A Cookie As Good As It Looks

When it comes to taste, fancy decorated cookies unfortunately have a bad reputation.

"I love how your cookies look but I honestly didn't expect them to taste delicious too," is what I hear time and time again when I serve my creations.

There is good reason for the skepticism, because in all honestly,  most decorated cookies don't taste that great. They are often thin, dry, flavorless and over-iced, sometimes with more sickly sweet icing than cookie. And although they look pretty, I absolutely abhor cookies topped with gumpaste and fondant decorations. Ugh. It's like eating straight up sugar with an artificial aftertaste.

Because of the negative preconception of fancy cookies, I always offer samples when I sell my creations and surprise people when they discover that a decorated cookie can taste as good as it looks.

Making a delicious decorated cookie isn't hard, it just takes good recipes and consideration. Here are my best tips for making a delicious tasting decorated cookie:

*Most important is having a good cookie recipe.  My favorite tried and true recipe contains all-butter, not too much sugar and a good dose of vanilla and pure almond extract. Click here for the recipe.

*When I roll out cookie dough, I aim for 1/4 inch in thickness. I want to be sure to end up with a product that's more cookie than royal icing, 3:1 is ideal.

Quarter-inch thick cookies ready to be baked.

*If I want to make a cookie with an intricate layered design, I go the double-decker route by topping a base cookie with another cookie. It's essential to have more cookie than icing!

For these Gardenia cookies, I went the double-decker route and added layer of "cookie petals" to keep the flower design from being all icing and making the cookie too sweet.

*As for the royal icing, powdered sugar is a necessary ingredient so I cut the sweetness with some tablespoons of lemon juice. The addition makes a world of difference and compliments the vanilla almond flavor of the cookie. Click here for my royal icing recipe.

*Remember that less is sometimes more. I've learned from experience that it's very easy to take a cookie into the realm of being overdecorated. Practice restraint with your decorating because simple is often what's most beautiful.

Colorful dot cookies are simple and beautiful!

Here are some of my favorite designs but most importantly, these are also great tasting cookies!

Rose Cookies

No paint was used to create these rose cookies. They are all made with royal icing that I manipulated with a scribe tool.

The process isn't hard but it does take some time so these probably aren't the best cookies to make if you have to make a lot. But for a single batch, it's a fun afternoon art project. 

Here's how I made them:

These are the colors I used. Take your time choosing and mixing your colors. I mixed cream for the base coats and small amounts of light pink, red, blue/green and yellow, and an even smaller amount of brown.

Put all of the icings into pastry bags fitted with #2 tips except for the brown. Leave that on a plate or bowl covered with plastic wrap.

First outline and fill your cookie with the cream colored icing. Then add drops of light pink and top those with some squiggles of red. 

Use your scribe tool (you could also use a skewer or toothpick) and swirl the red into the pink to make it look like a rose.

Add drops of yellow and blue/green for leaves.

Draw through the dots with your scribe tool to lengthen them to a point to shape leaves.

Dip your scripe tool into the brown icing and use it like a pencil to highlight the leaves with veins and outlines. One dip in the brown icing is good for two or three swipes. You also need to periodically wipe your tool clean so the icing doesn't build up. It takes just a little for this effect. You can also highlight the roses.

Adding highlights to another cookie.

Getting ready to make a single rose.

Adding the red icing.

The finished rose.

After the cookies dry, you might want to add a border. For this pearl border I used piping consistency royal icing and a #3 tip.

A leaf tip also makes a nice border.

When you complete your border you might need to use your scribe tool to knock down the last point.

Framed works of art!

Violet Cookies

I know it's not Spring yet, but it is right around the corner.

Besides warmer weather, I'm really looking forward to the emergence of some color in my garden and couldn't resist getting ahead of the season and making a batch of these pretty Violet Cookies.

Using the wet-on-wet decorating technique and different icing colors, you could make other flower varieties as well.  The only trick is to have all your icing colors mixed and ready in piping bags before you begin decorating — All of the colors have to be flood consistency and added one right after the other.

Start with decorating one cookie at a time and once you get the hang of it, you can move onto decorating up to three cookies at once in assembly-line style. 

Here's how:

Bake some round sugar cookies and get your flood consistency royal all ready, tinted and bagged.  I mixed white, lavender, dark purple and bright yellow. I fitted the white and lavender icing bags with #2 tips and the dark purple and bright yellow icing bags with #1 tips.

Outline and fill the cookie with white icing and immediately add five lavender dots.

Use a skewer, toothpick or scribe tool to swipe through the dots. I swiped through these twice but later decided that just a single swipe was better. Be sure to wipe your tool clean after each swipe so that the design stays neat.

After swiping through all of the dots, add five dark purple dots to the bottom of the petals.

Move your skewer, toothpick or scribe tool up and down through the dark purple dots.

Here is a flower with just one swipe through the petals and more exaggerated swipes through the dark purple. This is the look I like best but it took some experimenting to get to it. When working on a new design I always bake a few extra cookies because I know practice makes perfect. Now all this cookie needs is a drop of bright yellow icing in the center. The cookies need to dry completely before packaging or serving, this take about 8 hours.

Closeup of the finished cookies.

Barn Owl Cookies

I made these double-decker barn owl cookies by using the brushed embroidery technique to add texture and details to the owls and then later added the color by painting them with food coloring.

The cookies weren't difficult to make but they were definitely labor intensive. I achieved the pretty blue color for the base cookie by mixing four colors -avacado green, electric purple, violet and royal blue.

Here's how I made them:

Make a batch of sugar cookie dough and get your cutters ready.

Base cookies ready for the oven.

Outline the base cookies with medium consistency royal icing using a #2 tip. Wait for the outline to dry before filling in the cookie.

While you are waiting for your basecoat outlines to dry, outline and fill the owls with flood consistency royal icing using a #2 tip.

You might need to use a skewer or scribe tool to evenly distribute the icing.

Wait for the iced owls to dry completely.

Using flood consistency icing and a #2 tip, fill in the base cookies.

Once again, you may need to use a skewer or scribe tool to help evenly distribute the icing.

Let the cookies dry completely. This takes anywhere from 8 to 12 hours depending on the humidity.

Once your owl cookies are dry, you can add the brushed embroidery details using piping consistency royal icing and a #2 tip. First, outline the face.

Use a square tip brush to pull the icing from the outline in towards the center of the face. Rinse your brush after every few swipes.

Add the eyebrows and nose by piping them and using the small brush to maneuver and tweak the shape of the icing.

Also add wings by piping two sets of waves on the owl and using the square tip brush to pull the icing towards the edges of the cookie.

After adding the details, the cookies need to dry completely before painting.

A plate with the food colors I used. To thin them, I used plain water. A little drop of coloring goes a very long way and I added way too much to my plate.

With a soft brush begin adding color to the owl. To keep the color from being too dark, I swiped my brush a few times on a paper towel first to remove some of the excess coloring. Then go on to add two black eyes and a touch of light pink at the end of the owl's nose. I also added some black spots to the owl's chest.

A finished owl. To attach the cookie to the base cookie, just use a few drops of stiff royal icing.

I decided to embellish the cookies with decorative borders using medium consistency royal icing. If your icing is too stiff, your dots will have peaks.

Make sure the cookies are completely dry before packaging.

Another owl cookie with a different decorative border.

A cookie closeup.

I like that every one of these cookies is different. This was a fun and satisfying cookie decorating/art project.