Woodland Tree Cookies

These Woodland Tree Cookies were inspired by the late oil painter Bob Ross and the hundreds of trees that I watched him bring to life with his brush on his long running PBS show, "The Joy of Painting."

Bob's "happy trees" were just the trees I imagined in a magical woodland brimming with beauty, peace, joy and gnomes.

Now I am not a painter, but Bob's motto, "there are no mistakes, just happy accidents" is something I try to always remember and encourages me to not let a fear of failure hold me back.

As a college student, I religiously watched the "The Joy of Painting." It was on Sundays, early in the afternoon, and it was a relaxing end of the weekend ritual. Watching Bob paint was meditative and made me feel positive and ready for the upcoming week.

I never painted alongside Bob, I just sat and absorbed his creations and his sweet and wise narrative.

So, with tinted and thinned royal icings as my paint, and flooded and dry cookies as my canvas,  I made these woodland tree cookies.

Some are better than others since as with just about everything, practice makes perfect. But, I wasn't afraid to try and I hope Bob would be proud.

Here's my inspiration:

 And,  here's how I made them:

Make some cookies and outline and flood them with white icing. Let them dry completely before painting the trees.

I mixed a paint by tinting thinned royal icing with a bit of moss green and leaf green gel coloring.

Paint a line to mark the center of your tree.

Now load your paint brush and starting at the top fill in the branches and work your way down making the tree wider as you go.

Then go back and add some darker areas for dimension.

You can also add some brown royal icing paint to mark the trunk, branches and ground.

If you want to make a group of trees just make the one in the foreground bigger and darker.

Keep practicing and experimenting. This was one of my favorites.

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.

Quick Cookie Decorating With Edible Markers

If you don't want to spend a lot of time mixing colors and piping, you can still make some pretty cute cookies using edible markers.

The markers are especially nice for tiny details that are difficult to add with a piping bag.  To make these cute Christmas cookies, I flooded the cookies with blue royal icing and immediately added some dots for snow. After that dried, I used the same white icing that I used for the snow to add snowman and tree shapes. Then you just need to wait for the icing to dry completely before you can go to town decorating with edible markers.

The edible marker method is really the easiest way to decorate cookies and the perfect project for young children.

My favorite markers to use are from AmeriColor. The colors are vibrant and not translucent. They are available online and in specialty baking shops. Once you have the markers, you'll find lots of other uses for them besides cookie decorating. Who wouldn't love to find a funny faced apple in their sack lunch?

Snowy Scene Gingerbread Cookies

A round cutter and three colors of royal icing are all you need to make these Snowy Scene Gingerbread Cookies.

A cool 3-D effect on the cookie is created by adding the tree and a few additional snowflakes after the basecoat has dried. These are fun to make and there are so many design options depending on what colors you choose. Using black icing for the background would give you a night scene and you could even add a few gold dots for stars to the sky. A snowman would also be a cute and easy to pipe free-hand.

Here's how I decorated them and my favorite Gingerbread Cookie recipe:

Outline and flood the cookies with blue royal icing and immediately add different sized dots of white using medium consistency icing and a #1 tip. Let the cookies dry completely before moving onto the next step.

Using medium consistency green royal icing, outline and fill a tree in the center of the cookie.

Immediately add a few dots of medium consistency white icing on the tree and outline and fill a snowy bank under the tree.

The final step is to add a brown trunk with medium consistency royal icing and a #1 tip.

Let the cookies dry completely before serving or packaging.

Gingerbread Cookie Dough
6 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup packed dark-brown sugar
4 teaspoons ground ginger
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 teaspoon finely ground pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 large eggs
1 cup unsulfured molasses

Sift together flour, baking soda, and baking powder into a large bowl. Set aside.

Put butter and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; mix on medium speed until fluffy. Mix in spices and salt, then eggs and molasses. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture; mix until just combined. Divide dough into thirds; wrap each in plastic. Refrigerate until cold, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out dough on a lightly floured work surface to a 1/4-inch thick. With cookie cutters, cut into desired shapes. Space 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper, and refrigerate until firm, about 15 minutes.

Bake cookies until crisp but not dark, 10 to 14 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks.

Double Decker Christmas Cookies

I just bought a set of mini Christmas cookie cutters and couldn't wait to get to work.

These double decker cookies came together fast and were assembled just like the Thanksgiving double decker cookies I made last month.

I was tempted to add red dots to decorate the tree cookies but my daughter convinced me to leave them plain. Sometimes less is more and the simplicity gives them a more modern look.