It’s been awhile since I’ve created a blog, so I thought it’s time for me to sit down and take a break from cookie making and instead focus on helping other cookie decorators sort out some of their cookie decorating problems. I’ll be creating a series of troubleshooting blogs, so watch this space for more cookie decorating problems explained. Here I will be discussing how to tell when your icing is over-mixed.
How do you make your royal icing? When I first started making cookies in 2013, I looked everywhere for a good royal icing recipe. I would find one recipe, try it out a couple times and then realise it wasn’t exactly what I had hoped. Either the taste didn’t hit the spot, or it dried too quickly while I was working with it, or didn’t dry at all! If it didn’t dry at all, it became obvious that something was wrong! The icing seemed quite thick and marshmallow-y before I got it to the right consistency, but once it was the right consistency, it seemed fine to use for flooding my cookies. But there I was wrong, because if it’s been over-mixed, it takes MUCH longer for the icing to dry- sometimes several days! And it’s hard to tell how long to mix your royal icing for- many recipes suggest mixing for up to ten minutes! I have always found this to be way too long. Or if you lose track of the time you’ve been mixing, you can also easily over-mix, which is why it’s important to babysit your royal icing while it is being mixed in the mixer. You need to keep an eye on it and make sure that you only mix it until it looks thick and “spiky”. It’s not an exact science, but once you know what to look for with your finished royal icing, then you’ll get it right every time!
If you’ve been looking for a good royal icing recipe, I’ve got you covered! You can buy my royal icing recipe here. And feel free to message me with any questions you have about my recipe; I’m always happy to help!
]]>It’s been awhile since I’ve created a blog, so I thought it was finally time for me to sit down and take a break from cookie making and instead focus on helping other cookie decorators sort out some of their cookie decorating problems. I’ll be creating a series of troubleshooting blogs, so watch this space for more cookie decorating problems explained.
First up, I’d like to discuss colour over-saturation, or color over-saturation as my American counterparts would call it. It recently happened to me with a set of cookies I was planning to ship to my family in the states. I had dyed the icing a deep blue, but obviously had gone overboard, as when the icing dried it was a lovely dark shade, but had a bit of a crystallised or sparkly look to it. As I was packaging up the cookies for shipping, I picked up a cookie by gripping the edge of it as I usually do and the entire sheet of icing just popped right off! I was a little bit stunned! That has never happened to me before, although I have seen it discussed on several cookie decorating forums previously. Some people believe it has to do with using a very dry cookie, while others think the problem is due to over mixing the icing. These are possibilities! But in my particular case, it is certain the cause of cookie and icing separating is icing that is oversaturated with colouring. If I had wanted to save the cookie, I would have used a new batch of icing (likely in a less intense shade of blue!) to glue the icing back onto the cookie. In this case, since the cookies were only for family and not for an order, I just threw the cookie away. I suppose we could have eaten it, but the intense blue would definitely have been evident on our teeth and tongue and might not have tasted very pleasant, as some icing colouring can taste bitter.
So in future, I know now that I really need to mix my deep and dark colours up ahead of time, so that they have time to develop and I don't end up oversaturing the icing and causing problems. I prefer the Roxy and Rich fondust colourings for my darker shades, especially the red. These come in powder form, so I like to mix the powders with water first, and then use that coloured water to thin my icing to get it the right colour and consistency for my specific decorating purposes.
While this isn’t a problem that many cookie decorators may come across, I found it to be an interesting situation, worth sharing here.
Do you have any other questions regarding royal icing and cookie decorating? Email me at Courtney@cookiesbycourtney.co.uk and I’ll do my best to answer them either directly, or in another blog.
Happy Baking!
]]>If you’re looking to make lots of Easter egg shaped cookies, we offer a very useful Egg Multi Cutter design which allows you to cut 6 eggs at once! We also offer several other Easter cookie cutter designs that you may find useful, including Punky’s Easter Bunny foot cutter, rabbit head, carrot and even Punky’s Vase of Flowers, which makes for a very cute vase of Easter eggs on sticks!
Have any other cookie ideas for Easter and need a cutter made? Contact us and we can work with you to create the Easter cookie cutter designs you’ve been imagining. Happy baking!
]]>This year for Mother’s Day, a lovely plaque that says Mum is the best, or even some cookie flowers would make a lovely gift set. I purchase a lot of my cookie boxes for gift sets from Elite Packaging, where they offer several sizes of cookie gift box with clear tops so that you can easily see the cookies inside. Often when you see my cookies in boxes, these are the boxes I am using. Typically you can fit two of my large cookies in their “large” sized cookie box. Package with some food safe paper shred, or glassine padding, and you have a lovely Mother’s Day gift box, perfect for posting. In case you wondered, Elite packaging also offers the perfect post boxes for shipping your cookie boxes.
Now for ideas for Mother’s Day! Check out the flower shaped cookie cutters I have created - these would make a lovely collection of cookies in a box for Mothering Sunday. I also have a great plaque that could say lots of different things, including “best mum ever”, with some flowers piped on the sides.
Have any ideas for Mother’s Day cookie cutters that you’d like for us to create? Get in touch by contacting us here. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!
Happy Baking!
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First, we have the Valentine’s Day gnome. To be honest, this gnome is a very versatile cookie cutter and can be used for any holiday, not just Valentine’s Day. He can be holding a candy cane at Christmas, a heart for Valentine’s Day or you could even use him for Mother’s Day! Make sure you check out the listing for this cutter to give you ideas on the silly puns that you can use with this gnome cookie cutter for Valentine’s Day!
Next we have the two avocados, side by side. These cute green fruits are nestled up next to each other, having a cuddle. So “let’s avocuddle” seems like the most obvious pun here. If you can think of anymore, please let me know in the comments. I’m always happy to get new ideas, especially for Valentine’s Day!
These are just a couple of the designs we have created for Valentine’s Day cookie cutters, but we have a couple more up our sleeves. Stay tuned for my next blog to learn more!
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Firstly, we have the “sending you love” design with the heart with wings! This is a relatively simple design but very cute, especially for use during quarantine, or lockdown, or whatever stage of pandemic we are currently slogging through.
Next we have the eggplant, or aubergine and the peach. These cheeky designs are emojis that have alternative meanings… I won’t explain- if you know, you know! Great as a two cutter set that is extremely suggestive, but still cute! For this particular design, I flooded each cookie with either light purple or light orange, and then used a darker airbrush colour around the edges to give dimension.
Another option is the “I like your package” design, which was inspired by some very talented cookies i saw online. Great for the Amazon parcel addict, who you are married to, or have been dating, or just have a crush on…. Heck, i guess it would work for pretty much anyone that you like! A really easy design to add to your Valentine’s Day options.
If you have any questions about decorating these designs and would like some guidance, or images to help you decorate, please feel free to contact me! I’m always here to help and love talking about cookie decorating with my fellow cookiers.
Thanks for reading, and happy decorating!
]]>Or maybe fish and chips aren’t your thing (or maybe it looks like they’ll take too long to decorate!). Another option is simple heart shapes with sprinkles or airbrushed designs. We offer this simple chubby heart shape, and have several different Valentine’s Day stencils that would be really great to use to make these heart cookie cutter shapes really stand out.
Do you have a great idea for a new Valentine’s Day cookie cutter? Contact us here and we can create something for you!
]]>Our cutter options for Valentine’s Day include naughts and crosses, chocolate boxes, lips, lip stencils, hearts in all different styles, and lots of great cutters that go in the “we go together like” theme. My favourite is “we go together like gin and tonic” with perfectly sized gin and tonic cookie cutters. I would recommend buying the large size of these particular cutters, because they’re long and thin, which can often make the cutters seem small overall.
If you have an idea for Valentine’s Day cutters, please do let me know and we can work on creating a design for you!
]]>So this year, I decided my cookie options for Valentine’s Day should be a nod to my childhood in America! Most my cookie offerings are mini cookies, and one set includes what was always my favorite part of Valentine’s Day- a box of chocolates! Although my offering is a cookie that looks like a box of chocolates. If chocolate is the way to a woman’s heart, then a cookie that looks like a box of chocolates will definitely make her happy!
For my valentine cookie options, you can choose my traditional vanilla or the lovely chocolate brownie cookie flavor. I’m not sure I’d be able to choose, as they are both my favourites and both are loved by my customers.
Check out my valentine cookie options here! And if you’re interested, order soon as my quantities are very limited!
Also, if you live near CT162FB and you’d like to collect your order, pop me a message and I can send you an invoice that doesn’t include shipping.
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Along with our pencil cutters, we also offer a ruler cutter and stencil set designed by another of our talented customers! This would go beautifully in a cookie set with the pencils, and would make an excellent end of year gift for a teacher.
]]>These cookies were not for the royal couple, but instead they’ll be enjoyed by a group of friends who are watching the wedding on TV.
Several of these designs are from Cath Kidston’s Royal Wedding design. They are my hand-painted interpretation of this design, as well as a couple other designs I have found online.
Many congratulations to the happy Royal couple!
]]>For the black stripes and polka dots, I used Kroma colour black airbrush color. It can be challenging to avoid overspray while you’re airbrushing, especially black on white. But thanks to some fantastic videos by Stencibelle, I’ve learned that getting the stencil as close to the cookie as possible and slowly and carefully airbrushing with a thin stream of color is the best way to go.
I hope you had a wonderful Birthday Linda, and enjoyed your special birthday cookies!
]]>There are are so many elements of Alice in Wonderland to choose from, and I wanted to choose them all! Instead I chose a few elements that I thought went together well.
After doing some cookie research online, I saw that I would need a harlequin design stencil, so requested that my husband use our Cameo Silhouette for the first time to make me one. He did a beautiful job on his first try! We will be adding this stencil (as well as many more!) to our store soon!
We will also be adding the teapot and stacked teacup cookie cutters to our store.
Thank you Laura, for trusting my creativity to create these Alice in Wonderland Cookies for your sweet little Alice’s celebration!
]]>My lovely friend Sherry requested these cookies for Courtney and Andrew to help them celebrate their wedding day. The flowers are based on an image Sherry sent me of the spring flowers in the bride’s bouquet. These were done with royal icing flowers and hand-painted flags.
Wishing Courtney and Andrew many congratulations on their marriage.❤️
The cookie cutters used in this set were entirely made by us!
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I hope you’re enjoying this Saturday morning with a cup of coffee, relaxing in the sun! We’ve had a busy week filled with cookie decorating and prepping to get this website live, and I think a cup of coffee on the patio might be the most I get done today. Enjoy your weekend, and thanks for stopping by!
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I'm so pleased our new store is open and ready for business. It's taken a while to get to this point but I'm so proud of where we've got to and I look forward to helping you with all your cookie cutter needs.
Thanks for visiting!
Courtney
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