Halloween Cookies are fun...and fun to make. Today I'm showing you how to make a Skeleton Hand for Halloween or X-ray cookies (for X-ray technician week).
Hi, I have to tell you I'm not good at drawing and I don't have the time to learn, and practice on how to draw. I'm good at piping straight lines, dots, and make cross stitch cookies...but drawing is not my forte.
For this set of cookies, I used my Pico projector. I totally love this little thing. It works amazing and makes my life easier. (Sometimes, I still wish I was able to draw and pipe without a guide). Using the Pico, I traced the image
to the cookie using a scribe tool. I've learned that I had to make sure the Royal icing is fully
set, otherwise the scratch mark from the scribe tool won't be visible.
I used close to flood consistency Royal Icing and a very small hole in
my piping bag. It's important to pipe the areas that do not connect
together first, and then skip every other area to make sure the icing
does not run together for example: in the carpal area (wrist bones). In
this case, also make sure you let the icing dry or crust over a few
minutes before you pipe the next area.
It is easy to make, but it takes some patience. If you don't have a projector, you can always trace the pattern form a tissue paper.
So what do you need for these cookies? Well, if you are artistic and can draw free hand, forget about the projector and stencils.
Here is what I used:
Pico Projector (you can use other brand that you have),
Basic Sugar Cookie
Black icing for the base cookie,
White royal icing for the skeleton hand
Scribe tool (tooth pick does not work well in this case and the area of
Here is an easy Jack-O-Lanter cookie tutorial. Even though it looks complicated, I assure you it is not.
First thing you have to make sure your cookie is smooth on the surface....because a rough surface makes cookie decorating difficult. After all, we want easy.
So, what do you need in order to create these cookies? Well, you will need:
- Your choice of sugar cookies baked in pumpkin shapes (which requires either a pumpkin cookie cutter or a template to cut it out by hand - which is fine if you are only doing a couple)
- Flood or piping consistency Royal icing (I like to use the same consistency through out the process)
- Edible marker (I used Wilton brand)
- Edible food coloring Orange, Black, and Green (I used Wilton brand...and you can use any colors you'd like)
- Scribe tool or tooth pick
- Piping bag (most of the times I use sandwich bags with no tip)
- Paper towels, some water in a cup to clean the tip or your scribe tool
and lastly you will need:
- Some fun music playing in the background.
If I forgot something from this list, please leave a comment below.
Hope you enjoy this easy tutorial. Check out the Mummy Cookie tutorial as well...it's all made with Royal Icing, no fondant needed.
Post your picture either on my cookie page Violet's Creations or in comment section below of this blog.
Thanks for watching and sharing! Have a AWESOME Day!
I know this is not cookie or cake related...but I had to share how I roll my stuffed cabbage rolls. I've learned to make stuffed cabbage in Romanian when I was getting ready to host my 18th birthday party.
I will put the recipe and full video up as soon as I'm done editing it.
I love baking and I'm always looking for recipes to try out. My biggest challenge is making moist, fluffy, light cupcakes.
But not anymore! :)
After trying out many recipes from books, internet, Pinterest, friends, I finally stumbled upon Joy of Baking blog. She has a large collection of recipes with demonstration videos on her blog. I found the Banana Chocolate cupcakes and I fell in love with them right away.
What really made me stick with this recipe was the feedback of one of my friends whom I just could not get the right cupcake baked for her. She loved the cupcake and gave me a very nice compliment. That's when I decided this recipe is a winner.
- 1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar
- 1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup (35 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder (regular or Dutch-processed)
- 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 1 medium sized banana)
- 1/2 cup (120 ml) warm water
- 1/4 cup (60 ml) milk
- 1/4 cup (60 ml) canola, corn, or vegetable oil
- 3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 9 drops Orange Vitality Essential Oil (less or more depending on your taste)
Chocolate Fudge Frosting:
- 3 ounces (90 grams) unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
- 1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup (120 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Banana Chocolate Cupcakes:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place rack in the center of the oven. Line 12 regular-sized muffin cups with paper liners or spray each cup with a non stick vegetable spray.
In a large bowl whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In another large bowl, whisk together the egg, mashed banana, water, milk, oil, and vanilla extract. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir, or whisk, until combined. (The batter is quite thin.) Pour or scoop the batter into the muffin cups, about 3/4 full, and bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean.
Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. Frost with the Chocolate Frosting.
Chocolate Frosting:
Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.
In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter until smooth and creamy (about 1 minute). Add the sugar and beat until it is light and fluffy (about 2 minutes). Beat in the vanilla extract. Add the chocolate and beat on low speed until incorporated. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until frosting is smooth and glossy (about 2 -3 minutes).
Makes 12 regular-sized cupcakes.
Here is Stephanie show step by step on how to make the cupcakes based on her recipe. To add the Orange or Tangerine Vitality oil add it directly to the egg mixture.
This is my second Valentine's Day season for making cookies.
I still consider myself new to this form of art, as I work 8-10 hrs a day, 6 days a week...so I don't get many free hours to practice this skill.
I love decorating cookies, it gets me in a relaxing state of mind. If I'm starting to feel overwhelmed, stressed, antsy, I start decorating. So in other word, this is my therapy, my shrink. You would be amazed on how many ideas pop in your head when you get to that relaxed place.
This is one of the easier patterns to follow specially for a beginner cookie decorator.
Start out with a flat sugar cookie. You don't want to have cracks, dips, bubbles, basically an uneven surface. It is critical to get a smooth, flat surface for easy cookie decorating.
The sugar cookie recipe I use is on my blog, click here
The royal icing recipe I use is a Wilton recipe, click here for the video. You will get the basic recipe here and you will have to water it down appropriately for what is needed.
Most of my icing was following the 8-12 seconds rule, which is a bit thicker then I like. The icing for the grid was a little thicker to hold it's shape.
Once the cookie is cooled, you can draw a smaller inner heart in the center of your cookie or just free outline your small heart free handed with white royal icing. It's your choice.
After you outlined the inner heart, outline the edge of the big heart. Flood the cookie between the two outlined areas with red royal icing, use a toothpick or scribe tool to smooth out the icing and pop any bubbles that might emerge.
Drop some white royal icing dots on the red icing while is still wet and with a toothpick or scribe tool drag a line through the center of each dot all around the cookie. ( I hope this sentence makes sense)
Let the cookie dry for about 20 min or so. If you are new, let it dry for a few hours, you don't want to damage the red icing with the icing tip.
Use a size 0 or 1 decorating tip to make the grid. Use the white royal icing, which is a bit thicker, and start piping parallel lines next to each other in the same direction. Once you filled the heart with those lines, turn the heart sideways and start piping another set of parallel lines that go perpendicular to the existing lines. (well another sentence that I hope makes sense to you)
Once the grid is over, you can use the same icing as for the grid to start piping the dots in the grid. A tiny bit runnier works much better as you will not have peaks on each dot. Too runny, and your dots run together. You can actually see it on the right side of the heart (your right) where two dots are kind of running together. I had to pip another dot after it crusted over so the dot can be distinguished.
The basic heart pattern is starting from the bottom working upwards:
Line 1: - 1 dot in the center
Line 2: - 3 dots in the line above
Line 3: - 5 dots in the line above that
Line 4: - 7 dots in the line above that
Line 5: - starting flush from the previous line pipe 3 dots, skip 1, pipe 2 dots
Line 6: - skip a dot and place 2 dots, skip 1, and pipe 2 dots
That's the basic heart pattern.
Once the heart is done, you can add dots to other areas if you feel the center is too plain. Where the grid meets the inside of the big heart, pipe some dots to clean up that joint.
Now is time to add an outside border to your cookie. It's up to you what you want to do...you can just add more dots. That's fine as well. Most of the time I do prefer dots over any other borders. That's just my preference.
On this cookie, I added a little scalloped edge with a red dot in the center. Once that crusted about 10 minutes, I filled the scallops with super runny white icing. What do I mean by super runny? Well, you place some icing in a tiny bowl and add water too it. You will see a foam on top of the mixture. Use a brush (that was only used for food purposes, and I mean only cookies) to place the super runny icing in the small scalloped edges.
Hope this tutorial was easy for you to follow.
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