Adventure Awaits- Baby Shower Cookie Favors

When I created this website, my original intent was to share more information about the services that I offer in one organized place. As a former teacher though, I also wanted to share bits and pieces of knowledge that I've gained along the way in this cookie journey. The last two years have been busy, due in large part to a job change that has me traveling a good 70% of the time. I'm going to attempt to make an effort to share a few blog posts a month with helpful tips and a few favorite products. Any feedback that you wish to give over content (and what you might like to see covered) would be most appreciated.

I absolutely love making cookie favors for parties! Finding inspiration from invitations, themes or colors is always a fun process, and these cookies were particularly easy to design given the really neat invitation. Usually I'll create sketches with colors and notes for decorating, but I knew exactly what I wanted to do for these and was able to skip a few steps. I've never used the hexagon shape for cookies before, and just love the overall look of how the mountains lined up with the edges. So simple, but visually appealing. (Note- I was inspired by the amazing work of Mama Mayer Bakery, who frequently uses this shape for cookies.)

Once I decided on the shape of cookie to use, and the image that I wanted to put on it, all I had to do was get things in order so that I could start decorating. I use an online website called Picmonkey to recreate, design, or write text that I will ultimately pipe on to my cookies (with the help of my Pico projector).

Here is an image of the party invitation:

And here is a quick video of how I used Picmonkey to create the image that I decorated on the cookies:

With that step out of the way, it was then time to make and color my icing. Genie's Dream Meringue Powder is my preferred brand. I follow her recipe exactly, and add in equal parts vanilla and almond extracts for flavoring, along with a few drops of corn syrup and glycerine for a softer bite (totally optional). I absolutely loved the blue on the invite, and was able to achieve it by mixing the Vintage Blue and French Lavender, along with a touch of Midnight Black from the new Genie's Dream gel color kit. Helpful hint- when mixing deep colors, get the color to where it's almost just right, and then allow it to sit for a few hours minimum so that the colors can continue to develop. This blue was definitely darker by the time I started decorating cookies.

I prefer to outline and flood my cookies with just one consistency of icing. That way you don't see visible lines (although sometimes it's necessary). It also makes for less work. When I mix my icing, I will pull a spatula of icing out of the bowl and drop it back in. When it falls back down to a pretty flat surface within 10-12 seconds, then I know it's good to work with. You can see what I mean in the video below:

Once the icing is ready, I put it in Tipless Bags (I purchase mine from Truly Mad Plastics- size med), and tie them off with twist ties that come with bags I buy at Michaels. (You can also use chip clips or rubber bands.) I like decorating on a mat so that I don't get icing all over my kitchen island. I also have plenty of paper towels nearby, along with a MUST HAVE decorating tool- the Thingamagenie. This all-in-one tool allows you to spread icing, pop bubbles, clean up edges and so much more. I have several of them in my tool box just in case, but the great thing about them is that you can sharpen them in a pencil sharpener if the end gets dull. It's genius!

These cookies were multi-step, and I decorated them over the course of 3 evenings:

Day 1- Outline, flood, and let dry overnight.

Day 2- Use projector and two consistencies of icing to outline and flood the mountains, along with writing the words. Helpful hint- it helps to put the cookies next to a fan to set the icing faster when you need it to stay puffy (like the mountains).

Day 3- Paint tips of mountains using Super Gold dust from Truly Mad Plastics. After drying for an hour, they were ready to package and box up for delivery.

For the sake of condensing an already long blog post, I compiled a video that gives a fairly thorough look (hint- it's long!) at the entire process of decorating these cookies. I learned a lot making it, and have much to improve when it comes to video quality, etc. But if you enjoy seeing the process, please let me know and I'll continue to document as time allows.

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by. I hope the post was informative. If you're a budding cookie decorator, please let me know if you learned anything new or have any questions. I'm always happy to help!