Just a touch late, Spring Cookie Creations

Happy Spring everyone!!! I got so inspired by all the Easter and Spring themed cookies all over the web, I had to make some too. I knew that with the success of my Christmas cookies, I wanted to make another batch. Well, I finally got around to it. Check these out!!

So here are the results of my second batch of royal icing decorated cookies. I made a basic sugar cookie inspired from Sweetopia. (One of my favorite places for cookie inspiration.)  I went nuts  had a lot of fun with the royal icing decorations. And, I got to finally use some sanding sugars and sprinkles that I bought a few months ago, yay. Hope you enjoy!!

I really loved the bunny shapes, they are such fun! Some close up details of playing with icings below.

Thankfully, my honey works with a bunch of hungry guys who gobbled these lovelies up!! Sure makes me feel warm and fuzzy being able to share my baking passion with folks. 

And as usual, I learned a few things while making these cookies:

• I cut the recipe in half, and glad for it too. It made about 2 dozen, which was plenty. Even with the cookies ending up so big.
• Per suggestion from many bakers & blogs that I read, after you cut out the cookie dough, allow it to sit on a baking sheet in the fridge for at least 10 minutes, your cookies will maintain their shape better. See in the picture below for a great example.  The two egg cookies at the top, those were made with the same exact cookie cutter! But the blue one on the right was put straight in the oven and the white one on the left was refrigerated first, then baked. I was amazed at the difference in the two cookies. I think this is mostly because of all the butter in these cookies. They should be illegal!!

 

•  Working with Royal Icing is time consuming and messy. If you are like me, and still learning about cookie decorating, give yourself extra time to deal with your icing. You have to make a batch of white. Then work with the gel icing colors to dye icing to your liking. I used pastel colors this time and was quite happy with the results.
• Finally, I am really glad that I purchased extra piping bags (disposable) and icing tip couplers. It makes things a lot easier when you are making a bunch of different colors to use. However, when you are ready to flood or fill in the cookies with the main portion of the icing, it may be easier to use squeeze bottles rather than the piping bags. I thinned out the pink icing for flooding, and then worked on the other colors. When I sat down to actually use the pink, about half of it had drained out of the bag. No bueno! Thankfully I still had enough to use. Icing goes a lot further when its thinned out.
• I can't wait to do more of these darn cookies!!