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Happy Birthday to me. I just turned 31, and the day I got back from Sri Lanka I couldn't help but order myself a new cookie decorating kit from Martha by Mail. I debated between the cookie kit and the cake kit, and settled on the cookie kit for starters.

The kit comes in a big shiny metal box brimming with colored powders and gels; rock, crystal, and sanding sugars; nonpareils, pastry bag with three(!) tips, and meringue powder. The meringue powder is cool because it helps your icing firm up and set - like the pros. This way you can send iced cookies in the mail, or hang them on a tree with out getting icing everywhere.

I had visions in my mind of elaborately designed sugar cookie butterflies, snowflakes, hummingbirds, and flowers -- which immediately came to a screeching halt the minute I started piping -- apparently you need to walk before you run when it comes to the cookie decorating big leagues. It takes practice to pipe a steady stream of icing onto a tiny cookie, and for those of you with shaky hands, forget it -- every little twitch shows up as a squiggly line.

There are a handful of techniques to use when it comes to decorating cookies. Piping, flooding, flocking, feathering, and wet-on-wet to name a few. I was going to master flooding which is when you outline the cookie with icing, let it dry a bit, and then flood the inside with an even layer of icing. The trick here is to have your icing the right consistency. I should have thinned my icing out a bit more before attempting this because it was too thick (see picture). The term 'flood' implies some sort of fluidity, my icing was the consistency of a the spackling paste construction workers use. It still hardens up, but you will never get that refined smooth surface or foundation that looks so nice in the magazines. All I needed to do was add a bit more water, and everything would have been fine - next time.

The cookies were sturdy, and easy to work with. A receptive canvas for decorating, they didn't crumble or make my icing all crumby when I was frosting them. These aren't necessarily the kind of cookie you want to snack on all day -- ooey-gooey and flavorful they are not. They do provide the ideal foundation for pretty icing though and if you want to play around with this sort of thing these are both great recipes to use. Note: I used meringue powder and not egg whites in the icing.

All-in-all it was a decent first attempt for me. Next time I will dabble a bit with more advance techniques like flocking and feathering.
I was only using one pastry bag this time, and it was a pain to switch colors. If you want to get serious about decorating cookies, stock up on pastry bags - you will need one for each color you intend on using.

As a side note, I took my boyfriend to Roxanne's for his birthday last weekend, it is a fancy 'raw' food restaurant near Mill Valley (just north of San Francisco). I'm working on the next entry which will be one of her raw recipes, and the write up of our experience at Roxanne's.

From: Martha Stewart Cookie Decorating Kit

Royal Icing recipe

Cookie Decorating Kit + Booklet

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