One of my baking resolutions this year is to get much better at decorating cookies with the outline and flood method. This month, I decided to enter March lion-hearted and finally face down my woeful lack of cookie decorating skills. I mean who has over 300 cookie cutters and almost zip skill in the cookie decorating department? Me. That’s who.
I am back home in my own kitchen for a while and looking forward to devoting some time to practicing. And you know what that means. I will be torturing all of you with the results.
For the past months, I have been plotting this, all the while collecting tutorials on cookie decorating. At the end of this post, I listed some of these helpful links for those of you who are also interested in discovering or improving your inner cookie artiste.
First up are these lions I did to welcome March.
After I completed the outline and flooding and let them dry for 24 hours I used the same color icing to pipe the mane and the tip of the tail.
Then I covered both parts in brown edible sparkle sugar.
To be honest, I was pretty happy with these until I tried to do details on the face. Here is where I fell off the cookie wagon. I don’t know if it was the jet lag, lack of sleep or both but I just couldn’t visualize a good way to finish them. I left them unfinished or a day or so occasionally circling around them hoping inspiration would hit me. It never happened. I ended up quickly and crudely finishing them and they turned out to be a bit of a hot mess in the end.
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| Not Proud of this Pride |
Not a very grand start for this baking resolution. But I am forging ahead. In the next weeks, I plan to test drive various cookie and icing recipes from different very talented cookie artists. Here are the ones I used for the lions:
For the Cookies:
I used a sugar cookie recipe from the very talented Bridget at Bake at 350. Printable found HERE.
For the icing:I used SweetSugarBelle’sTop Secret Royal Icing recipe. If you haven’t already checked out her cookie blog, The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle, do so. It’s a real treat. This icing is very thick at first. You need to keep adding liquid to find the consistency that works for you for both outline and flooding.
Royal Icing General:
- Bake at 350’s Royal Icing 101
- How to figure out the right royal icing consistency – Video tutorial from Sweetopia. Check out Marian’s gorgeous blog and helpful tutorials.
- The über creative Meaghan from The Decorated Cookie‘s Royal(ish) Icing
- The Curvy Carrot’s monster Royal Icing Tutorial.
- Sweetopia’s How to Decorate Cookies with Royal Icing – Top 10 Tips and
- How to Store Royal Icing & How Long it Keeps
Decorating Sugar Cookies from Start to Finish:
- Check out Callye’s guest posts over at Glorious Treats Parts One and Two. Callye’s immense talent is matched by her generosity. From how to create zebra stripes to leopard patterns, she posts many wonderful tutorials to help readers try out her ideas.
- I am Baker’s super talented Amanda’s post, Sugar Cookie Decorating 101
- Pam at Cookie Crazie posted these glaze icing tutorials.
- Karen uses Meringue Powder Buttercream on her beautiful cookies. The recipe, Info, and hints HERE.
- Amanda’s from I am Baker’s Glazed Icing
All Things Cookie Cutter:
- Bake at 350’s tips for using cookie cutters
- The Art of Cookie Cutter Maintenance
- Callye has a few helpful posts on repurposing cookie cutters to create different shapes. Here’s one example and another one here.
- Create Your Own Shapes by making templates. Finding myself stuck out here in the German countryside, I can’t just zip out to the store and find the cutter I need so I often make my own.
- Tips on coloring and bagging glazed icing.
- How to prevent your icing from bleeding.
Many of us get stuck in a rut of decorating sugar or chocolate rollout cookies. There are tons of recipes out there for them. Here are some recipes I’ve collected from bloggers who took the rollout cookie to the next flavor level.
- Baily’s Irish Cream Rollout Cookies I used these for my last St. Paddy’s Day post. Excellent recipe!
- Chocolate Chip Rollout Cookies
- Lemon Poppy Seed Cut-outs
- Lemon Sugar Cookies
- Light Spice Cookies
- Maple Sugar Cookies
- Orange Gingerbread
- Peanut Butter Roll-Out Cookies
- Pecan Sandie rollouts
- Pistachio Cookies
- Sour Cream Cut-out Cookies
- Spiced Brown Sugar Cut-out cookies
- Tangerine-Ginger-Vanilla Rolled Sugar Cookies
6 comments
These are sell-able. They look great. I love that you are offering your followers different recipes to try.
Awwww… I think your lions are adorable! The glittery manes are totally inspired. A friend just found out their expected baby is a boy and was asking for name suggestions. I offered Leith, which means 'lion cub' in Arabic. Fitting, as they are 1/2 Arab and live in South Africa. If they choose it, guess what I'm going to send them for the baby's birth?! Yup, your lion cookies. 🙂
So gorgeous, beautifully decorated lion cookies!
For someone who says they're not a cookie maker, these look amazing! I am seriously impressed.
Wow, these lion cookies are just so pretty, lot eh pictures…awesome work 🙂
Your lion cookies look amazing! You should absolutely be proud of that pride. Rawr.
Thanks for linking to other rolled cookie recipes, too. As much as I love a plain iced sugar cookie, sometimes you just need to switch it up.