lovebird cookies

This past summer, my little brother got married! And it was such a beautiful wedding! He and his wife were married on a beautiful ranch in Carmel, among beautiful scenery, a view of the ocean, and grazing sheep nearby. And all of our family were there to celebrate with them. It was a beautiful day. And I had the privilege of making cookies for their wedding favors!

My brother and his wife love birds, so we decided on these lovebird cookies. I saw the original design at Little Wonderland, and thought it would be perfect for them! Their wedding colors were robin's egg blue and coral, so we decided on blue and white birds, with a coral beak and feet. I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe, which you can find in my book, and this heart cookie cutter which I found on Amazon. (I actually purchased several different heart cookie cutters, because I was looking for the perfect size and shape of heart! Some were too narrow, or too small, but this one was perfect!)

After the cookies were baked and cooled, I started on the royal icing (recipe also in my book!). I used white stiff icing and a small round tip to pipe the outline for the white bird, and then I filled it in with white runny icing.

Then I did the same for the other half of the cookie, using stiff blue icing for the outline, and then filling in with runny blue icing. (I used this gel-based food coloring get the perfect robin's egg blue!)

I let the cookies dry for several hours, before adding the details. First, I used brown semi-runny icing to create the branches.

Once that was dry, I used coral icing to create the beaks and the feet.

Then I used black stiff icing for the eyes, and then stiff white and blue icing for the wing details.

Aren't they sweet?

My brother's wife even made cute little cookie tags for me to package them up with!

I'm SO happy for them! Here are some pictures from their amazing day.

Congratulations Michael and Robin!!!