Let me start by saying that I can bake a mean cookie. I’ve been baking cookies forever! I baked them ALL – THE – TIME when my kids were little. Mostly snickerdoodles, but also peanut butter, chocolate chip, sandies, etc. I’ve used the same sugar cookie recipe for our Christmas cookies for almost 40 years. So, yeah … I’m great at baking cookies. However, when it comes to decorating them? Well, let’s just look at this day last week as an example.
It all started when my friend Maria posted THIS on Facebook just this past October:
And I replied:
That was my first mistake. 😜 But come on, ANYBODY can make dots, lines, and heart shapes, right?
Maria came over last Wednesday, the day before Halloween, so we could work on this project. It was cold and wet and dreary outside, so a perfect day for an indoor baking project. When I clicked on the link to the site where Maria found this beauty (You can look at it here.), I learned that the blogger started with a store-bought giant cookie that she purchased at World Market. But by the time I was shopping for our endeavor, I didn’t have time to drive to our closest World Market in Ft. Worth, so instead I bought this huge cookie cutter at the HEB…
…and we made our own gingerbread cookie dough. Maria brought along these day-of-the-dead cookie cutters, too:
Here’s Maria using them to cut out some cookie shapes:
They came out great!
Once the cookies were baked, it was time to make the icing. This was my first time making Royal Icing.
Here I’m putting the powdered sugar into the mixing bowl. That look on my face? That’s my “Dang, don’t take a picture I didn’t do anything with my hair” look.
So now’s the moment … time to decorate! As I said, I can bake a darn good cookie, but when it comes to decorating, I’d really just like to slap on some icing and then shake on some sprinkles. Or better yet, just sprinkle colored sugar over them while they’re still warm. It’ll stick and look great! (This is where my daughter Cara would shoot me a horrified look.)
So we decorated, but we ran out of time before we were finished. Maria had to go. I packed up some icing and cookies for her to take home and finish up on her own.
Here’s one of the cookies Maria decorated. I thought she did a GREAT job!
Are you ready to see mine? Are you sure? Ugh…I’m so embarrassed, but here they are:
I’m starting off with the best one. It’s not great, but it really is my best one. It helped to have the indentations on the cookie, so you can just fill them in with the icing. Sort of like a paint-by-number. Ha!
Then we have these beauties:
Yeah, one poor little pup ended up with no front legs!
And now for the piéce de résistance! Remember … THIS is the goal:
And this is my final product:
Ahhhhh! Fail, fail, FAIL! ANYONE can make lines, dots, and heart shapes, right? Uh. Wrong. Don’t you love the hair? That happened because when I was making the yellow dots around the eyes, the icing wouldn’t come out of the piping bag. So I squeezed harder, and you should have heard the scream that came out of me when BLOP! … a big GLOB of yellow squirted out! So I improvised, and it became hair. A mop-head of hair!
What did I learn from all of this? It’s harder than it looks. And I need to take a cookie decorating class. Maybe at Hobby Lobby? Michael’s? IDK … I’ll have to look into it. At least we had a fun day together. And Maria brought some yummy tamales that we ate while the dough was chilling. And the dogs got to visit.
Alright, are you better at decorating cookies than I am? If so, maybe YOU could give me some lessons. Have you had any “fails” recently? It doesn’t have to be at cookie decorating … it could be anything. Feel free to share whatever’s on your mind in the comments. And hopefully, next time I blog about decorating cookies, I’ll knock your socks off with the finished product. 😉
This post linked to The GRAND Social