wedding dress cookies with brush embroidery lace

A few months ago, an old friend of mine from college (hi, Kym!) was planning a bridal shower for a mutual friend from college (hi, Cora!), and she asked me to make wedding dress cookies for the bridal shower favors. I had actually been wanting to make wedding dress cookies for quite some time, so I happily accepted! Kym was nice enough to order me a brand new wedding dress cookie cutter from Etsy, one that matched the strapless trumpet-style wedding dress that Cora was going to wear on her wedding day.

For the cookies, I made a few batches of my trusty sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book!), and used my beautiful new cutter to cut out the shapes. After baking them at 350F for 10-12 minutes and then cooling them, I was ready to decorate with royal icing (recipe also in the book!).

First I used a pastry bag fitted with a small round tip to pipe stiff icing to outline each dress. (This helps to keep in the runny icing that you are about to fill them with!)

Then I used runny icing to fill them in, and let them dry for several hours.

Kym sent me a picture of Cora's wedding dress, which was covered in lace, so Kym and I decided that I would replicate that with some sort of lace design on the dress.  I immediately thought of these brush embroidery teapot cookies I had done a while back, and used the same technique to add a lacy design to the dress. I basically outlined my lace pattern with stiff icing ...

.. and then I used a food-safe brush to drag the wet icing into the center of the design.

I also added a lacy design to the bottom of the dress, and a beaded border to the bodice of the dress.

I loved how they turned out!

I think it would be so fun to recreate wedding dresses in cookie form, so I'm going to have to do more soon!

 

Happy Bridal Shower, Cora!

Hope everyone enjoyed the cookies!

umbrella cookies

I'm back! We were away for summer break, visiting hubby's family in Hawaii - and now that we're back, it's back to reality! School for the kids, work for the adults, and of course, baking for me!

In addition to the diamond engagement ring cookies that I made for Diane in my last post, I also made umbrella cookies, in pink and sage green to match the bridal shower colors.

I searched online everywhere but couldn't find an umbrella cookie cutter that I liked, so I used Cookie Cutter Kingdom's custom cutter tool to design my own! All I had to do was draw the umbrella shape that I wanted, upload it, and voila, the perfect umbrella cookie cutter!

After the cookies were baked and cooled, I whipped up a batch of royal icing (cookie and icing recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), and got to work on mixing my sage green color. I ended up using two parts leaf green gel-based food coloring, with one part brown, to get the perfect color green. Then I used the green stiff icing to outline each umbrella, and then watered it down to get runny icing for filling them in.

After I let the icing dry for several hours, the final touch was using stiff white icing to pipe the umbrella details!

I also did the same for the peachy/pink umbrellas, except I used two 2 parts soft pink with 1 part orange to get the perfect shade.

Happy Bridal Shower!

diamond engagement ring cookies

A few months ago, my instagram friend Rachel asked me to make cookies for her family friend Diane. Diane was hosting a bridal shower and she wanted engagement ring cookies, which sounded like so much fun to make, so I said yes right away!

For the ring cookie cutter, my friends at Cookie Cutter Kingdom sent me a special cutter! They normally only make the ring cutter in 3" or 4" sizes, but I asked for 3.5" and they were so nice that they obliged and made me a special one! Thanks guys!

Armed with my new cookie cutter, I baked up my favorite sugar cookie recipe (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), rolled the dough to about 1/8" thick, and cut out my cookies. (For the hole in the middle, I used the backside of a piping tip!). Then I baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes until they were golden brown.

Once all the cookies were baked and cooled, I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in my book!) and used stiff icing to outline the diamond part of the engagement ring. Then I filled it in with runny icing.

For the band part of the ring, I did the same thing with gray icing (outline with stiff icing, and fill with runny icing).

Then once the icing was dry (I like to let it dry overnight), I used more stiff white icing to pipe the details onto the diamond.

I thought they turned out pretty cute!

Happy Bridal Shower!!!

pastel hello kitty cookies, macarons, and bow cupcakes for a bridal shower dessert table

Way back in December of last year, I was contacted by a bride-to-be named Julieta, who had been following my blog and asked me about making goodies for her bridal shower dessert table.  When I found out that: a) she wanted Hello Kitty themed desserts, and b) she lives about 10 miles from me, I couldn't refuse!  At the time I was still pregnant with my third baby and due in February, but her bridal shower was set for April so I convinced myself that it would be fine, since my newborn would be about 2 months old by then.  But boy oh boy, when April rolled around, I was not prepared for the amount of work and lack of sleep that I was in for!

In the chunks of time that I had available for baking, I started with the cookies, since they could be made days in advance and would still be fresh.  We had decided on Hello Kitty cookies with pastel bows, as well as "J" and "D" monogram cookies after the bride and groom's names.  So I found all the cookie cutters that I would need, and baked up my favorite sugar cookie recipe.

For the Hello Kitty cookies, the steps were pretty much the same as the Hello Kitty cookies that I made last summer, except this time the bows would be pastel shades of mint, yellow, and peach.

As for the "J" and "D" cookies, she had decided on pastel mint and peach for the letters, with a white beaded border (just like the monogram cookies that I had made last year for my cousin's wedding favors).

Next up were Hello Kitty macarons, which could be made 2 days in advance, especially since the macarons needed "age" for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator to ensure the proper consistency.

See links here, here, and here for tutorials on making my Hello Kitty macarons.

Once the cookies and macarons were done, I only had one more dessert to make - mini cupcakes decorated with Hello Kitty bows!  These I made the night before her bridal shower.  I started with my favorite chocolate cake recipe, which I baked in mini muffin tins and liners.

For the frosting, I whipped up my favorite cream cheese frosting, and divided it in portions to be colored pastel mint, yellow, pink, and peach.  Then I used white frosting to outline my Hello Kitty bows, and filled them in with little dots of colored frosting, using a small round Wilton tip #3.

And then I was finally done.  After an entire week of juggling three kids and baking nonstop, I could finally rest.  Well, as much as one could rest with a 2-month old newborn, but that's another story.  It was all worth it though, because I loved how all the desserts looked together in the end!

Happy bridal shower, Julieta!  Hope you enjoyed the goodies!

*** Update:
You can now find my recipes for Hello Kitty Macarons, Hello Kitty Cookies, and Hello Kitty Mini Cupcakes in my new book, "The Hello Kitty Baking Book"! Enjoy!

white chocolate tiaras and red velvet cupcakes

My friend Cindy was helping to plan a bridal shower for one of her best friends, and she asked me to make cupcakes for it.  The theme was going to be "fairytale wedding", so I offered to pipe little tiaras to go on top of the cupcakes.

I tested the idea out by wrapping a few small bottles with waxed paper, and then using royal icing to pipe the tiaras on the bottles (to get the curve of the tiara).  They looked nice, but I couldn't get them off the waxed paper without breaking them!  So I tried using melted white chocolate instead, and it worked beautifully!  And to make them look even nicer, I also added a few pearl sprinkles to the tiaras while they were still wet.

For the red velvet cupcakes, I used my favorite recipe from Martha Stewart's "Cupcakes" book.  Then I topped them with my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe.  We decided to do half of the cupcakes with white cream cheese frosting, and the other half with pink.

The bride loves pearls, so we decorated the cupcakes with pearl sprinkles and tiny white non-pareils.  The original request was to have silver dragees also (those silver ball sprinkles), but they are apparently they are illegal in California!  Online stores won't even ship them to an address in California.  Boo!  (hint hint, to my friends and family who live outside of California!)

I loved the end result - the white and the pink, the different size "pearls", and the tiaras for that fairy tale feel.  I hope the bride and everyone at the shower enjoyed the cupcakes as much as I enjoyed making them!