Chocolate Cherry Blossoms

Spring inspired treats:

I scoured my cookbooks and googled like crazy to find another chocolate sugar cookie recipe.  My first recipe did not go so well (read all about it here) as the dough only had 3/4 cup of flour and was nightmarish to roll out.  So this time I looked for one with more flour....

This one calls for 2 3/4 cups of flour, so I thought I'd found a winner.  Wrong.  Once cooled, these cookies turned to bricks.  Not to mention they tasted pretty wrong.  But I'm not one to waste a canvas for practice, so I started thinking of ideas...

I lived just outside of Washington DC about 5 years ago and the annual cherry blossoms blooming along the shores of the Potomac river always took my breath away. 

Thus my inspiration...


Royal Icing Colors:

Piping the border:

Flooding:

Detail, piping the branches:

Adding the blossoms:

The search for the perfect chocolate sugar cookie continues.

Easter Sugar Cookies

Spring is here!

And this is my quick attempt at basic Easter themed sugar cookies…I was going for a cleaner, more elegant feel as opposed to bright colors and polka dots.

This time I came up with a plan first so I knew exactly how much icing to make and what colors I was using.  My “rough” idea for the rabbit was a light pink outline, pure white flood, and light pink details.  The eggs would be complementary, half with a light blue flood and yellow details.  The other half with a light pink flood and green details.  My original sketch for the eggs included a marbling technique for the pink and green half, but after my first try, I discovered the colors were too pale.  It didn’t stand out the way I hoped, so on to Plan B;  scrollwork in contrasting colors.

Here's the bunny breakdown...

These cookies turned out almost exactly how I envisioned.  I’ll consider this a trial run before the actual holiday.  I’ve worked through the kinks… like color choices (I really liked the pink scrollwork on green background better than the yellow on blue), icing consistencies, piping details, and design.  Another batch of these will be in the works soon!