Hello again, I wanted to share the pictures of how I decorated the Easter Egg cookies, so you can try it sometime yourself! It isn't hard, and I find it to be very fun. I can get a zone, and it sorta makes the rest of the world go away for a while. That is what happened for me Wednesday night after work, and I love when that happens. It rather sets my world back aright, if that makes any sense. I don't have the "eye" for this like others such as my daughter, S, but this is one of those techniques you really can't get wrong since each one is unique.
I used a shiny glaze for the "plain" eggs and piped icing for the imprinted eggs. I will start with the glazed eggs.
I believe I've said this before on here, but I don't like the royal icing flood that is very popular for cookies these days. I don't care for the taste; but even if that was ok, I don't like how hard it dries. I find it too hard. I don't enjoy biting into a cookie iced with the royal icing flood.
So I use this Simple Sugar Glaze I found on - where else? - the King Arthur Flour website. It is much easier to put together than the royal icing flood, tastes great and dries hard and shiny, but not rock hard so you can still bite into the cookie and appreciate the tender softness of the cookie itself. It is basically a powdered sugar glaze that includes clear corn syrup. I add a touch of vanilla and/or almond, lemon, etc., and a dash of salt for flavoring. It sorta surprises me that KAF doesn't include these for flavoring or mention them, but I guess they assume we will figure that out by ourselves?
The main trick is the balance - it needs to be pour able like the flood icing and should form a ribbon that folds back on itself and then disappears in about 15 seconds +/-. Something like this...except this isn't a good video...sugar cookie glaze consistency
I mixed together 9 ounces of sifted powdered sugar (it took two weigh batches and kinda sorta got just about everywhere)..
I added 2 T. of corn syrup, a dash of salt and flavorings and began with 1 T. of milk.
I had to add more milk, a teaspoon at a time until I got the consistency I felt like would pour from the squeeze bottles I use for this.
I used to have more of these squeeze bottles, and while one has been re-purposed by G for use in the garage/garden/man-type chemicals, I could only find 3 on Wednesday night, so I made 3 colors. And since I already had yellow and green on the tray from the lemon and lime cookies, I kept to those 2 plus a springy orange. (I mixed 2 parts red with 4 parts yellow for orange.) Although I did goof on the color. One of my favorite little taste testers asked "Where is the blue?" since his twin brother had gotten his favorite color of orange. I need to remember the blue the next time!
Mixed together and voila! Colored glaze!
I poured these into squeeze bottles and I was ready to glaze away!
Present cookies...
..and glaze! Note that I did not fill in the entire area, because I wanted the glaze to spread a bit to fill in the gaps and not be too thick.
I used a toothpick to help the glaze along a bit...(please forgive my poor video camera skills..) spreading glaze with toothpick
This cookie was now ready to add stripes or dots of a contrasting color and then drag a bit with only a toothpick...
....like this...
...or perhaps this...
...or even this. See what I mean about not being able to get this wrong even if you don't have the eye that S or others do? I look forward to decorating the rest of these with S on Good Friday and see the designs she comes up with!
I did a total of 8 of these. G came through the kitchen and said, "Those are beautiful!" I was pleased with how they turned out! K said something about them being ready for the Easter car show so I only needed to add some Rice Krispie treat eggs, and we're set! Hmmmm...
With a little time, they dry up hard to the touch and can be stacked between sheets of waxed paper for storage. I'm sorry, folks. I don't mean to sound like I'm tooting my own horn here, but these really do make me smile!
We also had another kind of Easter egg cookie. These were cut using this genius cutter.
Each plastic impression insert is held in the cutter with this twist handle that fits on the top.
I colored icing - still no blue! Double fail, Deb! Sigh...And I was ready to pipe!
I began with the bunnies.
But not before taking a pic of the impressions so I'd know where stuff was!
I let the icing crust a bit and then smoothed out with a Viva paper towel before giving them eyes and ears, mouth and whiskers. But I gotta tell ya. They didn't come to life until I'd given them eyes and goatees with a tiny paint brush dipped in black food coloring thinned with vodka. Then they were happy little bunnies!
I filled in the flower on this one...
...and filled in the dots and stripes on these others. The impressions are really pretty easy to work with by using small tips and thinning the icing just a bit.
And here are the eggs ready to dry!
Or stacked on a tray ready to serve!
And it was Easter! Not hard. Quite fun. Therapeutic and putting me in touch with the creative spirit that has been placed in all of us.
Happy Easter everyone! I promise that my next few posts won't have anything to do with cookies!!
As always I appreciate you stopping by and your comments and feedback as you have opportunity. Thank you mainly for your grace with my picture/video taking skills as I learn by doing.
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