Welcome to Cloud 9

Hello everyone and welcome back (or to) my weekly learning project. This week is very exciting as I decided to try something new when it comes to decorating sugar cookies, which is double layering! This means thats I used the usual flooding method when it comes to frosting each cookie, but after it hardened I added a second layer that appears three dimensional compared to the first layer of flooding. The disappointment of the week is that my meringue powder has not arrived in the mail yet, but that set back has just allowed me to use both the same cookie recipe and royal icing recipe as usual. Without the introduction of any new recipes I was able to incorporate my own ideas to further my designs when it comes to presentation. The presentation I find it the most important aspect to myself personally, and is the most rewarding part.

This week I decided to use the cloud cookie cutter since it has more curves that move inward and outward than either of previous cutters (circle and cacti). This week rather than mixing, rolling, and putting the dough into the fridge for one to two hours, I left in the dough in the fridge for forty eight hours to see if it would help the shape of the cookie as well as the flavour from sitting and becoming harder/chilled thoroughly. With that being said, after the dough chilled for an extended period of time I cut the cookies and they were more fragile than usual. It is safe to say that you live and you learn, but as soon as my fingers hit the dough it began to warm resulting in it becoming soft and easier to remove from the cutter.

While the cookies were baking in the oven I whipped up my royal icing (same recipe as my first two attempts) and coloured the icing blue! I was originally going to go with white and add edible glitter but edible glitter is harder to find than one may think! Safe to say another order has been placed on Amazon. So, I went with a beautiful blue colour and the idea to double layer my cookies came into my mind (so not finding glitter worked in my favour). I added the first layer of royal icing to my clouds using the flooding technique and allowed the icing to dry. With the left over icing in the bowl I added an extra cup and a half of powered sugar making it extra thick and controllable and put it into the piping bag and hoped for the best!

My first two cookies were not coming out well for me. I did not cut the hole in the piping bag big enough resulting in the icing coming out stringy and not in the pattern that I was leading the bag in. I decided to cut the bag slightly bigger, but it was the same story. However, third time was the charm and success was mine! At least I had hoped so since my wrists were getting sore from squeezing the piping bag and keeping it steady at the same time. Once I completed my second layer of icing to create dynamic on the clouds, I was happy with five of the designs.

Week three was a creative and fun experience for me and I highly enjoyed the creative process it allowed. Even though there were no new recipes or ingredients, I felt confident within the finalized design and would love to add texture and edible glitter in one of my remaining six weeks! Not only are the cookies delicious but a little bit cute too!

Next week I have a goal to try to do a two toned cookie along with trying to section off different portions on the cookie. If this does not make sense to you, make sure to come back next week to get the full run down! If you want to see sneak peaks of my weekly learning project be sure to follow me on Twitter! If you have not read week one or week two yet I highly suggest you do so, and I would appreciate it very much! I will see you all next week with another new blog post! Thank you for reading, stay warm and take care of your car batteries (hehe)!