Hey, hey, hey! It's finally here!! I'm going to attempt to give you a "How To" for some cute and simple July 4th cookies.
Although I am a teacher, I'm not so sure of how well I will do at explaining how to make cookies in word form. I'm used to hands on. You know where I would normally take whatever you are doing from you and do it myself. Is anyone else like that?! Please tell me I'm not alone!
First things first, what you need.
- Heart shaped baked sugar cookies ( Use your favorite recipe)
- Icing colors in Red, Navy Blue and White (I like to use Americolor) Which you can usually find at Michael's and Hobby Lobby.
- Blue icing for outlining
- Light blue for flooding
- Red and White icing for detail
- No. 3 Tips
- Couplers
- Disposable bags (that I was and reuse)
- Squeeze bottles
I like to decorate my cookies on a cookie sheet because it make it easy to turn the cookie without putting your hands on it.
Begin by outlining the cookie in blue. This is the hardest part to get down when you first begin decorating. You will want the consistency of this icing to be similar to toothpaste.
You will want to outline all the cookies before moving on to the next step. This consistency of icing typically sets up pretty quickly but still do NOT touch! :)
Next, this is the part of cookie decorating that is so soothing to me. Of course it was only this way once I got it down. The thing with decorating sugar cookies is, you have to practice A LOT. But trust me, you will get it eventually.
For this cookie I flooded with the lighter blue. I used the left over outline icing, thinned it down and added some white. Flood icing needs to be the consistency of warm syrup. You are probably thinking, "what does that mean". Flood icing needs to be fluid but not runny. When you squeeze it onto the cookie it should spread a little on its own but not run all over. Again, this will take practice and you will have to find your preference.
Once the flood icing is on the cookie you can use a toothpick to push the icing to the edges. This is something that will take some practice. If you overfill the icing runs all over, if you under fill the cookie you are fighting with the icing to get it the edge. You will get where you know how much you need to make the process easy and quick for you. Remember, practice makes perfect! ;)
Now for the fun part. This technique is called wet on wet. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE polka dots! So what you do is once the cookie is flooded completely you use the red and white to drop dots onto the cookie. It's like magic! This technique saves you a day in the cookie world. You can go this far, let them dry for 24 hours and voila, they are ready!
I just dropped a few red dots and then used the white. Play around and have some fun with sizing of the dots and placement. It's A COOKIE so don't stress! Someone is gonna shove in their mouth and devour it in 10 seconds, so don't get too hung up on the details and all attached to it! Trust me, I've had to let go of idea that everyone cares as much as I do as how cute the cookie is. Humph!
Ultimately they don't care...they just want to eat it!
And now we wait...24 hours if you can. My niece can NOT...she eats them semi-set up but not me...I like them really set up. Whateva you wanna do, it's your cookie :)
Okay, with these cookies I did add some detail the next day because...well, I have issues. I couldn't just let it be.
I added some dark blue outline to finish it off. You do NOT have to do this. Trust me your peeps are gonna think you are IT if you get this far and the cookie tastes good.
I also did some cute little stars to go with.
You may notice that it looks like the red is "bleeding" and it does. There are ways to stop this if you want to research it, but here's the deal, I can't stress about that. IT'S A COOKIE! I'm not making art here.
Just cute, simple cookies!
Enjoy!
