Do you struggle with royal icing consistencies but still want to make lovely cookies for your family? An all in one icing consistency may be your best friend. If you're just starting out, this consistency, plus simple designs, is your ticket to a lovely sugar cookie spread. I normally prefer decorating with multiple consistencies, but there are times when I opt for an all-in-one. I made these fall cookies with just one consistency.
I consider an all-in-one decorating consistency to be about 15-20 seconds. This means that if you drag a knife through your icing while it is still in the bowl, the line it creates will settle within 15-20 seconds. I always tell my beginner students that it's better if their icing is slightly thicker, vs too thin.
For the colors: Note that I exclusively use Chefmaster gel colors, but whatever you have is fine, as long as they are gel and not the stuff you buy at the grocery store.
Yellow - very small drop of golden yellow gel color.
Orange - sunset orange, plus a teensy bit of brown. (See my coloring guide blog post for an easy way to add brown).
Red - Super red, plus a teensy bit of brown.
Brown - buckeye brown, plus a little bit of yellow to warm it up.
You will need about one ounce of icing per cookie. For instance, if you were making a dozen cookies, 3 of each design, you would need about 3 ounces of each color.
If you would like to shop our STL files, they can be found here.
You can find the hand cutting templates for these shapes here.
Here is the Youtube video for these cookies, but scroll on for the full walk through.
To prepare your tipless bags, clip the ends of the bags so the opening is about 1-2 millimeters wide. Start small, because you can always make the hole bigger.
Keep a damp paper towel near you to clean off the tips of your bags and your scribe.
Let's start simply with our apple cookie. Using the red icing, outline the shape of the apple. Notice it's kind of heart shaped at the top, and be sure to leave room for the leaf.
Using the brown icing, add a stem that is fatter at the top, and skinnier where it connects to the apple. Add a leaf with yellow icing. A simple apple!
Let's do our leaf next. It looks more complicated than it is, so just be sure to break it down into small manageable steps. Start by piping just the center stem. Then add 6 stems connected to the main stem for each of the little leaves. Outline all 7 of the leaf shapes. Flood each leaf shape one by one. Fill with the yellow icing, then add brown dots to the icing while it is still wet. As long as your leaf outlines don't touch each other, you can flood them immediately.
Start the pumpkin by outlining the orange first. Again, this looks more complicated than it is, but just take it one step at a time. I find that if I start outlining the outer edges, then work my way in, it goes smoothly. Make sure to outline the stem in brown. If you struggle with this part, you can use your scribe to scratch guidelines into the cookie. Or you can always use an edible marker.
To flood the pumpkin, flood sections that do not touch each other first. Let those crust for a few minutes, then flood in the back 2 sections.
Let those initial pumpkin sections crust for about 10-15 minutes, then flood the remaining sections. Once those have crusted for 10-15 minutes, flood in the brown stem.
This scarf is our most complicated design, but I believe in you! Start by squeezing some brown icing onto the cookie, and spreading it flat. You can use a scribe like the one in the picture, or a butter knife works well too. Let this dry before you add the outlines. If you pipe the outlines onto the wet background icing, they will run together since they are the same consistency.
Add the scarf outlines as shown. It might be easiest to do the middle cross section first, then everything else can kind of fall into place.
To make the plaid design on the scarf, first flood one section in brown. While this is still wet, add two horizontal lines in orange. Add a yellow horizontal line in between the orange lines. Then add three vertical yellow lines. Finally, add three vertical orange lines. Go slow, and remember you can make any design you want. Let this first section crust for 10-15 minutes before moving forward.
Next, flood the bottom right and the top left sections following the same pattern as before. Let those sections crust for 10-15 minutes, then flood the final section the same way.
Whew! That cookie was a lot of steps!
Finally, let your cookies dry, then open a window and snap some photos!
As always, thanks for talking cookies with me!
-Savannah
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