Welcome to what I am hoping will be a semi-regular occurrence around here – my Cookie Decorating Adventure! While discussing my newest obsession with Kris, we kind of decided it would be fun to keep tabs on this newest endeavor of mine. I’m still learning, and maybe as I go there’s something I useful I can pass along that I learn the hard way.

I’ve always loved decorating cakes and cookies, and while my skills were passable, they weren’t allowing me to do all the beautiful creations I kept seeing all over the place. I’ve had books, and they have helped immensely, but only took me so far.

Then, I discovered Craftsy. I could WATCH someone do this stuff, make the needed decorating mediums etc. – it was fantastic! I found a few classes that intrigued me and as they went on sale, I’d pick one up here and there. I originally found cookie decorating classes, then that led me to cake classes. I started with a class for making piped flowers out of royal icing with the mindset the techniques would translate to buttercream etc. And they will. But, it seemed my timing was not the greatest – it was starting to get warm out. That’s not exactly a good set-up for success with frosting that can get droopy and melty, and I was running out of room to store the royal icing flowers I was making while practicing!

So, I went back to my class library and chose a cookie decorating class, and was seriously inspired! I could whip up a bunch of rolled-out cookies, bake them and then pop them into the freezer to be pulled out as needed/wanted for practice during the warm months! If I planned enough ahead, I could have enough to keep me set up for awhile. So, that’s what I did. I had a few marathon baking days, and now have some in the freezer ready to go when I am.

I decided a Food Friday was a good time to start! So, I will share with you one of my favorite roll-out cookie recipes from King Arthur Flour called Holiday Butter Cookies. It’s one I’ve used now for quite awhile and it always comes out nicely for me. I like it because it doesn’t use any leavening, therefore they don’t puff up and have too much spread – when they do that they can lose their nice shape and crisp edge.

The cupcake cookies in the above photo are my first attempt from one of the classes on Craftsy by Anne Yorks, owner of Flour Box Bakery. Her website, Flour Box Bakery.com is a wealth of supplies and knowledge, seems like I’m there at least 3 times a week! I love her selection, prices and the customer service is fantastic. Plus she and her team ship things out really fast!!

It had been a couple years since I’d decorated cookies like this, and it was likely Christmas cookies, and it was a lot harder than I remembered, lol. The instructor makes it look soooo easy! But you have to start somewhere, and the hard part for me is trying to NOT be disappointed that they don’t look like a pro’s the first time out. The point of learning is to experiment, make your mistakes and hopefully learn from them, and keep on going – not to give up after the first try if it’s not on par with someone’s skills who has been doing this for years! It’s really hard though! Having practice cookies has seemed to help – I’m not “practicing” on cookies I’m planning on giving to anyone etc. Now’s the time to push your limits, mess things up to see what doesn’t work!

So, there it is, my newest thing to work on. Hopefully I can document things along the way, share what I’ve learned as in what works and what doesn’t, lol. I have learned though that this “craft” is one that can be very individual, seems there are loads of royal icing recipes out there, techniques and so forth. It just takes some time and a lot of trial and error to find what works for you!

Have a great weekend everyone!!!