How to Pack Cookies for Shipping

It's taken a long time to work out how to pack my cookies so they not only survive in the post, but also create the best impression when they arrive.

Lacecap Hydrangea Cookies, Disgraceful Piping and a Video

There are many beautiful hydrangea cookies and cupcakes around, but I haven't seen any lacecap versions. I particularly like this kind of hydrangea with its tight little buds in the centre, varying from green to blue (or pink, depending on whether you live in Cornwall or Birmingham. I live in Birmingham. My hydrangeas are mostly pink. I like blue hydrangeas. So I made these cookies blue. It makes me feel like I'm back in Cornwall again).

(See? Pink!)

I frankencookied the basic shape as Glorious Treats did in this great tutorial and I was considering using brush embroidery in the same way, as the effect of the colour over the background is beautiful, but I wanted to have a go at piping actual petals.

I've never actually done this before, apart from one practice at RI roses being taught by the very talented, very patient Karen of Sucre Coeur. But I was slightly hungover at the time after a weekend of cookie debauchery and I'm ashamed to say I never practiced again. And of course you can tell. Just look at the way I pipe in the video - it's a disgrace, and that's after the worst bits have been edited out!

But I think this particular cookie is very forgiving. The overall effect works, even if individual petals are curling up in embarrassment. So here it is, in all its flawed glory:

You will need:

Hydrangea cookies
Green flood royal icing
Purple and blue lustre dusts (I used Rainbow Dust Starlight Purple Planet and Pearl Pacific Blue)
Large and small, dry, food-use only brushes
Stiff pale blue royal icing with petal tip (eg Wilton 104)
Small white sugar pearls
Dark blue and light green thick flood royal icing
Pink lustre dust (I used Sugarflair Shimmer Pink)

1. Flood the flower area in the darker green flood and allow to dry really thoroughly overnight (otherwise the lustre dust will stick and smear).

2. Using the purple and blue lustre dusts, dust the outer area of the green icing in patches.

3. Pipe blue four-petalled flowers around the outer edge, popping a sugar pearl into the centre of each one.

4. Pipe dark blue dots in groups of different sizes in the open centre and between the flowers, with a few smaller ones around the outer edge. Add a few green dots here and there.

5. Flood the leaves with green, and immediately pipe fine light green veins (I used a PME tip 1.5 for the veins).

6. Once the blue petals have dried thoroughly, with a smaller brush, dust the outer edges pink, and the centres purple.

I made this set as an engagement gift, and added a few simple leaves, popping them in a window 'tart' box, wrapped some green garden twine around a few times, and added a tag which was the perfect excuse to use my new Honeycat Cookies stamp. Fairly simple to make, fairly forgiving of poor piping skills, these make a lovely gift. Now I'm thinking I'd like to try some pink ones, after all...

Cookiesaw! A Cookie Garden Jigsaw Puzzle

I wish to introduce a new word to the cookie lexicon: 'cookiesaw'. It's definitely a thing: a cookie array that fits together like a jigsaw, or even using cutters shaped like traditional jigsaw pieces. If I use the word often enough, I shall force it into the cookie consciousness. I have already been hashtagging it all over Instagram like someone who really ought to be a little more embarrassed by the way she behaves in public.

Anyway, I was really excited about this project from the moment I was asked to do it. A cookie set for a jigsaw and gardening enthusiast, to take the place of a cake at his birthday party. All the design elements were requested: greenhouse, favourite plants and ducks, gardening tools, I just had to figure out how to put it all together.

As usual, when something like this comes my way, I do most of my planning as I'm falling asleep, until by the time I have to start making it, I really only do a few small sketches. In fact for this project I scribbled two thumbnails. This sort of design kind of forms itself as I'm piping to be honest.

One other aspect kept me occupied as much as the design though, and that was how to create a jigsaw with enough intricacy, where the pieces fit together tightly. My cookie recipe is a light, crisp shortbread style biscuit (recipe here and cookie baking tips here) but does spread just a little. Not enough to worry about usually but when the shapes need to fit tightly it can be a problem. With this dinosaur cookiesaw I used my microplane, but its flat surface meant I had to keep the curves fairly shallow. So after a little googling I came up with a six inch, coarse 'bastard cut' file much like this one, though searching on ebay will throw up much cheaper options.

It's a small, round, coarse file presumably intended for metal or woodwork. It was cheap and very rough, and perfect. (I did of course give it a long soapy soak, a thorough scrub, and dried off in a hot oven to ensure it was safe for food use first!). In fact it worked even better than I hoped. I simply used it to 'carve' the curves here and there, constantly adjusting and testing until all the pieces fit as tightly as I could make it.

A plain base of white flood, carefully piped right to the edges of the cookies, and I was ready to go.

I didn't take a photograph of the painted base layer unfortunately, but I came to do it just as Sugar Pearls Bakes and Cakes published her final Cookie Connection tutorial, and it was the techniques in her tutorial I used to create the background colour, including the small drops of vodka, which is really effective! I simply used a large brush and moved from light blue down to dark green, dabbing and mottling, and adding further layers where necessary.

I only had to mix two colours of icing - light green and orange! The behind the scenes moments when I'm most proud of my planning skills usually involve keeping mixing to an absolute minimum. I reckoned I could get all the greens I wanted with that one base plus handpainting on top, and the whole variety of tomato colour starting with the orange icing.

I used a pico projector to pipe the greenhouse shape, but everything else was done by eye. I had a collection of photographs of the specified plants and ducks to refer to, and an idea for where I wanted the actual flowers, trusting that the foliage could be piped around to draw the whole design together.

When it came to painting, again I referred to the photographs of flowers, but I tried to ensure that each colour would complement the ones on either side. So obviously starting with red and orange tomatoes, I followed with yellow irises, then peachy-pink roses, deep rose pink camellias with violet aquilegias sprouting through them. The magnolias I kept pale against the sky.

I used the same painting technique as in my Robin cookie video: starting with basic blocks of pale colour, blending and adding darker, finer elements on top. I finished with a few garden tools here and there, subtle, blending into the background.

And then came the best bit - I had made royal icing transfers of bees, ladybirds and butterflies which I attached with enough RI 'glue' to give a little 'lift' so these elements were slightly raised. I usually ship my cookies so have to avoid doing this, so it was lovely to be able to add a third dimension to this set. A simple border of gold rectangular cookies, with one or two stray insects finished off the project.

My Thoughts on Royal Icing (apparently I have a lot)

I've had several queries lately about my recipes for icing and cookies, so I thought I'd create a couple of posts to direct people to.