 IntroductionHI! Thanks for stopping by!! This is a HUGE set and we have a lot to cover! There are some fun things in this set that I can't wait to share with you! Hope you enjoy! *If you just want to see pretty pictures and skip all the details and chatter you can do that HERE. Sketch & Concept   I think this is the 1st set that I've had to use 3 pages for the sketch. This one was special though and 30 cookies is A LOT. These celebrate everything that is my sister... she's a chef, she loves reading books (the Moonshining was an inside joke between us. We watched Moonshiners when she visited and we had a really good time so it's a throwback to her visit in February). She likes to garden and crochet and she has a really cute little kitty. Her favorite drink is the "Moscow Mule" and she likes to snack on popcorn. Fun with Color MatchingSince I planned to do a Popcorn related cookie I wanted to get the Popcorn bag color as close as possible so I did some color matching and it came out pretty close. Little things like this are part of what makes cookie decorating so fun. Unfortunately it did dry a lot darker than I anticipated BUT it still passes as a bag of popcorn so I wasn't that disappointed. It's just one of those things.  Color MixingIt's been a while since I've had such an array of colors to photograph so I was quite excited to get one. I used multiple textures and multiple colors in this set.  Where it BeganI really wanted to create something special for my sister and I've been experimenting with flavors but after much deliberation I decided to go traditional with this one. I wanted to make a Chocolate Chip Cookie Sugar Cookie. Let me be clear. I wanted this cookie to taste like an authentic Chocolate Chip Cookie, not like a Sugar Cookie with Chocolate Chips. So I did some research and created a recipe. If you're interested you can find the recipe HERE: Chocolate Chip Cookie Sugar Cookie I did bake these cookies a little longer than I normally would because I wanted some extra carmelization.  Tester CookieSpoiler: I always bake extra cookies so I can keep tasting them along the way to make sure they are staying fresh while I'm creating my art pieces. I do want them to look good but it's also important that they taste good. For this set I decided to do a little color testing with one of the tester cookies because I wasn't sure about the bronze with the colors that I chose but it looked really good. Also you may see this cookie on the side in some of my pictures and I wanted to explain it's existence. Book GiftsThese are self explanatory. I had to wait for each color to crust over before I could add the next one. I found that writing on the colored icing was harder than writing on white icing. The colored icing was much softer even after drying overnight but I managed to make it work. A lot of people struggle with the edible felt pens. It takes some finesse, I'm lucky my pen didn't poke through the icing like lots of people complain about.  WatercolorThe watercolor cookies. I thought these were so pretty. I had no idea what I was going to do for backgrounds at first but after some searching I decided to go with some good ol watercolor. I think it helped tie the set together and the bronze looks good with it too.  I wrote on all the cookies above freehanded but decided to use a transfer for the "make a wish" cookie. I did a video on this and all the other watercolor cookies. You can find them on my TikTok! I usually don't use transfers because as I've mentioned before it's humid here and on top of that I'm impatient so they don't normally work out if I'm under any kind of time restraints. Of course I broke "wish" in 6 places but managed to just piece it together because I was kinda of set on it already. If you look closely you can probably see where it's broken but if I didn't tell you you probably wouldn't know. Regardless I won't be doing many tranfers in the future, especially not words, unless I absolutely have to (there will be instances I'm sure) and I will give myself a lot more time.  Yarn BallsThese were time consuming. They needed to dry *somewhat* before layering on top. I used edible marker on the purple to see if it would make any difference in depth but I don't think it did and I forgot to do it on the blue one anyway so I skipped it on the pink one too. Can't even tell so don't waste time with it. It is important to cover the cookie first though so don't skip that part. The pink one was done the same way the purple and the blue one was so I didn't take the time to document it.
 More Books, All The BooksThese are pretty easy to understand based on my pictures. They're straightforward. I used the same felt pen on the "Chapter 30" book that I used on the Gift Books and it was much easier to write on and it didn't go through the icing at all. I also didn't have any issues writing on the Survival Guide book either. I used my white edible marker and the felt pen on the side. The 2 at the bottom I decided to color with my edible markers to give it more of a book feel. I used some chocolate bits for the soil. I racked my brain trying to figure out what to do for the chef cookie and I love how the squares came out. Overall these are cute. I hope she likes them.  
The Moscow Mule and the Candied MintThis was a fun cookie. I've done the lime before. Oddly enough in the same set that I did the popcorn. I really enjoyed recreating the Moscow Mule. Creating the texture was fun. Flood the cookie entirely with white icing and then once it crusts over (don't let it dry completely) just poke it with a round fondant tool. Then I painted it bronze. I used a mixture of piping gel, vanilla extract and food coloring to create the liquid and then I topped it off with small clear sprinkles. It actually looks really similiar to the drink and I think this may be one of my favorite cookies of the set. We also need to talk about the mint because that was something new that I did and it was EASY and FUN!! You can find the instructions that I used HERE. Basically you coat them in warm corn syrup and then cover them in powdered sugar and let them sit for 24 hours. After 24 hours they are fully set and they're hard like candy!!!! The mint looks wet but it's completely dry. It created a candy coating. That was such a cool trick and I'm glad I learned how to do that. It will stay good for a few weeks too so even though I'm mailing these off the mint should stay good until she's ready to eat the cookie!!
  Happy Birthday CandlesThese came out better than I expected. The white pen really made the difference. My initial purple icing wasn't as stiff as I thought it was and I was worried at first but they came out fine. Consistency is everything and it takes time to get everything right. Sometimes you think it's right and it's still not quite there. It's better for me to make it more stiff than I think it should be because I live in a humid climate and it does thin out as I work with it. I will keep that in mind for next time.  My Sister's Cat |
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August 2024
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