[EDITOR'S NOTE: WOO HOO! I'm thrilled to announce that Laegwen, aka Leoni Eckart, has officially joined our Cookie Connection contributors team as of this post. After she submitted two outstanding decorating tutorials to the site two months in a row, completely unprompted and out of the goodness of her own heart, I decided to see if she wanted to get a formal Cookie Connection title in exchange for all of her hard work. Fortunately for me (and us), she said "yes"! Expect to see cookie decorating tutorials from Leoni under the Get Inspired category of the blog every other month! Her posts will be focused on her personal experiments with gumpaste, royal icing, and other cookie decorating materials and methods. Enjoy!]
Summertime is wedding time! I am simply ignoring the fact that it is not summer, but has recently snowed here, and that I don’t know anyone who’s getting married this year. Once I’ve set my mind on something, I don’t allow a little reality to interfere. So I just pretend that it is summer and that someone I know is getting married, and that’s why I absolutely need to make some wedding cookies!
How about you? Suffering from reality-loss like me, or are you actually in need of an idea for cookies to give to a special couple on their special day? In either case, think lace, and roses, and pearls, and get your tools ready.
- 6 (2 1/2-inch) cookies, iced in your favorite light blue (I used Wilton Color Right), thoroughly dried
- Celboard or any other nonstick surface for rolling out gumpaste
- White gumpaste
- Small rolling pin
- Magic Decor Pavoni Lace Mat (or other means to imprint a lacy pattern on gumpaste)
- Soft sponge pad (or kitchen sponge)
- Kitchen knife
- Edible glue
- Brush, for applying edible glue
- Red gumpaste (I used Sugarflair Poppy Red)
- Small piping tip (backside used as cutter)
- Green royal icing, stiff consistency, with #1.5 tip and small leaf tip like Wilton #349 (I used equal parts Wilton Kelly Green and Moss Green)
- White icing, piping consistency, with #0 tip
- Light grey icing, bead consistency
- Metallic silver paint (I used Rainbow Dust Metallic Light Silver mixed with vodka)
- Small brush, for applying silver paint
On your celboard, roll out a piece of white gumpaste as thin as possible; not quite but almost see-through. Place it on top of the lace mat, and use the sponge pad to press it into the crevices until you can clearly see the design (1). If you don’t have a lace mat, you could also use an imprinted rolling pin, real lace (as long as it is lint-free), or even slightly crinkled tin foil. Carefully peel off the gumpaste, and flip it over (2). Roughly cut out the design with your kitchen knife, and immediately place the gumpaste on your cookie, applying small dabs of edible glue with a brush where necessary and shaping folds as you go (3). Remove the excess gumpaste with your knife to get a clean cookie edge (4).
For the roses, roll out some red gumpaste as thin as the lace, and cut out small circles with the back of a piping tip. Each rose consists of two circles. If you work fast and only cut out a few pieces at a time, you can leave them in the open. If you want to cut out all of the pieces at once, you will need to store them inside some plastic wrap. Overlap the two circles, and press on the seam to secure them together. Then cut them in half. Place one half on top of the other, so the halves overlap slightly and their cut sides are aligned. Press the cut edges together, and roll up the piece to get a simple rose (1). Attach two roses toward one edge of the cookie with edible glue (2). On each rose, pipe a stem, side stem, and calyx with stiff green royal icing (3); then switch to the leaf tip to add leaves to each side stem (4).
Pipe a line of white royal icing unevenly around the cookie to form the thread of the necklace (1). Let it dry somewhat before you pipe pearls in light grey icing on top (2). The pearls need to be completely dry before you can paint them. Mix silver luster dust with clear alcohol (or alcohol-based extract), and apply with a small brush (3). Your lacy, rosy, pearly wedding cookie is ready (4)!
Tip: If you'd rather have a gold necklace, use light brown icing instead of light grey, and paint with gold luster dust.
Cookie and photo credits: Leoni Eckart
Leoni Eckart, aka Laegwen, started her baking career way before her own memory sets in, decorating Christmas cookies with her mother (at least that's what she's been told!), and has never entirely stopped puttering around in the kitchen since. Her first decorated cookies as an adult were her own wedding favors, and then, over Christmas 2014, her cookie fever went into overdrive! As of present, it shows no signs of cooling off. You can find Leoni on Facebook here, or you can reach her by email at laegwen@outlook.de.
Photo credit: Leoni Eckart
Note: Get Inspired with Laegwen is a bimonthly series of cookie decorating tutorials that follow Leoni Eckart's personal experiments with gumpaste, royal icing, and other cookie decorating materials and methods. This article expresses the views of the author, and not necessarily those of this site, its owners, its administrators, or its employees. To read all of Leoni's past Get Inspired tutorials, click here. And to catch all of our Cookie Connection tutorials, click here.
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