Beautiful Hearts with Royal Icing and Fondant

Simple Circle cookies with royal icing and fondant accents

I like making my own fondant embellishments. For more info look at this post.

I absolutely love Lilaloa's chocolate cookie recipe. I thought I would never go through my Costco size cocoa powder but now it's gone. I think I'm addicted to these chocolate cookies. One of the great things about this recipe is that it as long as you have your butter nice ready at room temperature it goes fairly quickly.

Here are some chocolate cookie tips.

#1) stick with Lilaloa's recipe. Use the best ingredients you can afford. I've tried this with fancy cocoa powder and they were amazing. I want to try this with a mix of dark and regular chocolates. Just like I do with my favorite drop cookie recipe.

#2) Once my dough pulls away from the sides I know it's done. I'm using the Bosche mixer here. I'm so superstitious about my royal icing I mix my dough in the Bosch and only royal icing in the kitchenaid. I don't think the kitchenaid is happy about this, but the whole oil in the icing thing scares me.

#3) When you can buy a silcone rolling pin and the rubber bands to keep the dough even. I love these two tools. I am rolling at a 1/4 inch thickness.

4) It's not necessary for this cookie, but out of habit I'm chilling the cut cookies in the freezer for a bit. It will soon be summer in Phoenix and I will be relying on this technique a lot more as the temperature in my house rises.

5) Bake on a silpat. I recently did a side by side comparison between parchment and silpat baking and I had less spreading with the silicon mat... such an easy clean up as well. I let them cool on the baking sheet.

Now I am simply outlining the cookies with a thick royal icing and will flood them with a thinner royal icing. I need to practice taking pictures while I decorate. I still haven't figured out how to flood a cookie and take a picture at the same time.

Allow the icing to set for just a moment and ever so carefully drop the heart in the center of the cookie. If it falls in the wrong place, eat that cookie. YUM! Ideally, in the end it will look like the heart is sitting on a soft pillow. I love heart cookies. I think they can work for so many different events. The ones I did here are about 1 1/2 inches across.

This is a great choice if you're not a big fan of food dyes and if you don't like that break my tooth feeling from royal icing layered upon more royal icing.

Happy Baking!

More Valentines Day Cookies

A bow makes such a difference in presentation.

Wet-on-wet techniques; marbling, Wet-on-wet polka dots .

Practicing Lines, Sanding sugar on wet royal icing

The kids gave these to friends and teachers at school. Julianna wouldn't give one to her "boy" teacher, she said that would be way too awkward. Valentines Day is over, now what??!!

Happy Valentines Day!

Americolor soft pink. Darker pink is 2 parts Americolor soft pink, 1 part tulip red.

Americolor Purple

I love sanding sugar!

120 cookies waiting patiently to be decorated!

Thank you Blackboard for your order!

Hello Kitty Cupcake Toppers for Valentines Day - Rolled Fondant

The Finished Cupcake

Inspiration for the cupcake - an image I found online. I was going to make a cookie but chose a cupcake instead, because I'll be making close to 200 cookies next week.

I placed the jpeg image in word and re-sized, because I hadn't decided yet what I was going to do with this image. I ended up using one of the small ones for the cupcake toppers. I will make a cookie of this, but not today. It's a no flour mess kind of day.

Step 1, gently roll fondant

To start buy some fondant, I used a Joann's cupon and bought some Wilton prepared fondant 50% off. It has been so much fun playing with this and I wonder why I would waste money on play dough when I could just buy fondant and for men and the kids.

To dye the fondant, use either Wilton or Americolor food dyes and gently knead. Wear non-latex gloves if you don't want red hands and to keep it very clean. Place a small amount of shortening on your counter to prevent sticking. You will notice the fondant will loosen up as you go.

Step 2, quickly roll fondant

Using a small fondant rolling pin, flatten and roll the fondant using the purple (higher) band. Important note, because I'm just making embellishments I'm not going to get carried away by taking out too much of the fondant. It dries very quickly here in Arizona and I usually have to discard all the scraps. So less is more.

Step 3, place fondant through Kitchen KPSA pasta roller

If you don't have this attachment you will have to continue with the plastic rolling pin until the sheet of fondant is very very thin using the thinner pink band. I love this attachment. I took a fondant/gumpaste flower class and this is how the instructor quickly prepared roses. I returned one of my Christmas presents and bought this three set of Kitchenaid attachments - this one is called the Kitchenaid KPRA set as it includes the roller and the cutters for fettucine. You can buy the KPSA alone, but for me it was worthwhile to buy the set of three. I had to do a lot of research beforehand to make sure I was buying the right one. Kitchenaid says it shouldn't be used for this, but I'll spend more time rolling fondant than I will rolling pasta.

Put it through the KPSA pasta roller two times to get it very thin. I have the knob turned on the number two to get it just the right thickness. Again, without the attachment just gently roll and roll. No big deal! This is how I prepared the fondant for my Valentines Cookies a couple of weeks ago. It saves a lot of time.

Nice thin sheets of Fondant - keep covered to prevent drying.

Sort of carve the image onto wax paper

Trace the image on to wax paper - you can see how the pattern transfers as you scrape off the wax layer.

You can also outline the trace marks with an edible marker to make it easier to see. Be careful with the marker because it will get on the Fondant. In this case I can just flip the cut-out over.

Gently place the image transfer on top of the fondant

The wax paper goes over the fondant and you will use a small tool (I used one of my metal pics) to trace the image. Very gently push into the fondant to outline the image. You will later cut around these lines. I used a paring knife to cut out the shape. You could also use an exacto knife. Just make sure whatever you use is sharp. After cutting you can place the shape back over the original image or the wax paper and make adjustments as necessary. I don't have any fancy fondant tools so I just used knives and spoons to smooth the edges. Hello Kitty is pretty symmetrical so I don't really have to worry about the direction. With other shapes I would need to pay attention to right and wrong sides.

Outline and transfer the bow

I got a picture of one of my favorite tools. I need to take a better picture. This is sold at the dollar store with turkey ties and is supposed to be used for poultry. I decided it would be great for helping me flood cookies. The tips are so small it works great to clear the clogged decorating tips.

Transfer Heart Image

My heart cookie cutter was not quite right so I made it the shape of the jpeg image.

Add Details

I placed the template back on the Hello Kitty and gently pressed where the head and the nose needed to be placed. I drew on the eyes and whiskers with a black pen. I used yellow royal icing for the nose (just because I already had it prepared) and used royal icing to glue the pieces together. You could just use water to stick fondant to fondant. I used my favorite little fondant PME plunger cutters to make the flowers and hearts with the scraps.

Completed Toppers, I could stop here but thought I'd make some cupcakes.

Use a coupler with a ziploc bag to make clean up easy. 1 part butter + 1 part shortening + a lot of powdered sugar and just a little milk and vanilla. Thank you Cathy Olsen.

Frosting ready to go.

Completed Cupcakes

Look at Cathy's info and tips on making delicious cupcakes.

I have to also acknowledge sweetsugarbelle for her post about transferring with pins for her Hello Kitty Cookies.

I also want to show this cute little Angry Bird cupcake Julianna (age 10) prepared.

Thanks to those helping me and encouraging me to have fun with this hobby.

Alexandra's Simple Sugar Cookies

I have a daughter who doesn't like frosting or chocolate, so we make these. I've been trying to turn the TV off on weekdays and when she complained of being sooo bored we made the quick sugar cookie recipe by sweetsugarbelle. I like this version because it is by weight and we get to use the digital scale. (a must have for the kitchen!)
Here she is rolling it out between two sheets of parchment paper. This makes the process much neater, especially with kids. No flour everywhere and no little hands touching dough. Put a little bit of water under the parchment paper to get it to stick to the counter. I love these pre-cut sheets and try not to stress about using too many each time we bake.

I included this picture because it has one of my all-time favorite kitchen tools - a very thin metal spatula. It makes it so easy to lift the shapes without touching the dough.

I found this container of sprinkles at Smart and Final for about $5 or $6. Not the best price but the store is close to my house. I love the texture that these sugar crystals add to the cookie. It gives a nice crunch and just a hint of sweetness.

We added the sprinkles three different ways, first we just sprinkled them on. I don't like all the waste.
On the next batch we carefully pressed the dough into the sprinkles. This works for easy shapes like hearts.

The last group of cookies were done by kneading the sanding sugar into the dough. These came out cute and again I like the texture of the crystals. I would add a little frosting to these but we will keep these plain for Alexandra.
Here they are all lined up, you can see how the look changes depending on how the sprinkles were added.

And how do you not eat the cookies? After baking and cooling put together individual serving sizes of these and "hide" them in the freezer. The kids take these in their lunches and my brain sometimes forgets to look in the freezer for something to munch on. By the time they eat lunch they are just the right temperature. I'm too lazy to defrost a frozen cookie for a snack.

Simple Valentines Day cookies

I wanted to try a quick sugar cookie recipe, one that wouldn't require 2 hrs in the refrigerator so I gave SweetSugarBelle's sugar cookie recipe a try. She is also baking in a dry climate so my results were great. I will use this recipe again if I am in a hurry. One complaint, using powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar gives the cookie a slightly different texture.

Now I'm going to ramble a bit. When my sister Rebecca and I were kids my Mom signed us up for a sugar cookie class at the Bloomfield Hills Public Library. We made dinosaurs out of cookie dough!!!! Amazing! My Mom raised seventeen kids and needless to say there was not much time for baking cookies. Anyhow, I can remember to this day the taste of those cookies and have searched and searched for a recipe that tasted just like those little Brontosaurs cookies. I have easily tried 20 or more different sugar cookie recipes in the past 15 years. For a long time I used this old Conant School recipe provided by my Sister Alison and posted by my sister Cathy. (She gives a lot of great tips on making rolled cookies).

Then this Fall, with the discovery of Pinterest, Becca found this recipe from the blog beeinourbonnet. I made it and called Becca right back with the happy realization that the beeinourbonnet cookies tasted just like the cookies we had made more than 25 years ago. We had been adding almond extract, but that little hint of lemon extract gave it the flavor we were looking for.

My point is, there is no perfect recipe for anything. You need to try as many as you can until you find that magical flavor you are looking for. And don't give up! (I still want to know the secret ingredients in a Cafe Rio salad and maybe it is crack after all).

So if you are in a hurry use SweetSugarBelle's recipe - just know the texture will ever so slightly resemble that of a mint milano, a little too melt in your mouth for me. For cookies with more of a bite to them, stick with the recipe from beeinourbonnet. She also gives great decorating tips and a royal icing recipe. I'm still trying out several types of icing and don't have a favorite - yet.

As to decorating these cookies, I outlined them working with about eight at a time then immediately flooded with Royal Icing. I keep my icing on the thin side so that the frosting layer is not too thick. Some I immediately covered in sanding sugar and the others I added sugar just to the edges the next day once the Royal Icing had time to dry. These were really easy and turned out cute. I feel a need to make more because I forgot to mix orange for this project. DOH! I wanted to have all the colors of the traditional conversation hearts.

Valentines Day Cookies

I love the way the red accents look with the chocolate cookie. I used one of my new favorite recipes, LilaLoa's Chocolate cookie recipe. Found here at Lilaloa. It's for those days when you are craving chocolate but feel like making a cookie. Here are some pictures of the grouping! Thank you Lilaloa for this recipe, I had no idea a chocolate cookie could be this delicious!

It tastes great with just the slightest touch of Royal Icing. We made fondant decorations that make the cookie pretty with out causing a t00-much-icing gag reflex. For more info on preparing the fondant for embellishments look at this post.

I will definitely make these again. More photos to come... someone is screaming in the background.