Valentine Cookies for Calendar

Several months ago I was lucky to be a part of a small group calendar project featuring many of my fellow Flickr cookie designers and graciously put together by Marlyn of Montreal Confections. We were asked to design cookies that would represent the calendar month we were given. My month was February and this is my Valentine design collection.

Valentine card cookie with an edible image.

  (These photos were taken over 4 months ago hence the 2012 watermark date)

Heart shaped petit four cookies. Stacked heart cookies adhered together with royal icing and topped with fondant rose and icing leaves.

Rosebud cookies.

Two tiered edible cookie candy dish, sugared mini heart cookies and petit four cookies.

The cookie plates are iced and then misted with white pearl food color.  The handle is a bamboo skewer that has a gilded twizzler candy stick covering it and fondant heart attached to the top.

Rosebud cookie in a vase.

 The stem is a bamboo skewer painted with green food coloring. The silk flowers and leaves were slipped on from the bottom.

Heart pendant cookie.

A gilded fondant heart tops a heart shaped cookie. Sugar pearls and gold dragees were attached with royal icing around the edge. The pearl necklace is just a piece of costume jewelry.

Real cup of coffee on an edible cookie saucer.

I added mini sugared cookies, a petit four cookie, and decorated sugar cubes.

Here is my calendar photo for February using all the different cookie components.

 Thank You Marlyn.

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Lemon and Green Wedding Cookies

I was recently invited to design wedding cookies for Cake Central Magazine. They were doing a lemon and green color theme, so my cookies needed to match their criteria.

This is the photo they chose out of several I sent in. Not having a scalloped oval, I just reshaped a circle one. The letter S is a royal icing transfer and the green diamond is embossed fondant.

Here is the set in both colors.

All bagged and ready to go.

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Fantasy Get Well Flowers

I made a quick bunch of fantasy flowers for my baby sister in Alaska using some cutters I made a couple of years ago for (these). I wasn't able to make them into an actual bouquet for her because I knew they probably wouldn't  make it there without some breakage.

These are some of the background and filler leaves. Sorry for the blurry photo, but I took these really fast so they could be sent out and didn't preview them first.

A couple more leaf sets.

Larger fantasy flower set.

2 more fantasy flowers.

Smaller filler flowers.

Here is the whole set arranged into a bouquet of sorts. I took this photo and made it into a get well card for her.  That way as she's unwrapping all the individual cookies she can look at this photo and at least get some idea of what was in my head.

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Edible Cookie Corsage - Tutorial

Here's my edible twist on the corsage. I wanted to get as much realism as I could by angling the petals toward the middle of the flower so it didn't look so flat.

A Corsage for Annabelle

This is the finished corsage I gave my grand-daughter for her performance in her school talent show, but I've broken down the steps for a similar corsage in the following photos. There are also notes regarding the toothpicks. This way worked better for me, but you can skip using them altogether if you like and just "glue" everything together with icing.

I've cut out 4 large hearts, 4 medium hearts and 4 small hearts. Also 2 large leaves and 2 small leaves , and one tiny blossom shape flower.

 I pushed toothpicks in the ends before baking because these will help me position the petals later. I will be adding a hole for a toothpick to the underside of the tiny flower shape as soon as it comes out of the oven

Note: You can skip the toothpicks-More on this later in the assembly photo.

I've cut my larger leaves down to only 3 sections so they would fit between the heart petals.

The tiny flower shape on the right will be turned over right after baking and a hole for a toothpick made in the center and left to cool with the other cookies

I wanted some of the petals to have a subtle 2-toned look, so I iced the outer edge first with icing and let dry. I added icing dots and "comma" patterns (which I forgot to photograph as I was doing them.---Can you tell I'm new to this blogging thing?)

Then I flooded the inner section with the same icing color and sprinkled with sanding sugar.

Believe it or not all the pink colored sanding sugar came from the same bottle it just looks different on the different colored icings.

On each leaf shape I outlined 3 smaller leaves and let dry.

When the outline icing dried I filled in the area with a lighter color icing and sprinkled with sanding sugar. Green sugar in this case.

To give the look of babies breath I added random white dots after the sugared leaves were dry.

Assembly

Once all the cookie parts were finished I rolled a large marshmallow into the same color icing of the middle section petals and sprinkled with sanding sugar and left to dry. The icing layer is very thin so I can poke the toothpick petals into it easily. The little plate here is a tiny tasting plate I found in a set of 10 at Party City, it has a slightly raised edge that helps to support the lower petals. A paper doily is taped to the bottom and the sugared marshmallow is adhered to it with royal icing.

Note: Colored fondant can be used in place of the marshmallow. And the sanding sugar can be omitted.

Now to assemble all the pieces. I started with the larger hearts and push the toothpick into the marshmallow. You may have to shorten the toothpick end to do this or it might go through the marshmallow and hit the plate underneath.

I clipped the toothpicks on these quite a bit to be able to angle the larger heart into the marshmallow letting them rest on the plate edge.

Note: The whole toothpick part can be skipped entirely and all the petals and leaves just "glued" with royal icing to the marshmallow individually.

Next came the medium size hearts I spaced these on top of where the lower hearts came together basically covering the gap.

I added the larger leaves after the medium heart petals were placed so I wouldn't accidently break them when placing the upper petals. They slid right in between the lower petals at the corner. Again the plate edge helps to support them. 

This is the tiny center blossom cookie that I forgot to photograph as I was icing. This shows how the toothpick is centered in the back.

I repeated this with smaller heart petals and leaves. The last cookie to go in is the tiny flower or blossom. Remember a hole was made using a toothpick right after baking. I re-attached it using a dab of royal icing. The length of the toothpick was cut so the cookie was sitting right on top of the marshmallow. I still show the toothpicks here, but the upper cookies actually cover them up.

 Here is it all boxed up and ready to give.

A big thanks to Susan (GeminiRJ) for her idea of the sugared marshmallow. 

To see her amazing work click (here)

♥Happy Decorating♥