seashell, starfish, and seahorse cookies

Last September, my cousin's husband's cousin (cousin-in-law?) Su asked me to make sea-themed cookies for her sister's baby shower. The invitations had a pretty sea coral theme, so we decided to go with seashells, seahorses, and starfish in turquoise and coral colors.

I baked up a few batches of my favorite sugar cookie dough (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and used various cookie cutters that I had bought on Amazon! (You can find them here for the star fish, here for the sea shell, and here for the sea horse!)

For the seashells, I used stiff white royal icing (recipe also in my book!) to outline the shells, and once they were dry I filled them in with runny white icing.

Then once that had dried for several hours, I went back with stiff white icing and a small round tip to pipe the shell details.

I also prepared piping bags of turquoise and coral colored icing. For the turquoise I used Americolor sky blue, and for the coral I used two parts soft pink, one part lemon yellow, and one part red.

Next came the starfish. I again outlined each one, this time with stiff turquoise icing, and then filled them in with runny turquoise icing.

Once dry, I added dot details to each starfish, using stiff turquoise icing.

I also made some of them in coral.

And it was pretty much the same process for the seahorses as well - outline with stiff icing, fill with runny icing, let dry, and then use stiff icing to add the details.

I love how they turned out, and I especially love this color combination!

Happy baby shower, Jueun! 

3D cookie christmas tree

Wow! Christmas and New Years flew by in the blink of an eye! Hopefully it's not too late to share this cute little tree that I made for our celebration Christmas Eve!

A long time ago I had seen this Christmas tree cutter set in a magazine somewhere, and I thought it was the cutest thing! So when Christmas rolled around this year, I thought I would make my own cookie tree, using this star cutter set that I already owned.

Even though there were only 4 different sized star cutters in this set, I figured I could achieve the same effect by cutting out several of each size.

Note that I cut out less of the bigger stars, and more of the medium and smaller stars.

Once my cookies were baked and cooled, I whipped up a half batch of buttercream frosting (recipe in my new book!), and tinted it leaf green. Then I placed a small blob on the bottom of my largest cookie, to attach it to a 6-inch cake board.

Next I fitted a pastry bag with a Wilton #352 leaf tip, filled it with my green icing, and piped little leaves around the perimeter of the star before filling it in completely with leaves. (See my Christmas wreath cookies for the same technique!)

Then I placed my next cookie on top, and again piped leaves around the perimeter of the star, after which I filled in the cookie with leaves. Around this time I also started to sprinkle on little white nonpareils after finishing with each cookie, to give the effect of snow on the leaves.

I continued with all of the star cookies, from the largest cookies on the bottom, to the smallest cookies on the top.

I finished it off with a small yellow star sprinkle on the top of the tree (taken from this set of star sprinkles), and more white nonpareils all over.

And there you have it, a cute little 3D Christmas tree made out of cookies! It made for the perfect little centerpiece and dessert all in one!