Cookie Stacks

I've been making quite a few cookie stacks recently. They make sweet gifts for friends or are perfect little wedding favours. Each one is made up of 6 round cookies - two small, two medium and two large.
 

Once your cookies have cooled, stick them together with royal icing as shown below. The cookies will look like a mini 3-tiered cake.....so sweet!

You can then decorate them  using royal icing, sugarpaste decorations, glitter etc. Whatever takes your fancy. I made a few blossoms out of sugarpaste then glued them cascading down the front of the cookie stack with royal icing.

Here are some other examples:

This one has sugarpaste inbetween each cookie which makes the stack taller.

This one is decorated in a country garden theme. You can add as much or little decoration as you like!

Hope you enjoy making cookie stacks.

Happy baking x

Vintage Chic Cupcakes

Here are some of the cupcakes I have been making this week for some lovely clients. I was really pleased to get an order for vintage-inspired creations as I love making roses and adorning cupcakes with lots of sugarpaste decorations. These cupcakes were filled with lemon curd and had a thin layer of lemon buttercream on top before the sugarpaste covering and decorations were added. I used royal icing to pipe some dots and stripes to add a bit more texture to the cakes.

And here are the cupcakes together on my new chandelier cake stand from the US.  I just love this cake stand.....it took a few months to arrive in the UK, but for anyone who is interested in purchasing one, you can find them on Amazon here.

Hope you are all having a lovely week.

Happy baking xx

Pastel Cookies

Last weekend I made a quick batch of cookies to test out my new ovens to make sure they bake evenly. Here's a sample of some of the cookies - they are just plain sugar cookies decorated with royal icing in pastel colours.

And here they are all together ready to take into work for my colleagues.......

Stay tuned for more baking ventures soon!

Easter cookies

I've been busy baking cookies over Easter. Here are some of the finished ones......

Easter lambs decorated with sugar paste


To make these lambs, attach sugar paste to a cooled cookie with warmed apricot jam, then use a dresden tool to texture the sugar paste. Add sugar paste bows or flowers if desired (attaching them with a little bit of water), then draw eyes and nose on with an edible food pen. Sugar paste is a great medium to use to decorate cookies. Lindy Smith's book 'Bake me I'm yours cookie' has heaps of great examples of cookies deocrated with sugar paste if you want some more inspiration. I love this book and can highly recommend it.

Easter cookies make a great gift, especially when wrapped up in cellophane with Easter eggs....

Yum!

Bunnies, eggs and chicks

A quick way to decorate lots of cookies, is by using royal icing. Here I used different pastel coloured royal icing to flood each cookie, then once the cookies had dried I piped on top of them.

Happy Easter x

And some more gingerbread

The baking marathon continues......I made some more gingerbread hearts and mini men today as a Christmas gift for some friends. I took the opportunity to practice my piping skills by decorating the cookies with piped lines, dots and simple designs. Here's how they turned out...


I had a lot of fun staging a Christmas scene with the mini gingerbread men around my little Christmas tree.......they are just so cute :)

Merry Christmas!!

Gingerbread House

Yesterday I made my first gingerbread house. I found some great templates on Gingerbread House Heaven for castles and victorian mansion gingerbread constructions but decided to stick with a simple elf house this time. After assembling the house with royal icing, I decorated it with a selection of lollies and gingerbread biscuits I made. Finally, I put a Lindt chocolate santa at the entrance. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out....

More Gingerbread

I've been on a gingerbread baking spree over the past few days. Here are some simple cookies I made for my work colleagues. I used snowflake, reindeer and heart cookie cutters, then decorated the cookies with piped royal icing.

If you want to make some, here is the recipe. They are really simple to make!

Gingerbread (makes about 24 cookies)

Ingredients

• 125g unsalted butter (softened)
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar (~110g)
• 2 1/2 cups of plain flour
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 3 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1/2 cup golden syrup

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C (fan forced). Beat butter, dark brown sugar and egg yolk in a bowl with an electric hand mixer until smooth and all ingredients are well combined. Stir in golden syrup, sifted flour, biocarbonate of soda, ginger and mixed spice in two batches to ensure all ingredients are mixed together properly. If the dough is slightly crumbly, add a little more golden syrup.

Knead the dough on a floured surface then roll it out to approximately 5mm in thickness. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes, then transfer cookies to lined baking trays. The cookies do not spread too much during baking, however it is best to ensure the cookies are evenly spaced on the tray. Bake thems for about 15 minutes until they are light brown in colour, before placing them on wire racks to cool. Cookies will harden once cool and can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 months. Decorate with royal icing if desired.

Happy baking x

Cookie Bouquet

Yesterday I prepared 2 cookie bouquets as gifts for friends who were celebrating their birthdays. This was my first attempt at baking a cookie on a stick and it was surprisingly easy!

I added the cookie sticks into the first batch of cookies as soon as I took them out of the oven. It was a bit tricky holding the hot cookies in place, but they turned out ok. For the second batch, I baked the cookies with the sticks already inserted. This proved to be the more successful technique, and the sticks felt more secure within the cookie.

Once the cookies were cool, I decorated them with royal icing, then put them into individual cello bags.


Next, I assembled them in a ceramic mug lined with tissue paper, using blu-tac to hold some of them in place. Lastly I wrapped the mug with tissue paper and cellophane to make it look like a flower bouquet. Here's the end result:


These bouquets make a nice centrepiece during a dinner party. I'll definitely be making more soon.

Decorating Cookies with Royal Icing

Last night I made a quick batch of cookies to take on my camping trip this weekend. I generally prefer to decorate cookies with fondant, however royal icing is much easier to use when you don't have a lot of time.

Here's my royal icing recipe:

1 1/2 cups (240g) pure icing sugar

1 egg white (from large egg)

1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice

Lightly beat the eggwhite and lemon juice in a bowl with an electric mixer, then gradually add sifted icing sugar, mixing well with each addition. When soft peaks start to form in the icing it is ready to use. Note: Royal icing begins to set as soon as it is exposed to air so keep the icing covered with plastic wrap while you are not using it.

Once you have made the icing, you can divide the mixture into different bowls and colour it with edible food colours. I like to use light colours, so I only add a tiny bit of colouring at a time with a toothpick, until I have the colour I desire.

Next, fill a piping bag with some icing, then pipe a line around the edge of the cookie. I have used piping tip #3 for these cookies.

Take a batch of coloured icing, and water it down slightly so it has a runny consistency. Fill the cookie with the icing, being careful not to let the icing overflow around the edges. Sometimes air bubbles appear in the icing, so have a pin or toothpick on hand to pop them.

While the icing is still wet, you may choose to pipe on different coloured icing. Patterns can be created by swirling the colours together with a toothpick.

Leave the cookies to dry for at least 4 hours, then store in an airtight container.

Enjoy!