Tuesday, October 28, 2014

cookie decorating 101

My sister is friends with a woman who decorates cookies for a business, and man, they are so beautiful!  I am often drooling over the pictures she posts on FB. (check out FROST) So imagine my excitement when Andrea (the owner/operator of Frost) posted that she was starting up home classes! For $30, you would learn some techniques and decorate cookies with royal frosting in one sitting! I was all for it!

My sister scheduled her class this past Sunday, where 6 of us gathered together for some fun.

I admit to feeling totally unsure of my abilities! I'm sure most of us did, but I was convinced that I would really stink at this! After all, everyone else seemed to have some sort of knowledge of icing and decorating and such. My extent of knowledge comes from buying a can of the Betty Crocker icing and spreading it with a butter knife over my crappy attempts at cupcakes! I don't even bother making cakes; if I need one for a birthday party, I beg my mother-in-law to make something for me!  Put icing into a bag? Different types and sizes of tips? Are you kidding me?  

Despite that, I did manage to fill up my practice sheet just fine. The more I practiced, the more confident I felt! Andrea was really good at encouraging you and offering advice. She was patient and really did think we could all accomplish what she was going to teach!




The class was a lot of fun! We learned how to fill and do wet-on-wet (seen below) and most importantly, fix mistakes!




The one cookie she was having us decorate was the cat, and I thought it looked like the easiest one to make out of all of them, but in the end I think it was the trickiest. Mostly because as we were outlining our poor kitty, most of us forgot to add the arch in the back (which Andrea tried to convince us that we didn't need to do, but who was she kidding? Of course we all wanted our cookies to look just like hers!) and then there was the neck and ears...that's the part I messed up. Dang!



If you looked at my poor kitty from the wrong angle, you wouldn't know what it was!  I had to add eyes and whiskers to make it look more 'cat-like', and even that made it look demented! Haha. Still cute enough, though!  (until I smudged the leg as it was drying, oops!)

Heather's cat was the cutest! In the end, I wished I had copied hers (since it was too late to follow Andrea's cat!) She named him Garfield. (she did awesome on her others too, as seen in the picture below)



The funnest one to make was the skull. Andrea made it look so easy, but man, those eyes!!! The wet-on-wet (I think that's what she called the technique) seemed easy, but hard to predict the icing spreading and growing into the eye ball and the pupils being off and such, and black icing isn't very forgiving if you make a mistake! But it was the one that made us all laugh the most at our attempts!



We made 6 cookies but decided that it was a long class to make that many. We were running out of time and most of us had to rush home to kids and dinner. An evening class may be better. Or we suggested having less cookies to learn.

I wished I had taken a picture of Andrea's sample cookies, but maybe comparing mine to hers aren't the best idea! I thought mine turned out just great for a newbie! As they sat and dried, they actually began to look better too. (my bat was done last, and was more rushed, since I had to leave)  I think I liked my spiderweb and skull the most.



If you are in the area, definitely consider hosting Andrea in your home for a cookie class! It was a lot of fun, and she really is interested in teaching you so that you can take these techniques home for your own cookies and cakes (or whatever else people decorate). She gave us a technique sheet as well, but I forgot mine. Oops. Check out her website Frost Me Beautiful for her gallery (the ones that say Elijah on them were done for a friend's baby shower in the Spring!) and her pricing. 




I wanted to keep these cookies forever because they really were too cute to eat, but even after my own kids oohed and ahhed over them, they immediately wanted one! I made them wait over a day before giving in!  




We all declared them to look good and taste good too!

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