Fun Easter Cookies with Royal Icing

More Easter Cookies - Softer colors, next year I want to try even lighter colors.

Easiest way to outline & flood - using a cheap plastic bag! Great for simple designs. Thank you Daily Cookie - go check out her Facebook page, she is an amazing artist!

See using a plastic bag works just fine!! Now flood away!

Rainbow colored Easter Egg and Easter Bunny

Plain old polka dot eggs. I tried dots with other colors, the white is best.

New design - happy flowers! I like the wide set eyes and little mouth.

Swirly Butterflies, I never know how to decorate a butterfly.

More yellow chicks, I'm in a swirly mood.

Baa, Ram, Ewe, Baa, Ram, Ewe.

Little birds. I think swirls look great for feathers.

Happy Carrot Cookies

I hope these make someone happy!

Happy Easter! Cute Easter Bunny Cookies - How to make a tiny sticker into a cookie

Bunnies dressed for Easter

Bunny Platter

To begin, you will need:

1) Sugar Cookie Dough

2) Bunny Template to hand-cut shapes

3) Royal Icing in lots of pastel colors (I use Sweetsugarbelles recipe found here)

4) I made the icing in both piping and flood consistency, but you may be able to get away with using just one. My family doesn't like too much royal icing on a cookie so that that is why I always flood with very thin icing.

5) Lots of time to hand cut shapes, a couple of hours to decorate. This part is so fun the time will fly by!

Inspiration - Stickers

I have a big box of stickers I have been collecting for too long. I've finally grown up a bit and let my kids use which ever ones they like. I found these under my daughter's bed, all dusty and squashed and decided I had to make these little bunnies for Easter. So I have no idea the brand or artist, but there they are, and thanks to whomever designed these. I won't pretend it was me. I just find things I think are cute and put them on cookies.

I put the stickers into the scanner, scanned them, enlarged them in word, printed that, then made these card stock templates for decorating. Hopefully you can print these out and save some time.

Template, maybe you can just take it off my page. I'm so not computer savvy and really don't have time to embed or label any photos.
Hand cutting is not easy, but is necessary if you want something unique. Use the template to cut out the Bunnies. I think in the time it would take me to make a cutter I can get them all done by hand. The key here is to have very cold dough.

Meanwhile prepare the icing. I learned to go softer on the colors. I wanted really soft pastels but found they became darker...

...later that evening

35 minutes later. Yes, I timed how long it took to bag everything.

Sorry about the dark photos, I like to keep it real.

Begin by outlining separate parts of the bunny's body. I kept the head and ears as one peice. The little arm was separate from the head.

Now outline and flood section 2, the bunny's outfit. I also added the pink to the ear, using the wet-on-wet technique. I did this while the white is still wet so it dries flat.
From that point, I added the feet. Notice on the sitting bunny the feet go over the dress. I had to think about this a long time. In one of the standing bunnies I left room to place a carrot on top.
Various stages of bunny detailing. I've added a carrot, some facial features. Next I will add the arms on top of the carrot. This has to be done about 30 minutes after adding the carrot. So, as you can see, it's all about layering the bunny sections.
Some notes about the faces. I kept the eyes very wide spaced, and the nose is sort of heart shaped just below the eyes. The mouths go just below that. I learned this time around that some features look better with royal icing. In this case I wanted the eyes to pop out so they are done that way. The mouth I wanted more in the background So I drew it on. I did a few mouths in royal icing but it didn't look quite right.
These bunnies have details drawn on with Americolor Edible writing pens. I think I need a new set. This was difficult as my pens were dull. I should have added some of these details before the feet were attached.

More examples of how I decorated their outfits.

They looked so cute in a little bag with either a mini egg or a mini carrot.

Here is the gift I presented to friends.

Happy Easter!

Simple and cute Halloween Cookies Decorated with Royal Icing - My first attempt, Fall 2011

My first attempt Decorating with Royal icing - I was instantly hooked!

This doesn't belong here. I've just been in the mood for Halloween. Not the cookies and the costumes, just Halloween cookies. I think they are my favorite cookies of the year. Nothing fancy (that would be weird) just fun ideas, the crazier the better.

These were the first I did last Fall and I became hooked on decorating with Royal Icing. I bought a bag of meringue powder and some sanding sugar months earlier but I put it off for months. I've been decorating the simple knife and buttercream frosting for a long time, but there is something so nice about the smooth surface of a cookie decorated with royal icing.

Second royal icing attempt (the kids did all but the spider cookie)

So that was October, post St. George Marathon injury. I finished the 26.2 in 3:57 (I think...) and I was happy with the results, but I have not been able to run comfortably since. Maybe it's from the hours sitting, decorating, looking at pinterest. The sign up for St. George Marathon 2012 is coming up soon... is anyone reading this going to put their name in for the 'lottery?' Should I take a break from cookie-ing and train for another full marathon????

Oh ya, as my sister Cathy says, 'people don't read anymore.'

Hello Kitty St. Patrick's Day Cookies using the KopyKake 300XK Projector

Happy Almost St. Patrick's Day

I made these cookies using a design off of some Hello Kitty St. Patrick's Day cookies. If you haven't noticed I am a huge Sanrio fan. I think Sanrio is right up there with Disney. Someday I'll make all the characters on a cookie. I may be taking this cookie thing a bit far, but I ordered a KopyKake 300 XK to help make cookies. I was going to do a side by side cookie with and without the KopyKake, but I think the one without the projector wouldn't even be worth the sugar. So here's how I made them, I am no artist and almost feel like I'm cheating with this new monster of a tool.

St. Patrick's Day Hello Kitty

Another St. Patrick's Day Hello Kitty

Outline and Flood cookies - Using cheap Ziploc bags and a coupler

We were making so many cookies that we ran out of piping bags and tubes so we used really cheap ziploc bags with a coupler to outline and another bag with a small hole at the end to flood. This makes for a very easy clean-up and is helpful when you just need a little bit of flood icing. I let these dry overnight before adding Hello Kitty.

Outlining Hello Kitty using the KopyKake 300XK Projector

Here I'm using the kopykake to project the image on to the cookie. The lighting in the room was dim so it was fairly easy to see the image. It was a little difficult to get used to putting my hands off to the side so I didn't block the image being projected from above.

More outlining, notice how my hands had to be off to the side

Guiding the icing to create an outline - using P.M.E. 1.5 tip

All the images are outlined, and I'll let them dry for about 15 minutes

Fill with thinner flood icing

To finish, I filled the image with icing and allowed the icing to dry for about 1 hour, just to be safe and to take a breather from the cookies. My sister-in-law Rayanne said this step looked like advanced coloring. It was probably my favorite step, just adding the color to each section. It felt like that dump tool on most paint programs. I didn't take a picture of the last step, but I put the cookie back under the kopykake and added details - eyes, bows, clovers, etc.

The clovers seemed so easy to complete after completing the characters. These were so much fun to decorate!

Very very amateur video using the Kopykake. What is up with my voice? Is my Michigan accent coming through? My sister just started filming.

Another video showing how to use the kopykake to decorate a cookie. What me and my sister Becca do for fun...