Zombie Skull Cookies for Halloween

This crazy summer has finally passed so I've been trying to catch up on all of the things I've lost track of. Here's a quick post of some Halloween cookies I made last week so I can get back into the swing of things.

The original cookies and tutorial that inspired me to make these cookies can be found here.

Enjoy!

Mother's Day Sugar Cookies and a Recipe for Tropical Trifle

For Mother's Day a couple of years ago I made some really cool monarch butterflies from Hello Cupcake. They were my favorite cupcakes to make by far and I wanted to try and recreate them into a sugar cookie for Mother's Day this year.

I hosted a Mother's Day BBQ for my mother and mother-in-law and decided to make my cousin Jeff's trifle to accompany the cookies for dessert. Every year his trifle is requested at all of the family holidays and it's a perfect springtime dessert with hints of coconut, crushed pineapple, and mandarin oranges. The best part is you can cook the components the night before and assemble it the day-of to make the day even less stressful.

 Jeff's Tropical Trifle

2 cans crushed pineapple, juice reserved

2 cans mandarin oranges

1 box yellow cake mix

1 box vanilla cook and serve pudding, not instant pudding

1 box coconut cook and serve pudding, not instant pudding (can used 2nd box of vanilla if coconut isn't available)

3 cans Goya coconut milk

2 cup shredded coconut, divided

1 cup malibu rum

1 pint heavy cream

Night before/morning of

1. Substituting coconut milk for regular milk, make pudding according to package directions (mix powders from both packets into one pot). While the pudding is cooking make sure to stir the pudding constantly so the bottom of the pot doesn't get scorched. Once pudding has thickened add 1 cup of shredded coconut to pudding and place on counter to cool. To prevent a skin from forming, place plastic wrap directly on the pudding. 

(If making the night before, once the bowl is cool to the touch, place in refrigerator until you're ready to assemble the trifle)

2. Drain the two cans of crushed pineapple, saving the juice, and place solids into a non reactive bowl. Prepare the cake mix replacing the water with an equal amount of pineapple juice and bake on a jelly roll sheet following the box instructions.

3. Drain the mandarin oranges and add the fruit to the bowl of crush pineapple. Add 1 cup Malibu rum and allow to soak into the fruit as long as possible (night before would be best). If there's any left over pineapple juice after the cake is baked, you can add it back into the fruit mixture. Refrigerate mixture if making the night before. 

Day of

4. Assemble trifle by cutting a circle of cake using the trifle bowl as a guide. Build by placing a layer of cake into trifle bowl, topping that with a layer of mixed fruit (approximately half) and drizzling some of the leftover juices onto the cake. Top the fruit with a layer of pudding and repeat until you reach the top of the trifle bowl.

(I actually had enough left over to make one more mini trifle in a canning jar for lunch the next day... Yum!)

5. Top trifle with fresh whipped cream and remaining coconut.

Enjoy!

Happy Star Wars Day: May the Forth Be With You

Happy Star Wars day everyone! Ever since I found out this was a real thing I've been wanting to make cookies for it. The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle has a bunch of really awesome cookie pictures and tutorials for Star Wars cookies including what cookie cutters you can use, R2-D2 and Yoda tutorials, and a post of the whole set. If you haven't been to her site before, you need to take a look at her work, it's simply amazing. Anyway, here are some pictures of the Star Wars cookie set I did for Star Wars day.

Enjoy!

Happy Easter and Some Bunny Themed Sugar Cookies

Spring is finally here and my Easter wouldn't be complete without some sugar cookies.

I love all of the designs from Cookies with Character but when I saw the Peek-a-Boo Bunnies, my heart flip flopped. An animator by trade, her designs are adorable and original and I could spend hours looking through her blog.

I also drew my inspiration for my Easter bunny cookies from the Sweet Adventures of Sugar Belle. If you haven't been to her site before she has a ton of information on cookies and cookie decorating.

The recipes for sugar cookies and royal icing are both from Sugar Belle's and can be found here and here.

Enjoy!

Skull and Crossbones Cookie Tutorial

Here's the tutorial for the skull and crossbone cookies as promised. I've been experimenting with a glaze (which has added corn syrup for more shine and a softer texture) instead of royal icing which can be a little dry and grainy for me. There are two icing consistencies that are used when decorating cookies, flood and piping. 

Flood icing aka 20 second icing is used to ice large areas of cookie and results in a smooth, even finish. Piping consistency is used for borders to keep flood icing in place and for details that need to keep their shape. 

When mixing colors I usually start with a medium consistency of icing, color it, then reserve a third of it to thicken for piping and thinning out the rest for flood. 

Piping icing should be the consistency of toothpaste and should be firm enough to hold it's shape, but not so firm that it breaks while piping. To get this consistency, I add powder sugar until the desired thickness is reached. 

Flood icing should have a honey-like consistency, thin enough so it easily smooths for an even finish but not so thin that it runs over. I add very small amounts of water (a few drops at a time) and mix until this consistency is reached. Another way to test for this is to draw a line in the icing with a spatula and count how many seconds it takes for it to smooth out again (as the names suggests, it should take about 20 seconds). 

Here are the step by step instructions for decorating the skull and crossbones sugar cookies as well as some other shots of the cookie decorating process. 

For the glaze icing 

2lbs powdered sugar 

1/4 c corn syrup 

1/4 c water 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (clear if you need bright white icing) 

1/2 teaspoon butter extract 

The icing will need to be thickened for fine details and thinned slightly for flooding

For the skull and crossbone cookies you will need: 

White piping and flood icing 

Black piping icing 

Red flood icing (or any color of your choice for the bandana) 

4 disposable piping bags 

4 icing couplers 

Two #3 and two #12 piping tips 

P.S. Read my post from earlier this week on the best icing tip ever. 

Here is a royal icing recipe which I thought was a little easier to start out decorating with.

1. Trace out eyes, nose, and bandana on each skull cookie using food safe markers

2. With piping icing, outline the skull, eyes, and nose onto the cookies. If you don't want to fill in the eyes with black icing, make sure to pipe on the insides of the lines otherwise the marker will show (hindsight is 20/20).

3. With the flood icing, pipe along the edge of the piping icing so that the two consistencies overlap slightly. Keep to the inner edges so that the flood icing doesn't run over the sides the skull. Allow to dry for at least a half hour. 

4. After the first layer has dried to the touch, use piping icing to make teeth. Starting with the top row, alternate teeth and allow to dry for a half hour. Repeat with the lower row of teeth and allow to dry for another half hour. While the teeth are drying you can skip to steps 6-8 to save time in between the drying of the teeth. 

5. Fill in the missing teeth by piping more ovals between the teeth that have already dried. 

6. Pipe bandana ouline onto top of skull cookie with the piping icing. If any marker is showing you can also fill in the eyes and nostrils with the piping icing. 

7. Flood bandana with your color of choice flood icing. Pipe outlines on the cross bones and let dry for 15 minutes.

8. Flood crossbones using the same method in step 1. Add any additional details you like to the bandanna using piping icing. 

9. Allow cookies to dry overnight. I actually find glaze to be more prone to damage in transfer as compared to royal icing, so be careful when transporting them. 

Here are some more images from my cookie decorating night including the ghosts and spider web cookies

Piped ghost pumpkin spice sugar cookies 

Finished ghosts

The cookie station 

Piped outline on spider cookies

Finished web cookies

Finished spider and web cookie set

Midway through skulls and ghosts

Complete Halloween set

Be sure to follow me on instagram @rocky092 for more cookie and baking posts

Halloween Cookie Set

I decide to make some pumpkin spice sugar cookies and decorate them for Halloween this year. I picked up two awesome copper cookie cutters at the end of last season from William Sonoma for $1.99 a piece (a steal, I know). One is a skull and crossbones, the other is a large ghost.

To make the project a little more interesting I added a spider and it's web, tombstones, and two types of pumpkins with cutters I purchased from The Cookie Cutter Company. The Cookie Cutter Company has a great assortment of cookie cutters, most in the $1-$2 range and I beefed up my Wilton 100 piece set with tons of extras, without breaking the bank.

 The whole Halloween set

Spiders and their webs

Spooky ghosts

A step by step guide for the skull and crossbone cookies can be found here.

Enjoy.

Be sure to follow me on instagram @rocky092 for more cookie and baking posts



Past Sugar Cookie Projects

Before heading to Atlantic City for a conference this weekend, I thought I'd do a quick post on previous sugar cookies I have made. My sugar cookie obsession started after stumbling upon the Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle, the cookies are out of this world amazing. The blog features step by step instructions with photos, recipes, tips, and a whole bunch of extras.

My first attempt at making intense sugar cookies was for Thanksgiving last year. I just followed the step by step instructions for Sugarbelle's decorated turkey and pumpkin cookies and here's how they turned out. 

Pretty good for my first time, eh?! They took me about a day and a half to make, but that included the baking of the cookies and drying time in between icing colors.

The next set I made was for Christmas of last year and I followed this reindeer tutorial, which was actually a guest post, leaving out a few of the more ornate finishing details. I also added a few cookies of my own design including customized Santa hats and snow topped candy canes.  

                                                                                                     

The last set of cookies I'm going to sugar with you are ones that I made at the end of my low vision rotation in optometry school. They were mini retina cookies with various ocular diseases. 

These were ones I designed completely by myself and I was really happy with how they came out.

That's all for now, hope you enjoyed!

Be sure to follow me on instagram @rocky092 to se more food and cookie posts