hand painted heart and diamond ring bridal party cookies

Sometime last summer, my friend Monica asked me to make bachelorette party cookies to go inside of goody bags that she was putting together. She was the Matron of Honor for her little cousin, and they were going to be travelling to Cabo for the party. She wanted a pink and gold theme, and wanted to customize the cookies with the names of each of the ladies. We ended up deciding on heart cookies and engagement ring cookies, each decorated with pink roses and greenery, with one white heart cookie for the bride and the rest of the cookies pink. This was definitely going to be a fun cookie project!

For the engagement ring cookies, I used a cutter from Cookie Cutter Kingdom, and my favorite sugar cookie and royal icing recipes (which you can find in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!). Once the cookies were baked and cooled, I started to decorate with white icing for the diamond, and finished with gold icing for the ring (tinted with Americolor gold gel-based food coloring). For a tutorial on how I did this, you can see my previous engagment ring cookie post here.

Then I finished by using pink stiff icing to pipe tiny rosettes, followed by stiff green icing to pipe green leaves (using this leaf tip).

I thought they turned out pretty cute, and the rosettes and leaves added a nice feminine touch.

For the heart cookies, I used this heart cookie cutter set (which I also used for these lovebird wedding favor cookies and these lovebird bridal shower cookies).



Even though I only needed one white heart cookie for the bride, I made several in case I messed up on painting her name!

For the gold letter painting, I used a combination of gold luster dust mixed with clear vanilla extract to form a "paint", and then used a food-safe brush to paint the caligraphy names.

 

I loved the combination of the rings and hearts together! 

Happy Bachelorette Party, Victoria!

rainbow unicorn sugar cookies with royal icing

To go along with the rainbow unicorn cake that I made for my daughter's 8th birthday, I also made these rainbow unicorn cookies as party favors, and also to pass out to her classmates on the actual day of her birthday.

For the cookies, I used my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book!), rolled it out to about 1/8 inch thick, and used these adorable unicorn cookie cutters from Cookie Cutter Kingdom to cut out my shapes. Then I baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown.

While the cookies were cooling, I whipped up my royal icing (recipe also in my book!). Then I used a disposable pastry bag fitted with a small round tip to outline each cookie with stiff white icing, before filling them in with runny white icing. Then with the rest of icing, I used Americolor gel-based food coloring to tint them yellow for the horn, and rainbow colors for the mane and tail.

I had originally planned to do each unicorn with several rainbow colors, but after icing a few, I didn't like the way they looked. So instead, I chose one color for each unicorn, and did multiple colors that way.

I wrapped each cookie in cellophane favor bags and tied with closed with raffia, so that they would be easy for her to hand out to her classmates (and so they would fit nicely in her party goodie bags!)

Happy Birthday, Miss Melodie! Hope you enjoyed your unicorns!

pokemon cookies

Two years ago I made these dump truck cookies for my husband's cousin Kristen, who has throwing a dump truck themed birthday party for her son, and last summer she requested Pokemon cookies for a Pokemon themed birthday party! Her son Caleb absolutely loves Pokemon, and knows all the names of the characters!

Since Kristen is back in Hawaii (where my husband is from), I'd be shipping the cookies, and all the Pokemon cookie cutters that I could find had a Pokemon with a long tail. When I told Kristen I thought the tails might break during shipping, we decided that I could just make the cookies round, with Pokemon's face on them! We also decided to do half the cookies Pokemon, and the other half would be pokeballs! (I actually didn't know what these were at the time, and had to look them up!)

For the cookies, I used my go-to sugar cookie recipe (which you can find in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), which I chilled, rolled out to 1/8 inch thick, and cut out with round cookie cutters. Then I baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes, until the edges were golden brown.

Once the cookies had cooled, I made a batch of royal icing (recipe also in my book!), tinted half of it yellow (I used a combination of lemon yellow and golden yellow), and then used stiff yellow icing to pipe the circle outline, before filling it in with runny yellow icing.

Once the icing was dry (I like to let it dry for several hours, or overnight), I used black stiff icing to pipe the eyes, nose, and mouth (complete with tongue hanging out!)





Next came red icing for the cheeks, and a final dot of white in the eyes to make them pop.



For the pokeballs, I started by outlining each cookie with stiff black icing...

... and then piped the details of the pokeball.

Then I filled in the pokeballs with runny white icing in the center and the bottom half of the circle, and runy red icing in the top half of the circle.

And then they were done!

I thought they turned out really cute, even if Pokemon looks kind of abstract! And with the addition of the pokeballs, any kid would know that it's Pokemon, right?

To send them off, I wrapped each one in a cellophane favor bag, tied it with raffia, and carefully filled my shipping box with alternating layers of big bubble wrap, cookies, bubble wrap, cookies, etc., with a double layer of bubble wrap at the top and bottom of the box. And apparently they all made it there with no breakage! Yay!

Happy Birthday, Caleb!

red and white lovebird cookies

Just last week, a friend of a friend asked me to make cookies for her sister's wedding shower dinner. She wanted favors for the guests to take home with him, and after seeing the lovebird cookies that I made for my brother's wedding a couple of years ago, and she requested them in red and white.

For the cookies, I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe (you can find the recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), rolled it out to about 1/8 inch thick and cut out shapes with a heart-shaped cookie cutter (the largest one from this nested set of heart cookie cutters). Then I baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes until they were golden around the edges.

Once all of 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 half of the heart, before filling it in with runny icing.

Next I tinted about a third of the icing super red (that's the actual name of the color!), and used stiff red icing to outline the other half of the cookie, before filling it in with red runny icing.

After letting the icing dry for several hours (I usually let them dry overnight), I was ready to add the lovebird details! I started by piping a brown branch for the lovebirds to sit on (done with medium running icing), and once that was dry I piped golden yellow beaks and little bird feet on the branch.

Then I used black stiff icing to pipe the little eyes, using the smallest piping tip I had.

I also added little wing details. And then they were done!

Aren't they cute?

Do you like them better in red and white, or the original blue and white?

Congratulations to the bride and groom!