Category Archives: EDTC 300

Hello reader, hello sunshine, hello warmer weather! I hope you are all thriving and have been taking in the beautiful weather over the past week as the sunshine and blue skies have come out to play. For my fellow bloggers that live in the Regina area, this means that opening day of Milky Way Ice-Cream will soon be arriving, and I cannot express how excited I am for a cookie dough twister. For those of you who have never been to Milky Way or even heard of the spectacular summer time ice-cream shop, then I am here to say if you ever get the chance to go, GO! With that being said, my learning project this week was highly inspired by all things sunshine, springtime, and ice-cream! Welcome to my learning project week number five!

If you have never visited my blog before, then you have never been introduced to my topic which is making sugar cookies in all kinds of shapes, as well as attempting to master the art of sugar cookie decorating with royal icing. Last week I worked with a new ingredient as well as a mermaid tail cookie cutter. If you are interested in reading about last weeks adventures, or even any before that, they are all listed under my EDTC 300, Learning Project tab or you can click right here for last weeks post specifically. Without further ado, let us begin this weeks decorating eleganza extravaganza!

This week I used the same sugar cookie recipe that I have used throughout week two to my present week of baking cookies, however, I decided once again to try a new royal icing recipe that I was directly linked to from my trusty cookie recipe. My cookie cutter of choice for this week was an ice-cream cone which helped me decide that I wanted the tops of the cookies to range in different pastel and spring colours. Skipping the baking process this week as it all went smoothly without any problem, I allowed for the cookies to cool and the decorating began. I am visiting my mom at the moment which means I had to pack all of my baking necessities, yet I still forgot the piping bags which means I had to get a little bit crafty and cut the corners off of ziplock sandwich bags. Once I followed the instructions and the recipe for the new royal icing I divided the mixture into four bowls. One quarter pink, another quarter blue, and the last two were split into a green/yellow and then a tan portion for the cone. I put the tan coloured icing into a ziplock bag to begin piping and could tell by the consistency that it was going to be too watery. This was slightly upsetting since I know which icing recipe works, yet I tried for a different one. I moved forward and added more icing sugar to the other three colours hoping to thicken it enough to stay on the cookie without having the icing flood off of the sides and onto the counter.

After the cone section of the cookie dried I went in with pastel blue icing, covered the top portion of the cookie, and then to make it a little bit more visually appealing I added sprinkles for added texture and colour. I repeated these steps with both pink and green/yellow icing, added two different kinds of sprinkles, and the final result was both cute and delicious. This batch of cookies was much larger than the batches I had recently created, so I ate one blue ice-cream cone, packed up the other thirty eight cookies, and drove down to my summer job and left them in the staff room so that others are able to enjoy my creations as well! I have decided to stick with my old royal icing recipe using cream of tar-tar and egg whites despite being so excited to use meringue powder due to the fact that it is thicker, and does not run off the sides of my cookies.

I hope that you all enjoyed reading about my learning project this week, as every week is like stepping into a new adventure and learning about new do’s and do not’s in the baking world. Go outside, enjoy the sunshine, get your favourite Starbucks drink and take the day head on everyday! Spring is here to play, and so am I, I hope you are too! I will see you all next week with another update. If you are wanting to read some extra content here is my first blog post based on my learning project, and here is my Twitter account! See you all again soon!

Welcome back or welcome to another week and another update on my learning project which consists of making sugar cookies and decorating the final product with royal icing! In my last learning project post Welcome to Cloud 9 I explained how I was waiting for my meringue powder to arrive so that I would be able to create a different recipe and consistency with my royal icing, while becoming impatient for my Amazon order I went to Bulk Barn and behold, they got meringue powder in! The adventure for my ingredient has officially come to an end and I have a feeling you are all as relieved as I was since you no longer have to hear about it (for now). This blog post will be a little bit different since I will not be explaining my learning project, rather you will be able to watch it here on YouTube and read about the video editor I used called Animoto!

Not only is there a blog post from me this week, but there are also two videos to go along with it (you only need to watch one as they both contain the same elements, just a different editing software was used for the videos). I first used iMovie to lay out my idea, incorporated my favourite non-copyright music, and had some fun with the project. If you wish to watch the iMovie version it is right here. However, I have been using iMovie to edit my YouTube videos for over a year now so I went on an adventure to find another video editing software that I had never used before, and that is when I found Animoto. I spent hours trying to figure out how to upload videos onto Animoto and finally resorted to looking up other videos on how to use the video editor, sounds ironic but it worked, a special thank you goes out to Sally from How to Create a Video with Animoto. After I finally figured out how to use the new editing software and explore the website as a whole. I compiled a personal list of the positives of using Animoto as a classroom tool and also how to get around in the quickest/easiest way.

First off, if you prefer to use videos rather than pictures when using Animoto, the easiest way to put them into the website is to download each video off of your phone or camera, then transfer them onto your desktop, then enter your desktop through Animoto, click the video you would like to use on your slides, and then enter them in. It is easier than it sounds and after you do it once you will be flying through the next videos you would like to upload. Now, if you are only interested in using photos it is much faster as you just download them straight onto your laptop, open Animoto, and then download them straight onto your slides. All of your photos and videos will be shown on the right hand side of your screen and you are able to drag each individual file onto your preferred slide. Once you have them all in the order you desire you can add text, a border, or even layer other images and videos onto the same slide. I did not personally attempt the layering strategy but it would just be as easy as dragging two individual files onto one slide once you have chosen the correct layout to do so.

Another tip I have for using Animoto for the first time is choosing a template that has already been created. There are dozens of outlines to choose from. The options range from different aesthetics, colours, topics, and you can even choose a blank canvas. After you have clicked on the slide you have full range of control when it comes to the videos/pictures used, colours pallets, text fonts, and borders. As stated earlier, you have full creative control when choosing a template, even though the outline is there to guide you and lay out different ideas for you, you are free to change the slides appearance and move around both the text and images. Once you have completed your project Animoto has a wide range of non-copyright music to chose from, all you have to do is click the song name on the left hand side of your screen in the music library to listen to it, if you like the song press the add button to add it on top of your video! Lastly, if you are wanting to upload the video to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or even email it to someone then click on the export option in the right hand corner of the screen and all of the options are open to you. Once you have clicked your preferred route of upload it will automatically upload within two to three minutes and you are all set. Your work even automatically saves for you so that you are able to visit it again later in your library!

When it comes down to applying the tool Animoto into the classroom, I would recommend it to both future and current educators as well as use it as a tool for myself. I defiantly see this version of editing software as an application for the teacher to use rather than the students. The reasoning behind this is Animoto is slightly difficult for students in elementary school to use. The uploading to different areas of both your computers documents and the slides provided by Animoto may be both challenging and frustrating especially for young children. I am in the elementary school program so this would not be a software I would allow my own students to use, but rather for the teachers to use on their own to bring something different and intriguing to their lessons. I find Animoto especially useful for the online classroom world as you would either be able to share your creation over zoom to your students or link it in an email to send to their parents. The layouts that Animoto provides would be beneficial when creating an informative based video on either an event or upcoming information within their school or classroom. Animotos can be altered to hold the information necessary and photos/videos you took yourself to bring a fun and informative video that both the student and parent would be interested in. Unless you are willing to pay for the professional version of Animoto, you will unfortunately be stuck with non-HD videos and a water mark in your bottom right hand corner. If these two negatives do not bother you, then feel free to give it a try both within your personal and educational lifestyles. This was not a big downside and can be overlooked by the user.

Thank you for reading this weeks learning project blog post, this post was created to inform you, the reader, of the editing software Animoto as well as some tips and tricks I learned along the way. If you are wanting to watch my own Animoto based on the topic of my confectionary creations, I will link it again here! Thank you all for visiting my blog and reading my post, I hope that you enjoyed it and I will write again next week with another update! Stay safe and healthy.

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)!

Hello everybody and welcome back to my second week of learning how to bake delicious sugar cookies and decorate with royal icing! Earlier this week before I began the mixing, cutting, baking, and decorating process for this weeks project, I ran a poll on Twitter and asked all of you which design you would like to see for this week. For week one I used a simple circle cookie cutter, this week I still wanted to keep it simple but add a cookie cutter with a more diverse pattern. The cookie cutter options that I incorporated in the poll were of the following shapes: a cloud, cacti, and a mermaids tail. With sixty four percent of the vote, cacti won!

If you read my post from week one, Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing, you may remember that the recipe I used ended in failure. The cookies did have one positive as they kept their assigned shape, but when tasting the cookies the positive outlook went out the window and I was left with forty unpleasant baked dough disks. The cookies reminded me of an old baking soda flavour, almost as though the dough was stale even after using all fresh ingredients. This week my main objective was to find a recipe that not only tasted amazing but also kept its shape, was easy to roll out, and had a smooth consistency. After a quick text conversation with my mom about the sugar cookie recipe failure, she sent me a link to a sugar cookie recipe titled The Best Sugar Cookies that one of her coworkers had previously used, and I am happy to announce that it was a victory!

I began the process with setting out all of my ingredients and then in two separate bowls I combined the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients. I followed the recipe as precisely as possible as I wanted the finished product to not only look pretty but also be edible this time around. Once the ingredients were combined into one large bowl, I kneaded the dough into a smooth ball and then divided the dough into two halves.

Once the dough was halved I placed each portion onto a piece of parchment paper, rolled it out to be around a quarter inch thick, moved the dough onto two baking sheets, and placed both trays into the fridge for two hours. I am also happy to report that this week I purchased a real rolling pin so I no longer needed to roll my dough with an empty bath and body works candle. During the time frame that the cookies were chilling in the fridge I reread the recipe over six times just to ensure that I had not made a mistake (and I also went to the gym hoping that the cookies would turn out and I could eat several of them that evening).

Once the dough was completely chilled I took out the trays and began to cut the dough sheets into cacti shapes. Once complete I moved each individual cookie onto another baking sheet and placed them into the oven at 425 degrees for eleven minutes. As they baked I used the same recipe as last week for the royal icing as I know that it works well. I have ordered meringue powder off of amazon (so that I am able to try another royal icing recipe and method in the upcoming weeks) since Bulk Barn, Walmart, and the Co-op grocery store do not carry it due to Covid-19 and the products manufacturer. I added in a couple drops of lime green food colouring and one drop of teal food colouring to the icing mixture to make a smooth and vibrant green. The eleven minute timer came to an end, I pulled the baking sheet out of the oven, and transferred them onto a cooling rack for twenty minutes.

To end off my second week of my sugar cookie and royal icing learning project, I got to finally complete my favourite part of the whole process which is decorating each cookie. I decided to decorate nine cookies again this week, scooping the icing into piping bags and dispersing the mixture onto the cactus cookies. Once the base portion of the icing was dried I went in with another layer of icing to add lines for texture, or on other cookies I applied some magenta coloured icing to create flowers. Once again I allowed them to dry and am happy to annouce that I was thrilled with the taste and texture of both the cookie itself and the icing, as well as the way the icing dried on top of the cookie.

Next week I will be using the same sugar cookie recipe, but a new cookie cutter will be introduced as well as a new royal icing recipe! If you would like to participate in the choosing of next weeks cookie cutter you can follow me on Twitter! I will see you all back here next week with another learning project update! Thank you for reading!

Hello everyone and welcome to my weekly learning project based on learning how to perfect sugar cookies and flood royal icing.

Ever since last year when I was scrolling through Pinterest and discovered the world of decorating sugar cookies with royal icing, I have been interested in learning (and becoming pretty successful) in decorating each individual cutout. Not only is the end result fascinating but one can also become the ‘cool friend’ that shows up to Christmas dinners and birthday parties with themed, smooth, and creative cookies! However, I had never made a sugar cookie before alongside the fact that I knew absolutely nothing about royal icing and how it works. Upon further research (Google, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok) I had come across do’s and don’ts, successful and unsuccessful recipes, dozens of ways to make ‘The best cut-out sugar cookies‘ and ‘perfect royal icing‘, and watching endless videos of others decorating their own creations.

Ultimately a few hours later I found myself in Bulk Barn purchasing icing bags, food coloring, and nine different cookie cutters. Once I returned home I began with a recipe I found on YouTube titled Best Sugar Cookie Recipe for Cut Out Cookies, which (spoiler alert) ended up in the garbage due to the fact that it ended in crumbs rather than a smooth ball of dough. So, I moved onto the next recipe that I found on Pinterest called The Best Cut Out Sugar Cookies which officially landed me a victory (at least for the moment). I mixed, kneaded, rolled (with an old bath and body works candle that had been emptied since I forgot to purchase a rolling pin), cut, and placed my dough onto the baking sheet and into the oven, they went for ten minutes. The dough did not spread resulting in the circles I had previously cut in the dough to still be in their perfect shape.

While the cookies were cooling I made my royal icing mixture (by following a YouTube video called How to Make Cookie Icing Three Ways) and decided upon using the first option displayed in the video that called for cream of tartar since I was unsuccessful in finding meringue powder anywhere in my city. After the icing was complete I added in a drop of red food colouring to create a light pink colour, put the mixture into the piping bag, and began to ice my cookies! Icing the completely cooled cookies was the highlight of the entire experience for me as it was fun, worked on my first attempt, and was satisfying as it flooded the top layer of the cookie. Although, I would like to try different royal icing recipes since it took about half an hour to completely harden which I know is longer than it should take.

Now that the cookie and icing process was complete it was time for a taste test which can be described in the kindest of words, was horrible, and tasted like dry baking soda. The icing was sweet and enjoyable but the flavour of the cookies themselves was not victorious.

Moving forward my plan is to find the perfect sugar cookie recipe with trial and error in mind, try a new royal icing recipe that hardens almost automatically, and each week a new cookie cutter will be introduced keeping the updates fun and the designs interesting!

Next week we will move onto yet another sugar cookie recipe (recipe number three) and I will update you all on both the taste and the experience! I hope you all enjoy this journey as much as I and if you have a sugar cookie recipe or suggestion please leave it down below! Thank you for reading!