I kept sucking the air ... til I broke the tip off my sail boat from the air pressure! Uh, oh. I wasn't so
thorough the next time I used this tool. If you are planning to decorate within a day, just leave the bag on the counter.
If not, the air tight bag goes right in the freezer. They can stay there up to several months I hear, but I've only
let them stay frozen for up to a week or so. When you are ready to decorate them, just remove them from the bag and
lay them back on the cooling racks to defrost. Some may be stuck together, no worries, let them thaw. Wait
til they are room temp to decorate; it doesn't take long.
Decorating! The fun part ...
I decorate my cookies with royal icing. I always start with a double batch and I keep a damp towel
over it at all times.
My favorite tools:
Hands down ... my Viking 7 quart stand mixer
wooden spoons from my cake supply shop for easier stirring
Americolor gels
Squeeze bottles from www.kitchengifts.com
Size 1, 2, 3, and 4 tips
TOOTHPICKS
waxed paper
a plethera of clean washcloths and small towels
paper
towels
www.kitchengifts.com has a fantastic tutorial on how to decorate a cookie with their squeeze bottles. Watch their videos as they are
very helpful!
Sometimes I pipe outlines as I did in my fish cookies, sailboats, etc. I do this with full
strength royal icing and a paint brush. I would prefer it if you couldn't tell where I started piping and where
I stopped. I haven't achieved that yet, but a damp paint brush does help smooth things out at those points.
I then fill in with runny royal. To make this take you bowl of colored icing and add water by drops and stir, stir,
stir, til you achieve a consistency similar to paint. If you pick up a spoonful of icing and let it run back into the
bowl, it should take less than 7-8 seconds for it to disappear into the other icing. I think www.kitchengifts.com shows this better than I can explain it. Fill a small bottle with the desired color and place a tip on the end -
whatever size is appropriate for your needs, likely a 2 or 3. Cover your bowl with a damp cloth is icing is left over.
I begin with an "outline" of the cookie but continue on not letting that dry. I keep flooding the cookie continuing
to outline within the outline until the cookie is mostly covered with icing. Then I use a toothpick to smooth it all
together and to pop any air bubbles.
Again - watch the video at www.kitchengifts.com
Special Effects ...
To achieve a shiny, pearl-like finish ...
Paint the cookies with
lustre dust mixed with vodka or lemon extract. The key here is the alcohol content which will evaporate and leave behind
the lovely finish. Just so you know, lemon extract actually has more alcohol content than vodka. So if you have
some vodka around, feel free to use it. You only need a few drops. If you look at Kid's Projects on this site,
you'll see my daughter Meghan painting one of the first communion crosses. I use that small measuring glass in that
photo for my paint pot. It hold up to 2 TBSP, 1 oz., 30 milliliters. or 6 tsp - pretty handy! It's the perfect
size for this job as you only need a few drops of the liquid mixed with just a bit of the dust to achieve a watery paint.
Paint away! Just make sure your runny royal coating is thoroughly dry - give it at least 2-3 hours!
I painted
the Christmas tree with green lustre dust, the snowmen with pearl, the skate blades with silver, the snowman cowboy hat
in a brown...they are lots of colors choices! You can purchase this at your favorite cake supply store and even at Michael's
and the like.
To achieve a design within the wet flooded cookie...such as my treble
cleft cookies....
While the runny royal is still wet, immediately pipe the design with more runny
royal in your color choice. You must act rather quickly before it dries. The two wet icings will blend into each
other for a beautiful, single layer effect.
To achieve the wispy hearts like in my butterflies,
posted under Oh my! ...
Flood the cookie and immediately pipe a dot for one heart or a line of dots
for several. Take a toothpick and slowly drag the tip through the wet icing starting just above the first dot.
Don't pick up the toothpick til you've gone all the way through the dots if you want them to run together. If
you want them all separate, clean the toothpick before you do the next heart or you'll drag unwanted color through it.