Are you all busy making Christmas cookies? I have been having fun with a few new designs, this year.  The build a snowman cookie, above, was a lot of fun to make.  I got the template from Domino Sugar‘s website. I used circle cookie cutters to cut out his body but the rest of the pieces were hand cut.  I printed the free template on card stock to make it easier to cut around the pieces on the cookie dough.

Here are a few other cookies I am making this year.

I have been trying to master different royal icing consistencies. I would be lying if I said it is easy or intuitive. Sometimes I get it right the first time but not always.  It is getting easier though.

I joined a couple of cookie groups, on Facebook, to get tips and tricks to make the process easier.  In one of those groups I “met” a woman who is an incredibly talented cookie artist.  Her name is Teri Butler Wood and she makes the most amazing cookies I have ever seen.  If you get a chance, check out her Facebook page.  I have linked it, above.  Teri has been very helpful and has answered any question I have.  The one piece of advice she gave me was to practice, practice, practice, so that’s what I have been doing.  You know what….she is right.

This picture shows my 1st Olaf cookie I attempted and my 3rd try.  What a difference a few days made.  I am pretty happy with the progress I am making.  It will be fun to look back, in 6 months or a year, to see how much progress I have made.

The Olaf on the left is evidence of my lack of drawing skills.  To get around that I traced a photo that I found and printed, onto the cookie.  That made it so much less stressful.  Then I frosted it in sections.  First, I used a small paint brush to paint black icing in the area of his mouth. Once it was dry I flooded and filled his head and the larger part of his body.  I have started using a small table top fan or heater to speed up the crusting of the frosting.   Now I don’t have to wait hours to be able to move from section to section of any cookie. The other advantage of using a fan or heater (they both work great) is that they seem to dry shinier.  I waited about 20 minutes for the first two body parts to crust and then flooded and filled the upper snowball, his feet and his nose.  I waited another 20 minutes then added the eyes, hair and arms. To do the eyes I piped a dot of white and immediately added a tiny drop of black for the pupil. My brown icing wasn’t stiff enough making it difficult to get definition on his arms and hands.  I waited another 20 minutes then piped small dots of white icing and sprinkled sanding sugar to make it look like snow.  Using the fan, I was able to complete the cookies in a few hours rather than a few days.

The recipes I used can be found by following the links,  sugar cookies and royal icing

Please share your favorite Christmas cookies with me, either here on the blog or on my Facebook page.

Have a fabulous holiday season!