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!

Cake Balls

My girlfriend Jen came over for a lesson on how to make cake pops. She took home the cake pops and I was left with a few cake balls.

Mix it up Jenny!

A proud cake pop rookie, showing off her stuff!

Don't you just love our aprons?  Check out Sassy Apron at Etsy.com for the cutest handmade aprons.

We were having too much fun!

To make cake balls, follow the basic cake pop instructions.  I still inserted a stick into the ball, but removed the stick and placed the ball on a parchment lined cookie sheet to set. Add decorations immediately.

Simple and sweet!  Here is the final product.

Elmo Cookies

I did it! Thanks to Sweet Sugarbelle who made a video tutorial showing how to decorate sugar cookies without using a fancy tracing projector, I made these cute Elmo and number 2 cookies. 

In this post, I will walk you through the steps to making more challenging cookies, minus the fancy projector.  (In the future, however, I may invest in a Kopykake projector.)

Items you will need for this project:

-sugar cookies

-printed image(s) of Elmo and the number 2

-black edible ink pen

-royal icing

-#1 Wilton piping tip

-squeeze bottles

-toothpicks

Bake sugar cookies and let cool. Print an image of Elmo onto cardstock and cut out around the face. (I found this image on Sugar Envy's Flicker photo stream.) Cut out mouth and poke holes around nose with a toothpick. Place printed image onto cookie and trace around Elmo's face with an edible ink pen to create the border. Since I was going to pipe the outline black, I used a black edible ink pen. Always try to match the color of ink to the colour you will pipe as the border.

Next, trace the mouth and the dots of the nose.

When the dots are connected and the eyes are joined, the face begins to take shape.

Next, pipe the drawn image with black royal icing using a number #1 Wilton Piping tip. (I used a #2 tip in the pictures. In retrospect, I think that a #1 tip would have been better.) Fill in the mouth with the same black icing. Repeat steps for remaining Elmo cookies. Let set and dry overnight.

The next day, flood the face with red royal icing. Use a toothpick to spread the icing into corners or hard to get to areas on the face. For the recipe that I use to make royal icing, click here.

Flood the nose with orange royal icing and the eyes with white royal icing. Let dry overnight. 

Use a black edible ink pen to draw and colour in the eyeballs.

Ta Da!

For the number 2 cookies above, print the number 2 image onto cardstock. Cut out, trace onto cookie and pipe with royal icing. Let dry overnight. Flood with coloured icing and let dry overnight.

The Lexie cookies were first outlined with black royal icing. The next day they were flooded with coloured royal icing and left to dry overnight. On the third day, the names were piped on top.

Happy Birthday Lexie!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Happy decorating,

Melissa ;)

Vanilla Valentine's Day Cupcakes

Whoo! Snack is back for the staff at my school!  For all of you non-teachers, Friday's are FAT at most schools...we like to call them "Fat Fridays"...you know, treat day. At morning recess, the staff meet in the staffroom to schmooze over food and treats! 

Since I was on treats this week, I chose to make Valentine's Day cupcakes for my colleagues to enjoy. This time I made simple vanilla cupcakes with three kinds of frosting: pink buttercream, white cream cheese frosting and delicious chocolate buttercream frosting, (see recipe below) all topped with heart sprinkles.  The same heart sprinkles that I used for the eyes of my Valentine's Day Cake Pops!

I was inspired by tags created by Bakerella, and by Melissa, from Domesticated Lady.

I know, I need to get a circle punch!  When I made Duff's Cake Pops with tags, Nancy suggested that I buy some circle punches.  Haven't gotten around to it yet Nancy! Scissors did the trick, yet again this time!

I glued the tags onto some red popsicle sticks that I bought at Dollarama.

How cute!

Love the "Valentine, I think you're...WILD" tags!

Ghirardelli Chocolate Buttercream Frosting 

(Warning...this is sinful!)

6 tbsp butter softened

2-2/3 cups icing sugar

1/2 cup Ghirardelli Unsweetened Cocoa

1/3 cup milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

In bowl, beat butter until light and fluffy.  In a separate bowl, mix icing sugar with cocoa.  Blend sugar mixture with butter alternately with milk, beating well after each addition.  Beat until smooth.  Blend in vanilla.

(Frosts tops and sides of two, 9" layers.)

For other Valentine's Day ideas check out these posts:

Valentine's Day Cookies

Valentine's Day Chocolate Cupcakes

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Mini Cherry Cheesecakes

Happy Valentine's Day!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Have you ever visited Ming's website called Ming Makes Cupcakes? My cousin Naomi sent me the link to her page a few months ago and I have finally tried a recipe form it. This Red Velvet recipe is one of her 33 delicious cupcake recipes. A perfect choice for Valentine's Day! On her site, it is Cupcake 4. However, she makes these cupcakes with a buttercream frosting, and I have used a cream cheese frosting.

Red Velvet Cupcakes
(Taken from Ming Makes Cupcakes)

1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 tbsp red food coloring
1/2 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla

Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, buttermilk, egg, food coloring, vinegar and vanilla.  While mixing at medium speed, gradually add dry mixture to wet mixture until just combined. Fill cupcake liners.  Bake at 350 for 25 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

The recipe was pretty easy to make.

Key ingredient...red food coloring.

Each cupcake formed such a nice dome shape.

Perfect for a thin layer of delicious cream cheese frosting.

That's how I like it!

Yum!

But others prefer loads of icing!  These ones turned out so beautifully. They are made with the same cake, but contain many more calories due to the excess amount of cream cheese frosting!

So what kind of a cupcake lover are you? 

Do you love a cupcake with a thin layer of frosting and more cake, or, a cupcake loaded with frosting and just a bit of cake?