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.

Painted Cookies

Painted cookies.

If painting is your passion then you might want to try using cookies as your canvas.

Painting onto a cookie is really no different than putting watercolors onto paper. The only supplies you need are gel food colorings, paintbrushes and some dry base-coated cookies.

To thin the coloring I used plain old water but you could also use vodka or alcohol based extracts. The only difference is that when you use alcohol it takes less time for the colors to dry.

I used a plate for mixing my colors.

With my minimal painting ability I think these floral designs turned out just fine. Imagine what an experienced painter could create? I'm going to have to recruit some of my artistic friends to find out. Linda, Christine and Michael — I'm talking about you.

This would also be a great project for kids who want to decorate cookies but aren't quite ready to handle a pastry bag.

Here's how I painted the rose cookie:

I first got my painting supplies together — Gel food coloring, water and a paintbrush.

Start with a dry base-coated cookie. It's very important that the icing be completely dry.

I added some blobs of pink to get started.

Next, I added some leaves around each pink blob.

With a darker pink I added a touch of more color to blobs and now they are starting to look like roses.

Using a darker green, I painted a single stroke on one side of each of the leaves to add definition.

Using a bit of white coloring and a very small brush, I added more detail to the roses and leaves. And that's all there is to it.