Floral Watercolour Sugar Cookies - Video Tutorial

Sugar cookies are the perfect blank canvases to express your creativity. There are so many different techniques to learn. It always amazes me what you can do with some royal icing and gel food colouring. Just scrolling through #sugarcookies on Instagram you will see beautiful works of art by sugar cookie artists.  The Painted Box, Shop the Whisk, and Hello Baked are just a few masters of the craft. Their cookies are always intricate and completely stunning. They give me something to work towards. One of my new favourite techniques that I have been playing around with is painting with gel colours on flooded sugar cookies. Much like a watercolour painting. 

When painting sugar cookies I use Wilton brand gel colours, a variety of small clean food only paint brushes that I purchased from my local craft store and either water or some form of clear alcohol (such as white rum or vodka).  While painting on sugar cookies is similar in technique to water colour painting there are definite differences. Royal icing can only take so much moisture before it starts to crumble and create holes or bubbles within the frosting. This makes it difficult to layer your colour or build up a design on the cookie. I find that using a clear alcohol typically produces better results then using water as it evaporates faster from the cookie. 

If you cookie is still slightly sticky from the gel colours after it has dried lightly dust cookies with corn starch or powdered sugar. While this will dull the colour slightly it will prevent the colours from being spread on your cookie ruining all of your hard work. 

Floral Watercolour Sugar Cookies

Directions:

You'll Need:

• Sugar Cookies flooded with Royal Icing and allowed to dry for 12-24 hours 

• Various Gel Colours - I use Wilton

• Toothpicks

• Paint pallet or plate

• Clean, food only paint brushes 

• Water, Clear Alcohol or Extract 

• Cornstarch/Powdered Sugar, Opitional 

• Using a clean toothpick, place a small amount of each gel colour onto your pallet or plate
• Add a couple of drops of water/extract/clear alcohol to each colour until desired paint thinness is reached 
• Paint desired designs onto flooded sugar cookies, allow cookies to dry for 4-6 hours
• If needed, dust cornstarch/powdered sugar onto dried cookie design to absorb any wet gel colour 

Valentine's Day Heart Sugar Cookies

“Simple and sweet, pink and white Valentine’s Day heart sugar cookies video decorating tutorial.”

I can't believe that Valentine's Day is just around the corner. It is hard to believe that we are already almost in mid February. This year is already flying by! Do you have plans for Valentine's Day? My boyfriend and I typically keep things pretty low key for Valentine's Day. In fact, we hardly ever celebrate it on the actual day. I love the idea of celebrating Valentine’s day with your girlfriends. It has been fun seeing all of the Galentine's Day parties that are popping up on Pinterest & Instagram. Perhaps next year I will plan a Galentine's day brunch for me and my girl friends. How cute would these cookies be on a dessert table?

I kept these sugar cookies fairly simple using a wet on wet icing technique. Which means that I flooded the cookies then immediately added more royal icing on top so it would blend into the flood icing and dry as an even layer. This allows you to swirl or drag the icing creating pretty designs on your cookie. Don’t be afraid to play around with it. Personally, I like the simple designs best with just a line or simple border of hearts. Decorating with royal icing can be frustrating at first, especially if you don’t have the right consistency of icing. It makes all the difference between an enjoyable decorating experience and a frustrating one.  Personally, if my cookies are going to be all one colour, I tend to use the same consistency of frosting for both outlining and filling/flooding my cookies. This means that I don’t have to mix up multiple batches of icing or fill multiple piping bags. I like to use a 10 second icing - when a knife is dragged through the frosting it should take 10 seconds for the line to disappear. This video is a great explanation.

Valentine's Day Heart Sugar Cookies

You'll Need: 

• Sugar Cookies
• 10 Second Royal Icing 
• Pink & Red Gel Colours* 
• Piping bags, couplers & Tips*
• Tooth picks 

* I used Wilton Red & Pink Gel Colours and Wilton Tips 2 & 3. 

Gilmore Girls Sugar Cookies

“In anticipation of the new mini series I decided to rewatch the series for the upteenth time and came up with unique sugar cookies that I believe embody the spirit of the Gilmore’s and the wonderful world of Stars Hollow. I hope you like them!”

Today is the day!!! I have been anxiously awaiting for the Gilmore Girls reboot since the rumours started.  To say that I am OBSESSED with Gilmore Girls is an understatement. It is the first show I ever binge watched (on DVD) and have since re-watched it over and over again (I think I've seen the entire series over 10 times). Gilmore Girls is comfort TV for me - when I am feeling sick or sad I immediately turn on one of my favourite episodes.   In high school my besties and I used to hang out in each others basements watching Gilmore Girls and eating copious amounts of junk food. From pizza to ice cream to candy to cookies we had it all! When we finished the series we started watching some of the movies mentioned throughout. We were (and maybe still are) serious die hard fans.

#TeamJess

One of the things I love most about Gilmore Girls is that no matter how many times I watch it I never seem to get sick of it. Each time I watch I relate to a different character is a new way. The first times I watched the series I was decidedly Team Jess. He challenged Rory, had an air of mystery about him and was your typical bad boy.  However, now I am leaning towards Team Logan. Don't get me wrong I would be happy if she ended up with Jess but there is something about Logan that I think makes him perfect for Rory - the ending of season 7 aside (it doesn't really count anyways - does it?). 

Watching the Gilmore Girl's Reunion 

While I'd like to space out the reunion episodes and not binge watch them. Letting the the excitement of a new episode live on just a little bit longer, I don't think I will have the will power. I can’t seem to sit down and watch just one Gilmore Girl's episode. I have the girls coming over tonight to watch Gilmore Girls the way we used in our pjs with lots of junk food and of course these sugar cookies!

Will you be watching the Gilmore Girl's Revival? Let me know in the comments below!