Baking and Decorating Sugar Cookies-A Two Day Workshop

I led a sugar cookie workshop for my colleagues last week! I was very excited to share with others, what I have taught myself over the past two years about making, baking and decorating sugar cookies. It was loads of fun!

I taught everyone how to roll out dough, fill a pastry bag, pipe, and flood cookies.

We used basic ingredients to make the cookies: butter, sugar, flour, salt, vanilla and eggs. For the sugar cookie recipe we used, click here.

When rolling out cookie dough, using wooden slats is one way to attain cookies of the same thickness. For a more detailed post on how to roll out cookie dough, click here. 

Everyone was cutting away. So many cookies were baked! The aroma in the room was delicious!

While the cookies were baking in the oven, the royal icing was tinted.  Toothpicks were used to add Wilton Colors to the royal icing. For the royal icing recipe we used, click here. So many colours were made.

The next day was time to decorate! First, I taught the group how to fill a pastry bag.

How to Fill a Pastry Bag

(Adapted from Sweet SugarBelle)

     

What you will need…

-Mini spatula

-scissors

-Wilton tip #2

-coupler and ring

-clear glass (allows you to see the color of icing in the pastry bag)

-clear disposable Wilton pastry bag

-twist tie or elastic

-paper towel

-royal icing (consistency of pudding) in a clear measuring glass

   Directions

1)   Place damp paper towel at the bottom of glass. (This will prevent tips from clogging.)

2)   Cut tip off of pastry bag. (About 3 cm.) 

3)   Place coupler into bag.  (The bag should be just a little longer than the coupler.)

4)   Place Wilton Round #2 decorating tip straight on, on top of coupler.

5)   Screw the ring on tight. (Tip should not wiggle.)

6)   To fill the bag, place the pastry bag with tip inside the clear glass.

7)   Fold the rim of the pastry bag over the lip of the glass to form an opening where the icing will be poured.

8)   Pour about ½ cup of icing into piping bag.

9)   To tie the bag, remove it from the glass. 

10)  Unfold the pastry bag and squeeze all of the icing down toward the tip. If you notice air bubbles, try to massage them out with your hands.

11)  Use a twist tie or elastic to secure the top of the piping bag.

12) Thin remaining icing to flooding consistency and pour into Wilton squeeze bottles.  This ensures consistency of colors between the piped borders and flooded icing.

      

The bags were filled and ready to be used to pipe away!

I did a quick demo showing how to pipe the border of the cookies.  After everyone piped their own cookies, they were set aside.

A small amount of warm water was added to the royal icing used for piping to thin it out to flooding consistency. The icing was then poured into squeeze bottles to be used to flood the cookies. 

All of the cookies turned out great.

They were so colourful!

Everyone was hard at work...

and so focused.

I was impressed. The cookies were set aside to dry over night.

Great job ladies!

Thanks for letting me share my passion for baking with you!