Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Cookie Decorating

I've always loved to bake, and last night I thought I was going to take my baking skills to a new level. I signed up for a cookie decorating class through the Junior League (which I joined this year to get more involved in the community and to meet people). The instructor showed us some great tips, most of which involved hints like "just walk through the aisles of your local Home Depot or Lowe's... you can find great unexpected things there!" Boo. I already spend too much time in those stores!

Regardless, after about half an hour of tips and instruction, she gave us each a half dozen cookies to start trying various techniques on. I have a newfound appreciation for real bakers! We were working with glacee icing, which is the kind that goes on rather runny and sticky but dries shiny and hard. It wasn't nearly as easy as it looked to trace an outline in icing and then "flood" the cookie with the runny icing ... and keep it all in place! I think I started getting the technique down towards cookie #3, when we learned techniques to add additional colors, make polka dots, hearts, tie-died designs, monograms, etc. My cookies definitely aren't going to win any awards, but I definitely had a good time and learned some great techniques that I'm sure I'll use in the future :)

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