Holiday Cookie Fiasco!

So, I thought I had this brilliant idea to bake my holiday cards this year.  Well, I gave it a try and it wasn't such a great idea after all.  First off, paying for the edible images seemed to be a bit pricy.  I was thinking about buying my own printer and edible ink, but I wanted to test out my cookie before purchasing everything.

I went to Gloria's Cake Supply and had them print out one sheet of icing paper for me.  It was $10 for one sheet.  I called a million other places, but most bakeries wouldn't print the sheet for me.  They only wanted me to order a cake.  Once I got the sheet printed the pictures didn't look quite as high quality as I was expecting, but I knew I could fix that in my design later.  It was just a matter of adjusting my font and making it bigger.

Edible Icing Sheet

Close shot of the 4x6 picture.

Close shot of the 3x5 picture.

 
I also didn't have a cookie cutter I wanted to use yet, so I had to cut the shapes by hand.  Here are the cookies I cut out and iced with plain white icing.

After these dried over night, I cut out the pictures and applied them to the cookie using a brush and water.  They actually stuck to the cookies pretty easily.

4x6 cookie

Mini Square Cookie

3x5 Cookie

Small Rectangle Cookie

Now it was time to add a border.  Red seemed like the perfect color to me.  I had trouble getting the icing just the right thickness.  I tried and tried and ended up making it waaaaay too thick, but I did manage to get the border out.

I added various borders to the other cookies and a couple of hearts.

4x6 Cookie

Once they were finished I wanted to send at least 2 through the mail to test my packing techniques.  I sent the large 4x6 cookie to my friend Erin and the small 3x5 cookies to my mom.  Both of them ended up cracking.

4x6 Cookie sent to Erin

On top of the cookies cracking it cost $3 a cookie to send it standard mail.  I think I might be able to figure out a way to send them without breakage, but the cost of shipping is a little steep to send out so many holiday cookies.  I have decided to stick with real holiday cards this year!  I will definitely bake some more cookies for this wonderful season, but they won't be my holiday cards. 

Boootiful!

I am so happy to report that there are no color issues on my cookies anymore!  I am assuming that the cookies weren't completely dry thus leaving a bit of a blotching issue.  Now that they are completely dry the colors look perfect!

HAPPY HALLOWEEEEEEN!

SPOOKY COOKIES!

Well as you all know Halloween is fast approaching, which means that the tasty treat baking season is fast approaching.  Since last year I just did pumpkins and leaves, this year I really wanted to make fun Halloween cookies.  Every year my mom, a first grade teacher, has a Halloween party in her classroom.  I always want to be a part of it, but I am usually working and can never go.  Since I am able to go to her classroom this year, I thought what a great excuse to make a bunch of fun cookies!!

I found inspiration online and then began adding my own twist to it.  I have also been reading up on cookie decorating to help give me some helpful hints.  I always look to sweetopia.net, which has the most beautiful cookies I have ever seen.  She is really good about giving advice and responding to any questions.  I bought and read the book called, Cookies Craft: From Baking to Lister Dust, Designs and Techniques for Creative Cookie Occasions.  Long title, but really helpful.  The book really emphasizes narrowing down your designs and sketching them out ahead of time.  Here are my preliminary sketches.

Frankenstein, Vampire, Pumpkin, Cat, Ghost, Witch

Mummy, Spider and Web, Jack Skelington, Spider and Web

I have to say that the dough and cookie baking process went exceptionally well this time.  I decided to only make square and round cookies.  I mixed my colors and began decorating.

Icing Colors!

I piped all the background colors as well as the pumpkin faces and hair for the Frankenstein and Vampire cookies.  I also added the spider webs as well.

Spider Webs

In the next 2 pictures you can see how I was experimenting with making mummy cookies.  I had no idea what I wanted to do so I kind of just went for it!

Mummy experiment 1!

Mummy experiment 2! Oh and some orange round cookies!

Okay well before I finished for the day I had to prep my eyes and my spiders so that they would be dry to work with the next day.

You can see I made yellow and white eyes as well cat eyes and spider bodies.

The next day when I looked at my cookies I was pretty upset and disappointed.  For some reason the green, purple and black had discolored in various places.  The only thing I can think of was maybe there was too much water in those areas.  I just don't know since that has never happened to me before.  I was going to email the sweetopia woman and ask her advice.  I had no choice but to push ahead and decorate.  I really hate when I don't get my cookies perfect, but honestly in this kind of work it is pretty rare to have perfection.  Plus I am still learning and experimenting.  

You can see how the black in the middle is a different color.

Poor Frankenstein cookies have blotchy faces.

The purple witch faces had a bit of an issue as well.

 Here is a look at the rest of the cookies.

This was a left over cookie that I was just playing around with.

I think the mummy cookies came out better than expected.

Had a left over cookie and decided to just make a huge spider.

I made some mini pumpkin cookies as well.

These were 2 leftover cookies that I decided to make into pumpkins.

The pumpkin king!

Mummy!

AHHH Spiders!!

I want to suck you blood!

I think these cookies came out pretty well, despite the little issues I had.  I am trying to think what type of cookies I will make next.  I definitely want to use luster dust, but maybe that will work better for the holiday cookies.  I am also thinking that this year my holiday cards will be made out of cookies.  I am not totally sold on that idea since I send out over 100 holiday cards, but I am mulling over the idea.  

I hope everyone has a sweet Halloween!