Second post of a series of three on Sugar Cookie Decorating
For one of her bake-along tutorials, Tanya showed how to make little silhouette details using Royal icing. They can be made way in advance (pretty much last forever) and saved to add to your cookies previously flooded and fully dry. The possibilites are endless, as you can imagine. And the great thing for us who cannot draw to save their lives, is that you can find clipart to download and print for free, adjust them to the size you want and use them to pipe your little decor. She demonstrated with a gorgeous deer’s head, I went first with a cat. She also demonstrated how to make a winter scene with a full moon and trees, so I joined both techniques in a single cookie.
BROWN SUGAR AND SPICES SUGAR COOKIES
(adapted from Bake at 350)
360g all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp cardamon
150g granulated sugar
50g brown sugar
226g butter, cut into chunks
1 egg
1/4 tsp salt
Heat oven to 350.
Whisk the flour, baking powder and spices, set aside.
Cream the sugars and butter. Add the egg and salt and mix until well-blended. Gradually add the flour mixture and beat just until combined. Roll on a floured surface to about 1/4″ and cut into shapes. Place on parchment lined baking sheets and freeze for 10 minutes.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, depending on the size of your cutter. Let sit a few minutes on the sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack.
Use Royal icing to decorate, recipe in previous post.
ENJOY!
Comments: There are countless sites that offer free downloadable templates for all sorts of drawings. You can then print them side by side and place a sheet of parchment paper on top of the printout. Using Royal icing with the consistency Tanya demonstrates in her tutorial and a very fine piping tip, carefully outline the drawing. Make more than you need, because they are obviously very fragile. They are best if allowed to dry overnight.
For the stars, in some cookies I used sprinkles… and in others I followed the technique demonstrated by Tanya, pulling small white dots with a needle.
That surface is allowed to dry overnight, and then the silhouette is glued, and the trees piped. In the cookie above, I used some silver air-brushing just for fun.
Here they are, all my babies! Before watching Tanya’s tutorials, I would never dream of making cookies with so many little details.
I will be back tomorrow with the final post about sugar cookies, using the same recipe (Brown Sugar and Spices). and a slightly different way to decorate them.
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Bewitching Kitchen 
You’re doing a good job. I tried making decorated sugar cookies a few years back and basically gave up. For me, it was so time consuming coupled with the fact that I am so slow, made them impossible to sell at a price point that made sense. I’m leaving my baking job at the end of the year and may just try again, There is a rather steep learning curve, in my opinion, to becoming good at these and I hadn’t been willing to play it out. I have lots of plans for how I will use my time after I quit. I just may add decorated cookies to my new to-do list and maybe because you inspired me to try again. We shall see. 🙂
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amazing that you are getting ready to step into a new phase – always interesting to change, although not easy…. I hope you try it again. I had a HUGE problem with royal icing and decorating, really hated doing it, in part because I despise sugary mess, but the more I worked with it, the more I enjoyed it. It still irritates me that I simply don’t seem to get some things right, but… I really want to get better, and hey, I am not baking in a tent anymore, no one is judging me, except myself. .so I can just have fun with the process
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Hah! I could write a book, literally, on what not to do whilst making decorated sugar cookies. There were so many things I remember that irked me. i won’t list all of them for fear of scaring off your readers from moving forward. 😉 All I can say, as you will surely agree, is that practice makes perfect…or perfect enough.
It was a really hard decision to quit the restaurant. Like you, I love to bake. However it was becoming so encompassing that I no longer had time to devote to things *I* wanted to work on, which is mainly celebration and 3D cakes. It’s what stole my heart initially and my head is swimming with new project ideas. Change is usually good, so it’s a bittersweet time for me. Leaving a job and people I love, but excited to see what the next chapter will be. First up is to finally finish my website, which has sadly been collecting dust in the cloud for about 2 years! Thank you for your enlightening posts. They are always a pleasure to read.
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celebration and 3D cakes… OMG! YOU ARE KILLING ME! Royal Icing cannot possibly scare you… 😉 well, I hope you keep me posted on your future projects, not that I would ever venture in those areas…. (yes, tempted but… I rather live vicariously through you)
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These are so beautiful! An inspiration!
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I love this idea. The cookie recipe doesn’t show brown sugar in the ingredients did I miss something?
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