Practice Makes Perfect

Time and time again I wait until an actual occasion to make treats. Of course, then the pressure is on to have a nice looking finished product.  Pressure = stress = not a fun time for Mrs. A. 

Last week I surprised myself by creating an occasion to practice some cookie making and decorating. I tried out two new recipes that have been sitting in my recipe cabinet for some time now (coughyearscough). 

Citrus Sugar Cookies on the left and Double Vanilla Sugar Cookies on the right. Both from Canadian Living magazine. The citrus cookies were really good. The Vanilla ones, meh. But, I did get to use a real vanilla bean for the first time. Even though the recipe called for the vanilla bean plus 5ml of vanilla extract, we found the flavour fairly bland. The dough was a bit dry and I had a hard time getting it to hold together. 

First up was a meringue wash. I used the stencils and a small paintbrush to apply the wash to - mostly - the parts I wanted it to stick to. Then decorator sugar and voila! Snowflake cookies version the first. 

Then onto more complicated things...

The stencils were something I'd wanted to play with for a while. Since I like the idea of snowflake cookies so much, it would be nice to find out if I like actual snowflake cookies. Geez. It's about time. 

This batch of icing worked out much nicer than the batch I tried at Hallowe'en. It actually worked. I used the stencil to guide piping the design. Then I covered the wet icing in decorator sugar, shaking off the excess into a dish. 

This batch went over fairly well. That was that. So what did I learn? I learned I like decorating cookies when the icing actually works out. I should use the Martha Stewart sugar cookie recipe. I learned to bake one day and decorate on another. Decorating takes a while. So, I expect I'll have another go at some of these and we'll have actual snowflake cookies for Christmas instead of just thinking about snowflake cookies at Christmas.  

❤Mrs. A