The beginning of a whole new school year is right around the corner! Time for meeting new teachers, packing lunch boxes, and of course, learning. Michele of @lucky_bites shows us how to decorate these cute apple cookies and notebook cookies that you can personalize with any message!
*
What you'll need:
- CookieCutterKingdom Apple Cutters, 2” & 3” - CookieCutterKingdom Rectangle Plaque Cutter, 3” - Sugar cookie dough (CookieCutterKingdom recipe here) - Royal icing (CookieCutterKingdom recipe here) - Flooding consistency in white, red, green - Piping consistency in brown, yellow - Plastic drinking straw - Toothpicks or scribe tool - Food pens: red, blue, black - available on Amazon. - Piping bag or squeeze bottles
Optional: - For Granny Smith apple cookies: lime green royal icing in flooding and piping consistency - Super Pearl luster dust (you can get this on Amazon) - Fluffy paintbrush - Cellophane bags - Ribbon - Gift tags
Directions:
Preheat oven based on cookie recipe. Dust workspace with flour and roll dough to ⅛ inch thick. Dip cutters in flour for a clean cut and then cut out cookies. Use the straw to make binder holes left side of the rectangles – this will be your notebook paper.
Bake and cool completely.
Once your cookies have cooled, start on the notebook paper cookies. Using white royal icing in piping consistency, outline the holes and border. Use a toothpick or scribe tool to smooth out anything that isn't quite perfect. Let dry for a few minutes.
Flood with white icing. Shake cookie gently to distribute icing evenly. Lightly tap cookie on table to bring air bubbles to surface, then pop any bubbles with toothpick. Work quickly here before icing starts to set. Set aside to dry for 1-2 days. I like to give them 2 days, especially if it's humid. This will help avoid color-bleeding with the food pens.
Using red icing, outline and flood the apple cookies. If you decide to do Granny Smiths, use lime green icing to outline and flood as well.
Then, while icing is still wet, add the “highlight mark” with white icing. This is what we call the “wet-on-wet” technique. Allow apples to dry for at least 30 minutes. If you're short on time, leave space between colors so they don't bleed together. If you look closely at the final pic below, you'll see that I've done this.
Pipe the stem with brown icing, and the leaf with green. Use the toothpick to perfect the leaf shape, and pop any air bubbles. Set apples aside to dry for 1-2 days.
Once the icing is completely set, you can add luster dust to your apples to give them a nice sheen. Apply luster dust with a dry brush.
Using yellow piping consistency icing with a very small hole snipped from the pastry bag, pipe lettering onto the apples.
Draw lines on notebook paper with your red and blue food pens. Allow to dry for 30 minutes. Then write your message in black food pen.
Once everything is dry, you can bag them with ribbon and a gift tag: