So we're already on Day 7! It's officially been a week of Fun Fall projects! If you want to start back at Day 1, click HERE.
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Today's project was inspired by Loren of The Baking Sheet. She made the most adorable spider cookies and I wanted to try making them myself.
First, I baked a batch of No Fail Sugar Cookies. This recipe has honestly never failed me! It's the only one I use when I make sugar cookies. I follow the directions exactly, but remember in THIS POST when I talked about rolling and refrigerating the dough? The same rules apply here! I make the dough, roll a chunk of it between two sheets of wax (or parchment) paper, and then refrigerate overnight. The next day, I cut out the shapes (in this case I just used a knife to cut rectangles), lay them on parchment on a baking sheet, and refrigerate again for at least an hour before baking.
While they are baking, I gather up what I'll need to decorate. I've started to use less and less disposable bags for decorating with royal icing. I find that when I make a batch of cookies I go through five or more bags, depending on how many colors I use. It's getting to be too expensive - besides the fact that it's soooo wasteful! I've been starting to experiment with using bottles instead and I really like them. I took this photo with the bags, but once I started mixing colors, I decided I was going with only bottles. I'm glad I did, too. I need to get more CK bottles like the ones below. They have couplers built into the cap so you can put your own icing tip on them! They're perfect!
Once I had everything ready, I started to mix the royal icing. It's really important that you are organized when you work with royal icing. It hardens and crusts really quickly and, once it does, it's ruined!
I always use a royal icing recipe from cake central. Just like the No Fail Sugar Cookie recipe, Antonia 74's royal icing recipe is my "go-to." Here I'm adding the confectioners sugar to the meringue powder mixture.
Once I've made the icing, I divide it up and color it. Today I'm using just orange and black. I'm using a big squeeze bottle from Wilton for the orange. They are for their Candy Melts, but I use them now for royal icing. They don't fit a decorating tip, so they can only be used for jobs that have little to no detail required. (And this is why, after filling the bottle, I switched the black to the smaller CK bottle I showed you in the picture at the top! I needed a #1 tip for the webbing detail.)
I outlined the cookies in orange.
Then I filled them in.
The last thing is to add the spider web and the spider in black. Like I said earlier, I used a #1 tip for the black. To be honest, I HATE #1 tips. I avoid them whenever possible. They clog sooooo quickly and cause me a lot of grief when I use them. PME makes #1.5 tips that I want to try. I think I'll be able to create the same detail without the major issues I seem to have. (I've already asked the jolly fat man for 1.5 tips…Hopefully I'll be able to show them to you in the new year!)
These are really easy to make but it turns out to be a pretty time-consuming project. Whenever I decorate cookies, I expect to have cookies and icing bottles spread around the kitchen for days! It can be a little overwhelming, but I just love the end result!
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Omg, will you mail me one? lol
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