Lavender Cookies

After weeks of dark rainy weather in Portland,  yesterday was surprisingly warm, sunny and reminiscent of Spring so these lavender cookies were what I chose to make.

Only four colors of royal icing are needed to create them - white, green and two shades of violet. It's important that your royal icing is the right piping consistency to get a crisp looking scalloped edge and leaf and bloom details. Toothpaste is the best way for me to describe the desired consistency.

I let the base icing dry for 20 minutes before adding the lavender decorations so that the flowers would sit on top of the cookie and not sink into the icing.

I can imagine these would be a hit at just about any tea party. I made an additional super-sized cookie for my daughter Eleanor to present to her friend Momoko on her birthday. Because I don't have any giant square cutters, I cut the cookie freehand using my 6-inch bench scraper.

Here's how to decorate them:

With piping consistency white icing and a #1 tip, pipe a scalloped border.

Add a border to all of the cookies.

With flood consistency white icing and a #2 tip, flood the cookies and use a skewer to move the icing and evenly fill the cookie. Let the flooded cookies dry for 20 minutes.

With piping consistency green icing and a #1 tip, add lavender stems.

With the same icing, add "v's" to a few sections of the stems.

Do this to all of the cookies.

With  two shades of piping consistency violet icing and #1 tips, pipe dots on top of the "v" sections of the stems.

Because the base icing was left to dry for 20 minutes, the lavender will sit on top of the cookie and add dimension.

I like to use self-sealing cellophane bags to package the cookies.