Christmas Cookies - 2015

As usual I had more design ideas for Christmas cookies than I had time to complete. So I was happy to at least be able to finish and photograph a few new ones.

This hand numbing and cross-eye inducing mountain contains over 500 decorated mini cookies. I've done these before, only not nearly as many.

These were added to chocolate dipped pretzels, spoons, biscotti, and Oreos along with toffee, peanut brittle and spritz.

White on white snowflakes with silver indentations.

The center snowflakes are molded fondant.

Set of edible top hats.

Black edible 3-D top hat cookie filled with mini snowflake cookies.

The snowflakes on the hat are punched out of a white icing sheet and detailed with icing.

Red edible 3-D top hat cookie filled with small chocolate dipped pretzel rods.

The band is fondant and the buckle was made with silver dragees.

White edible 3-D top hat cookie filled with decorated Christmas mini cookies.

The hat band is made of fondant and decorated with icing leaves and red Sixlets candy.

Elf cookie place-card and 3-D cookie mug filled with mint chocolate candies and candy canes.
The mug was suppose to be another hat, but the brim broke so I added a candy cane handle and molded fondant trim.
The elf's legs are candy necklace beads on bamboo skewers.

Elf place card cookie sitting on a 3-D red hat cookie.
This elf''s legs are candy necklace beads strung on licorice laces.
In hindsight I should have pick a different color for the shoes.

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Easy 3-D Easter Basket Cookies

It wasn't until I was almost finished with these designs that I realized I should have taken photos along the way. Hopefully the very short mini tutorial at the bottom will help somewhat. 

3-D Easter Baskets using colored cookie dough as well as chocolate cookie dough.

I wanted these to be easy and quick, and since I already had the bows and edible lace left over from other projects they were.

Oval basket with a Twizzler handle and fabric bow.

Round basket with a Twizzler handle and edible lace bow.

Oval chocolate basket with a chocolate Twizzler handle and fabric bow. The doily is edible lace.

To make the round basket you'll only need one of these scalloped round cutters, but to make the oval baskets you will need two.
These happen to be made by Wilton.

To make the oval basket you will need to stretch the two round cutters using different stretching points as shown by the arrows in the above photo.

When you stack them they should look like this. The scallops should alternate evenly.

The Twizzlers candy already have a hole in them so I just used a lollipop stick to secure them into a handle shape.

I added the holes to the top cookie before baking using a soda straw.
The bottom cookie does not have the center cut out so it will hold little candies.
You could add mini decorated Easter cookies to these as well, but that would take the "easy" out of them.

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Edible Mad Hatter 3-D Hat Cookies

I fell in love with all those decorated little Mad Hatter type top hats that came out a few years ago as head bands, hair clips and even Christmas tree ornaments.

Those hats have been on my make-it-into-a-cookie list for years, and since I've taken some much needed time away from my forever ongoing home renovation I decided to see if I could translate one into a cookie. And because the design side of my brain never shuts down I couldn't stop with just one.


The upper part of the hat was easy to figure out compared to finding a way to cover the whole thing with an even coat of icing and getting the brim to have a nice flared edge on either side. I know I could have just used a flat round cookie, but my sense of design demanded that it not look like a giant push-pin.

This is my fancy Mad Hatter/St. Patrick's day hat. My very first finished 3-D cookie hat.
The embellishments are 24 karat (supposedly edible) gold brushed on molded fondant pieces.
They can be popped off before eating the cookie however.

Molded white and black fondant along with edible gold were used to make the decorative shapes.
This photo shows some of the pieces before and after painting.

This was actually my second completed hat, but the first photo I posted to other sites.
The basic composition of this top hat is the same, but instead of colored sugar all over I used a patterned sugar sheet by Wilton. Finishing the hat using this method has a lot more visual impact, but adhering the icing sheet takes more time and care.
The flowers are fondant and the heart is a made of sugar pearls and dragees.

The underside of the finished hat, brushed with icing and sprinkled with colored sugar.
Inside I just brushed on 2 coats of black icing without the added colored sugar.
All of the hats are hollow, and as long as the decorations don't extend over the top, they can be turned over and filled with candy etc. as an extra treat.

Front view of another design. The cameo broach is made of fondant, sugar pearls and dragees.

The broach and edible lace are made up ahead of time to facilitate decorating.

Close-up of the edible lace detail. I used a product called Sugar Dress to make the lace as I needed it to stay pliable.  The jeweled flower is fondant with a sugar pearl and dragee center.

Two extra designs using less rings, and shaping the top to give them their iconic cowboy look.
The accents are fondant and edible wafer paper.


As you can see, there are a variety of ways to shape and finish these hats so they can suit any number of occasions. I have other 3-D hat designs in the works including a baseball cap, graduation hat, witch's hat, and fingers crossed, a pirate hat, which is proving to be quite challenging.


♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Pirate Cookies

Pirate cookies are on the agenda today. I'm taking you back several years to revisit two pirate cookies that will now be available at Ecrandals as cutters along with a pirate hat. 

I can't tell you how exciting it is to open a box from Eric and Jamie and find my designs gleaming up at me. I stare at them and wonder how in the world I'm going to force myself to open the neatly wrapped packages and expose their bright shiny surfaces to the elements. Then reality hits me. It's because of these meticulously formed works of art that I don't have to hand cut these shapes anymore, and the packaging suddenly disappears.

The best part however is knowing that I will eventually be able to hand down these sturdy beauties to the ones that inspired them in the first place.

Here is the set all together. The Pirate girl (top) and hat (left) are the new cutters. The Pirate Boy (right) has been offered at Ecrandals for some time now.

Now for some design history.

The adorable little girl in the picture on the left is my grand daughter Annabelle at the age of 5 or 6. Way back when I was designing my Pirate Buddy cookie she asked if I could design a girl pirate for her. Since my grand kids are my biggest fans and greatest inspiration I decided to go one better and design a pirate girl using her image for the cookie right down to the freckles. I first posted the hand cut version (photo on the right) on my Flickr site in 2011.

It starts out as a line drawing that I refine in my computer's paint program.

The Pirate Girl cutter and baked cookie.

My quick way to add outline areas to decorate by cutting out pieces of the template and marking on the cookie with a food marker.

Finished cookie with a slight design variation.

A new addition to my Pirate Designs is this Pirate hat, adapted from the girl's hat with a rolled edge detail added.

The Pirate Hat cutter, and baked cookie.

The finished cookie.

I've designed them for a more girly pirate here, but this can easily be designed for a boy or girl.

The inner hat detail can also be eliminated for a larger looking hat.

And lastly my Pirate Buddy which ironically was my first pirate design.

The boy and girl pirates were originally designed and posted in 2011 hence the old watermarked date.

The Pirate Buddy cutter and baked cookie.

The finished cookie.

Finished Pirate Set

♥ Happy Decorating ♥