Woodland Mushroom Cookies

Of all the cookies in my woodland set, these mushrooms took the least amount of time. I could have easily made more of them and trust me, I don't feel that way about too many cookies.

For the smaller mushroom, I just outlined and flooded the stem with white icing and outlined and flooded the top with red. While the red icing was still wet, I immediately dropped on small and large dots of white icing.

For the large mushroom, I outlined and flooded the stem with white icing and the top with brown. Then, I let that set for at least 30 minutes before adding detail with some piping consistency ivory icing.

I could have stopped there, but decided to add some green grass at the base of the mushrooms after the icing dried overnight. As paint, I used thinned green icing and I applied it with a small soft brush.

Here are more details:

Outline and fill the stem.

Outline and fill the top and have your white icing ready for dropping on the dots.

For the large mushroom, I outlined the stem with white icing and the top with brown. Then I let the icing dry for 30 minutes before adding details with ivory piping consistency icing and a #2 tip.  With the ivory icing, I outlined the stem and then piped some lines for the gills.

I let the mushroom cookies dry completely before I added the grass at the base.

For the grass I painted on thinned royal icing using a small soft paint brush. I tinted the icing with leaf green and moss green gel coloring.

All done!

Woodland Cookie Set

I had been thinking about designing a set of Woodland Cookies for nearly a year, but it was a recent trip with my friend Cindy to Blake's Decorette Shop that really pushed me into action.

I already owned the gnome and large mushroom cutter but found the smaller mushroom, deer and small plaque on our shopping trip and immediately couldn't wait to get started. 

I devoted a good amount of time to planning and designing the cookies, and two full days to baking and decorating them.

The mushroom and tree cookies were by far the easiest of the set to make. The deer was a little frustrating because it was hard to release the cookie dough out of its long thin legs. Cindy mentioned this might be a problem when I picked up the cutter at the store but the deer's cuteness won me over and trumped practicality.

Then there are the gnomes — The only way I could figure out how to bring them to life was to base coat them and then after that dried, add more details by painting on thinned royal icing. Each gnome took a good 40 minutes to decorate but despite the work, I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

Stay tuned for detailed tutorials on how to make each cookie in this set. Up tomorrow will be the mushrooms.