August, 2012

  1. Halloween Ambigram Cookies

    August 27, 2012 by Mike

    halloween_ambigrams_title

    The end of August is a time I always look forward to– Halloween season! Retail stores remove the lingering back-to-school supplies of pens and notebooks from the shelves, replacing them with costumes, candy, and Halloween decorations.

    I have a few Halloween cookie ideas I can’t wait to share but first let me show you the package that arrived in the mail this week.

    Aren’t they pretty? I got these fancy frame cookie cutters from CopperGifts.com and were the inspiration for my first Halloween cookie idea this year… AMBIGRAMS! They were popular a few years ago when the book/movie, Angels & Demons, came out. Many people still get tattoos of ambigrams of words like “angel/devil,” “life/death,” or even their kids’ names. Just google “ambigrams” and you will see what I mean.

    I bet some of you are thinking, “what the heck are ambigrams?” Well, an ambigram is word art that can be read as one or more words depending on how you look at it. Still confused? Here’s one example:

    The word “halloween” is written on these cookies, but if you turn these cookies upside-down “halloween” still can be read as if it was right-side up. Now, ambigrams aren’t just for single words. One word can be turned into a totally different word like this example:

    The word “trick” can also be “treat!” Pretty cool, right?

    I went to FlipScript.com to make these ambigrams. On that site you can input any one or two words and it will create an ambigram for you instantly. I thought choosing Halloween-themed words would be a neat idea for upcoming fall parties. The fact that the font already looked gothic and halloween-y was another plus. If you visit the site, keep in mind that FlipScript is a commercial site that charges for their designs, and they are not free.

    Here are my other word combinations I added to this batch.

    “fright” and “night”:

    “scary” and “ghost”:

    “spooky” and “creepy” (this one may be a little difficult to decipher):

    And this last one is just the phrase, “trick or treat”, read the same either direction:

    I didn’t get too detailed with outlining the frames because I didn’t want to distract from the word itself. I just added a simple, thin line with a spider web here and there– nothing too busy. In all, I had 10 different words/phrases from only 6 ambigrams designs.

    I have few more Halloween ideas in work. If they come out as planned I’ll be sure to share them on this blog… so stay tuned!

    Category: Cookies, Holidays
    Tags: ,
    18 Comments

  2. Hobbit Door Cookies

    August 15, 2012 by Mike

    hobbit_door_cookie_title

    (Warning: In this blog post I will be embracing my inner geek. Please try to keep the eye-rolling to a minimum.) If you been to the movies this summer you have probably seen the trailer to The Hobbit, the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If not, I highly recommend you check out the clip below.

    Pretty cool, right? The Hobbit movie doesn’t come out until December and talking about it may seem too early. However, after seeing the trailer I had a idea for an easy cookie design. (Plus, in December everyone is busy with the holidays. Why not just share my idea now?)

    Here’s where it gets a little geeky. In the book version, The Hobbit begins like this…

    In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

    It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle.

    This round, green door is considered iconic and well-known to J. R. R. Tolkien fans. It’s even featured in the movie poster!

    (image source MGM)

    I thought this hobbit door would make a great cookie design to commemorate the upcoming movie release. It’s also a pretty easy cookie to make. Here’s how I did it:

    Outline the door and frame with dark green and dark brown piping icing (Step 1).

    With green and brown flood icing, fill the spaces that are non-adjacent to one another (Step 2). Wait 20 minutes.

    Continue to flood more non-adjacent spaces (waiting 20 mins in-between steps) until the the cookie is covered. (Steps 3 thru 5.) Doing the flooding this way makes the cookie have more dimension. Once the cookie is covered, leave it to dry over night.

    After the icing has completely dried use green and brown food-coloring markers to draw wood grain patterns (Step 6). This is an optional step but I think it adds a nice touch.


    Finish by outlining and flooding the door knob and door hinges in gold icing (Step 7). Ta-da! You’re done!

    This design is pretty basic and it mimics the door in the book/movie. I took the liberty of adding the gold door hinges and center door knob detail to dress it up a bit. Even with those extra details I still found the door to be a little boring. So, I decided to do other versions of hobbit doors that have a little more flair and embellishment.

    With the set below I added some stones as well as an awning with roof tiles. I also did a coordinating set of windows just for kicks. I got a little fancy with the gold detail on the door.

    I continued the stone detail with the next set but I added leaves (using a Wilton #67 tip) and some vine detail to make it more interesting.

    There you have it.

    Oh! I did have one more idea for these cookies. If I was a cake maker I would have tried to make a ball-shaped cake that looked like it was covered in grass. By slapping a door and a few window cookies on that cake you could easily have yourself a Hobbit house.

    Category: Cookies, Movie Themed
    Tags: , , ,
    23 Comments

  3. Thomas the Tank Engine Cookies

    August 8, 2012 by Mike

    thomas_the_tank_cookies_closeup

    Brayden just turned 4-years-old and he is quite the fan of Thomas the Tank Engine. For his birthday, his mom asked me if I would do a Thomas and Friends themed batch. I was very happy to oblige.

    I’ve see many great Thomas cookies on the Internet but I wanted to do a batch that was a little different from the rest. Instead of an ordinary flat cookie, I thought why not try to make it more 3D-like? The kids would get a kick out of that.

    The first step was the dough prep. I used my basic sugar cookie recipe, but set aside about a quarter of the dough. With that quarter dough portion, I added black food-coloring and used a cookie cutter to cut them into small circles. With the un-dyed dough, I carved out the train body bases of Thomas and his two friends, Percy and James.

    These trains have really expressive facial features– it seems to be all about the nose and cheeks. I wanted to see if I could captured those features in these cookies. A while ago, Sugarbelle posted a guest tutorial from Vicki’s Sweet Treats on how to make lumpy potato cookies. I used that same technique to create these faces.

    1. Take one of those black circles.

    2. Using 15-second icing, outline the edge and around where the eyes should be. Then immediately flood the middle part with that same 15-second icing.

    3. Wait about 2 minutes for the icing to kind of set and slightly “crust over”. With your icing tip, place the tip directly INTO the flooded areas of the cookie where the nose and cheeks should be and inject more icing. You should be able to see those areas pump up.

    Since this was the first time I tried this technique, it was trial-and-error before I got the wait time correct. I made sure to make a lot of extra faces just in case I messed up a few. That was the hard part.

    The rest of the cookie was pretty typical– just outline and flood. Once the body part of the cookie was completely dry (over night), I attached the faces to the body with a little royal icing.

    I’m really pleased how Thomas, Percy, and James turned out (I think the red James engine is my favorite though). The stacked cookie, along with the 3-dimensional facial features really added some visual depth that I was aiming for.

    Happy Birthday, Brayden! I hope you and your friends had fun with this batch.

    Category: Cookies, Decorating Tips, TV Themed
    Tags: , , , ,
    3 Comments

  4. Vintage Letter Cookies

    August 4, 2012 by Mike

    letter_cookies_closeup

    In the last post, I mentioned the Muppets were only part one of JT’s birthday batch. Well time to show part two! I wanted to somehow personalize his cookie batch. JT goes by his initials (obviously) and I thought maybe I could do something creative with his name.

    One night, I was flipping through a Pottery Barn catalog (which, btw, turns any bad day into a good one when it arrives in the mail). I found my inspiration — this picture.

    The Portland Desk. It’s a good looking desk but pay attention to what’s on the wall. Around the desk were framed prints of letters in various, ornate typefaces.  Here’s a better closeup of what I’m talking about…

    I really liked the typeface of the letter C above the desk. I loved the vintage look of it and was determined to find that font and make it into a cookie!

    Now, have you guys heard of FontSpace? Sugarbelle has mentioned it before being a useful resource here and here. It’s a searchable database of free fonts you can download for personal use. To find the font I was looking for I had to be a little creative with my search keywords.  Typing in “ornate” and “carnival” did the trick! The font used in that PB catalog turned out to be Ringmaster.

    So I downloaded the font, typed out JT’s name and age, enlarged them to the size I wanted, printed them out, and the used the printout as a template for a few cookies.  I was able to use the leftover black and white icing from the Muppets cookies for this set.

    I really love how these letter cookies came out.  They are beautiful, stand-alone pieces (and I think worthy of a separate blog post).  Actually, now that I mentioned it, I think they would look great standing alone on a cupcake or as a cake topper.

    Happy birthday, JT!  Here’s to another 50 years.

    Category: Cookies, Decorating Tips
    Tags: , , , ,
    13 Comments

Older Entries