We had a special request from Victor, the owner of Apespresso to make a few ape cookies for the cafe (to match their Apespresso logo) so that people will be able to enjoy yummy cookies with their coffees.

This was one of my workmate's idea to put the cookies into the cafe so more people can enjoy them :)

We finished creating them over the weekend and here is what they look like

I'll go thru the step by step details on how to create these cookies, but first I had to plan ahead to make sure that i have the right cutter to make them.

So i start with sketching the ape on paper to make sure they can fit into the cookie cutter that i want to use. I also use a tombstone cookie cutter to make the little coffee cups.

Here is my rough sketch that i had to plan before baking, you can see Apespresso's card that Victor gave me with their logo so that i can create the cookies to match :)

So after the planning session, baking start with a fresh batch of cookies...fresh from the oven :)

Mark the cookies with edible food markers to make it easier to fill them in with icing

We prepared the icing with the colours we need to make the ape: beown, cream & red.

Outline the cookie with piping consistency brown icing before filling in the top part of the monkey (his forhead area) and the side of the ears with brown flooding icing (see picture below).

I waited about 1 hour until the brown icing sets a bit, then pipe the cream colour flooding icing into the face, ears and his nose area. Leave the cream colour icing to dry at least 4 hours (we left it overnight to dry coz we want to make sure there wont be any colour bleed).

When the cream colour icing is completely dry, pipe the face details starting with the nose and mouth.

Continue to add the rest of the details on the face, add the eyes & eyebrows.

Ape cookies all done....so now we move on to decorating the little coffee cups...

With a tombstone cutter we snip the top part to make the little coffee cups

Star by outlining the coffee cups with piping consistency & then fill with flooding consistency of the same colour icing, then leave the icing to dry.

The fill the middle gap with flood icing and leave the icing to dry. Then finish it off with outlining the cookies with red piping icing.

Coffee cups cookies are all done :)

We wrapped them together in an individual cellophane bag so they will stay fresh longer.

We really hope people will grab them along with their daily coffee fix :)

Because of our new found love in cookie decorating, my thoughtful father in law have recently given us a butterfly cookie cutter, so we thought this is a perfect opportunity to practice our marbling technique or some people refer to it as ' wet on wet' technique :)

Here is what our butterfly cookie platter looks like....I love how they look so colourful! :)

Our cookie making schedule usually takes a few days, the first day is for baking, the second day making up a batch of icing and do the first step of decorating, then the day after that for the details.

For this butterflies, we did it reasonably quickly because its using the wet on wet technique we dont have to wait until the icing dries, we actually did the marbling technique while the icing is still wet.

Here are the cookies fresh out of the oven

First thing we did was mark the areas we want to fill in with edible food marker, this will make it easier for us to fill each wings :)

As usual we outline the cookie with piping icing then we started with the bottom left wing. Fill with black flooding icing, however before you start flooding the cookie make sure you have all the icing colours you need in flooding consistency for the next step, which is when the wet on wet technique start.

While the black icing is still wet, pipe a dot in the middle of the wing with orange flood consistency icing, then grab your scribing tool or a toothpick if you don't have a scribe tool. With a toothpick/scribe tool, pull the orange icing upwards and also pull it downwards to create sort of like an eye shape, then straight away drop another yellow dot (also in flooding consistency) on top of the orange colour while the icing is still wet. Then again drop a small black icing dot on top of the yellow while the icing is still wet.

repeat the same steps for the other side of the wing.

Next we work on the top wings. Fill the outer sides of the top wing with black icing as outlined in the picture below. Then while the icing is still wet fill the wing areas with white, yellow & orange flood icing. The picture below should give you a better idea of what we did :)

The next step is where the marbling technique comes to play. While the icing is still wet take a toothpick or a scribe tool and drag the icing through the wings (from the top corner of the wings into the middle of the butterfly) and repeat the steps 3 times until you see the wing pattern emerging. Its really hard to explain this, i think its easier to understand when you watch it on video, Here is a video of Marian from Sweetopia explaining how to do the marbling technique.

Repeat the same steps on the other side of the wings

Then its time to wait until the icing is dry, you can wait for a few hours but we prefer to let it dry overnight.

After the icing is dry, pipe the middle body of the butterfly with #5 piping tips and black piping consistency icing. Then while the icing is still wet sprinkle some sanding sugar on top to give it a more sparkly look.

With a brush gently brush off the excess sugar from the wings and body.

That's it, all done :) This is probably the fastest cookie we made because we don't have to wait around for long as we do most of the decorating process while the icing was still wet.

Here is the gift pack ready to go

Hope everyone is having a great day ;-)

This time we are making cookies for a very special boy :) He has been such a blessing to us so we just want to say thank you :)  Ben loves soccer so we want to give him a soccer cookie gift package.

This is what the platter looks like

Now, because we don't have a jersey cookie cutter we had to get creative. We do have a onesie cookie cutter as part of a baby set cookie cutter we got from e-bay (don't you just love e-bay? we can get 'almost' anything from there :P).

So we decided to use the onesie cutter and trimmed the bottom part

The soccer ball is easy, we just use a normal round cutter and a soccer ball paper template. Just print a picture of a soccer ball around the same size of the cookie and use the 'push pin' trick' to mark off the pentagon so that we can outline of the soccer ball into the cookies.

Use edible food marker to mark off the areas to fill with icing.

Fill the area of the black colour spots first with black icing and let it dry for an hour or so until the icing crusted over (let it dry overnight if you have bleeding issues). After the black icing is dry, fill up the white area in alternating space (see picture), wait about an hour or so for the first white spaces to crust over before filling in the rest of the white spots with icing. The alternating filling of the icing will give us a better definition line between the pentagon.

Finished soccer ball result will look like this :)

Next we do the soccer jersey....Ben's team colour is mainly red, so we go with red icing. Just a note that making a batch of a deep red icing takes time, usually the colours develop over a few days. We usually prepare the icing at least a couple of days before the decorating process as the icing colours changes (gets darker )after a couple of days.

Outline with red piping icing and fill with the same colour flooding icing, and let it dry over several hours. Because red is a notorious colours for bleeding issues we tend to let ours dry overnight to make sure we wont have any bleeding issues.

After the red icing dries, pipe the name and number of the soccer jersey. Followed by the black trim for the shoulder and neck.

That's it, nice and simple. Here is the gift pack ready to go :)

We really hope Ben enjoys his special cookie gift package ;-)

I have a couple of workmates who has little girls that loves Peppa Pig, so we decided to try making Peppa Pig cookies, they seems pretty simple to make :)

Here are the Peppa Pig cookie platter that we created for Ruby & Maggie:)

When we were planning on making these cookies, I found a Peppa Pig face cookie cutter online, but i couldn't find the cutter for Peppa Pig with the whole body, so we had to create a paper template from a picture of Peppa Pig. We traced the picture and ended up with this template

These are the cookies after they were cooled-off, and we marked the areas where for Peppa's face and dress so make it easier to decorate.

Here is the step by step visual of how to decorate Peppa Pig:

        Step 1: Outline and fill Peppa's face with pink icing, let the icing dry for at least 1 hour.
        Step 2: Outline and fill Peppa's dress with reddish orange icing, let the icing dry for a few hours.

        Step 3: Add Peppa's legs and arms with pink icing, let it dry for at least an hour.
        Step 4: Add Peppa's shoes with black icing

        Step 5: Outline Peppa's face with dark pink icing and add her nose at the same time
        Step 6: Add Peppa's eyes and smiley lips

        Step 7: Lastly, add a blush into Peppa's cheek with a pink lustre dust :)

Next we decorate the cookies in Peppa's face shape only, its very simple and pretty much the same steps as above without Peppa's body. Start with outlining her face with light pink piping icing and fill with the same colour flooding icing. Let the icing dry for a few hours (preferably overnight).

Then add the outline of Peppa's face with a darker pink icing, then start adding the details of Peppa's face such as: nose, lips, and eyes.

Lastly, give Peppa's cheek a blush with a pink lustre dust just like what we did with the other Peppa cookies.

There you go, the step by step of how to make Peppa Pig Cookies :) And here is the gift box ready to go

Hope everyone is having a great week ;-)

We have been meaning to try making a ballerina set cookies for a while, and we know a few little girls who would be the perfect recipient for these cookies. So when we saw this ballerina template from Cake Journal we just knew we had to make them :)

So here is what the ballerina tutus & ballet slippers platter looks like.

And lets explore how to make these cookies :)

Firstly, i want to show you the gorgeous template that we found from Cake Journal (see below)

I found that the ballet slippers a tad too big for my liking, specially when compared to the tutus so i printed 2 templates, one that i cut out for the tutus and another smaller template for the slippers. This is just my personal preference, you can keep it the same size as the template if you prefer.

After we have the template ready, we get busy baking and having fun decorating :)

We used the chocolate cookies recipe for the dough and here they are fresh out of the oven

Its the same steps for pink tutus, outline the cookies with piping consistency icing then fill them in with pink flooding icing. Let the cookie dry for a few hours (best overnight) before moving on with the next step.

So lets decorate them :) These cookies are simple to decorate because its only using 2 colours icing, pink & white...my kind of cookies, easy & simple :)

Lets start with the bellet slippers, as usual first thing to do is to outline the cookies with piping consistency icing then fill in with pink flooding icing. Let the cookie dry for a few hours (best overnight) before moving on with the next step.

Pipe a small bow with white piping icing on the ballet shoe and let it dry. Then finish the ballerina slippers by adding satin ribbon.

After the icing is dry, decorate the tutus with white piping icing. You can also use edible glitter on the wet icing, when you pipe the decorations on the dry flooded cookies to give them a sparkle.

Its the same steps for the pink dress/gown, outline the cookies with piping consistency icing then fill them in with pink flooding icing. Let the cookie dry for a few hours (best overnight) before moving on with the next step.

After the icing is dry, decorate the dress/gown with white piping icing.

This is what the whole ballerina set looks like :)

Here is the ballerina gift box ready to go :)

Hope the girls love these tutus & ballerina slippers as much as we love making them :)

We've just been told by Claudia's school that we have another chance to do a netball fundraising this weekend. We had such a great response to the whale cookies for the first netball fundraising that we decided we will do another batch of cookies for this event too....hey its for a good cause right? ;-)

So we did a little brainstorming session...and because it is now winter time and its been so cold lately that its appropriate to do a snowman cookies with earmuffs. This was totally inspired by the famous Sweet Sugar Belle, she is an amazing cookie decorator and I really love her awesome work.

This is probably our biggest task in baking and decorating since we started this new adventure. We donated two dozen of whale cookies last time, and this time we want to do a little bit more.

We baked and decorated 48 snowman and 72 snowflakes to go with the snowman cookies, a total of 120 cookies baked, decorated, sealed and delivered....so to speak! Wow that is a lot of cookies, for us this is big task as we never made this much cookies before.

This is what the platter of the snowmen and complimenting snowflakes looks like...

We used a monkey cookie cutter to make the snowman. This is what the cutter looks like

This first batch of cookies ready to go into the oven, and we made sure that they are completely cool before decorating starts.

We start off with using the food marker to mark the area for the earmuffs.

With white piping consistency icing, outline the middle area, excluding the earmuffs. Then fill with white flood icing. Let the icing dry for a few hours.

After the white icing is dry, its time to add the earmuffs. Use a piping consistency icing to outline both the earmuffs, you can use any colours you like for the earmuffs, we decided red and lime green works well for what we had in mind. Fill the earmuffs with flooding icing and then sprinkle with sanding sugar. Then let it dry for a few hours.

The next step is to do the details:

• Use piping consistency icing to draw the line to connect the earmuffs.
  
• Use black piping icing to make the eyes - we used #2 piping tips.
  
• Use a stiff orange icing to create the carrot nose.
  
• Use a pink flooding icing to make the blushed cheeks.
  
• And lastly pipe the mouth with the same black icing that we use for the eyes.

Oh btw, check out our little 'sanding sugar station', my daughter Claudia set this up so that we can get a little production going and makes things easier for us....isn't she clever? :)

We also decided to make little snowflakes to accompany the snowman, i love the colours on all these little snowflakes :)

We also made a cookie gift tag to finish off the packaging. For the last netball fundraising we created "Have a Whaley good game" cookie tags for the whale cookies, this time we made "Hope you're having SNOW much fun!" cookie tags for the snowman cookies! :) I guess there are advantages when we know how to use photoshop, we can create these kind of things to suit the occasion when needed :P

Then of course we put them into individual cellophane bags to keep them fresh for longer.

 Here is the result, 3 dozen packs of snowman ready to go for the netball fundraising this weekend :)

Lets hope they will sell as well as the last batch of cookies at the netball fundraiser :)

A friend of mine shared an article in Facebook about a Hello Kitty Diner opening up in Australia, and when i saw the picture of Hello Kitty i remembered that we got given a Hello Kitty cookie cutter a whole back....i figured its time to dig it out and make Hello Kitty cookies :)

This time we also want to try making a chocolate cookies instead of our usual plain sugar cookies.
We found a great recipe from LilaLoa that we decided to try out.

Here is the result of our Hello Kitty baking session...so cute right??!! I just love Hello Kitty! ;)

So here is the baking and decorating process...if you read LilaLoa's chocolate cookies recipe its pretty easy to follow and she also provided the step by step instructions in her website.

A good friend of mine gave these cute Hello Kitty cookie cutter last year, it was a gift she brought back from her trip to the US. Glad that we can now made a full use of it :)

So we made the dough and we use the cookie cutter to cut into shape. These are what the cookies look like, after they came out of the oven and have been chilled.

Outlined the rest of the bow with black piping icing and let it dry.

Unfortunately we only have enough dough to make one full body Hello Kitty....next time we must rationed the dough properly so we get the same amount of each shape :)

This is what the full body Hello Kitty looks like....

We left it to cool down for a few hours before starting the decorating process.

Firstly, we outlined the area where we want to put the bow with a food marker. Note to self: next time use a different colour food marker so that it wont show up so much.

Using a red piping icing, we piped the middle part of the bow first and leave it for 30 mins ot so until its a bit dry before putting the rest of the bow to give it some dimension. We let the red bow to dry for a few hours. If you have colour bleed problem then i would leave it for longer (overnight if necessary).

Then use the white piping consistency icing to outline the face.

The next step is to use white flooding icing to fill the rest of the face, then let it dry for a few hours.
When the white icing is completely dry, start outlining the middle of the bow with black piping icing.

Then start adding the face features by piping a black icing to make the eyes and the whiskers and lastly finish it off by piping a yellow icing for the nose.

Here is a close-up of all the Hello Kitty heads when they were all done :)

Next is the full body Hello Kitty, i forgot to take a photo of the actual step by step decorating process but its pretty much the same with the steps we did for the face above.

With edible marker we mark the areas for the bow, the body, arms and legs. The just like the steps above we made the bow first and then fill the face and then some parts of the body (arms, neck and legs) with white icing. Here is what it looks like half way thru decorating...

Oh i forgot to mention that we always like having some accent cookies to accompany our main cookies, so in this case we made square chevron cookies to put in the gift bag, you can also see them in the finished result of the Hello Kitty platter at the beginning of this post.

Then outline the bow with black icing, add the face details and fill in the clothes with pink icing (or whatever colour you want her clothes to be). When the icing dries, outline the rest of her body with black icing and add the little details, such as the red stripes on her arms and the little white buttons on her clothes. And that was it....all done :)

Sealed the gift box with bows and little homemade tags and they are good to go! Taadaa....!! :)

Hope you are having an enjoyable day :)

It was my niece's birthday last week, and just like any little girl we know she loves the movie Frozen and Princess Elsa. So we decided to make her a special birthday package filled with Frozen cookies.

Well unfortunately, I don't own a princess dress cookie cutter, but we wont let that stop us...so I decided we can make a dress template and cut out the cookie dough free-hand. I do however own the snowflakes cookie cutter which makes life a bit easier.

I saw a Princess Elsa dress cookies from one of my Pinterest cookie inspiration and I knew as soon as i saw it that i want to make one just like that.

I will go through some of the steps that i did to make it, however just to show you what we had in mind, here is what the end result looks like...

I also have another lovely friend who happened to have a little girl that is a huge Frozen fan (i think almost every little girls are to be honest!), and because i know that if i make one batch of cookies, i will have quite a bit of cookie dough to work with we decided to make a another set of Frozen cookies for her too. Both of these girls lives overseas so we are sending these cookies away on a long trip :)

So now lets talk about the baking and decorating process....

We started with our favorite sugar cookies recipe from Sweet Sugar Belle and when we finished making the cookie dough we cut them out to to size using the template that i made for the dress and using snowflake cookie cutter.

While we are waiting for the cookies to cool off, we prepared the royal icing to decorate the cookies.
Because meringue powder is soo expensive in this country (NZ), we made our royal icing using egg whites, cream of tartar and icing sugar.

When the icing is ready, we separate them into bowls to be mixed with gel food colouring to create the colours we need to decorate the cookies. In this project we only need 2 colours, blue and white.

Then the fun part begins! With Princess Elsa's dress we started with outlining the middle bodice of her dress with blue icing. We used tip#2 and piping consistency for outlining, then fill it up with flood icing. Let it dry for 4-6 hours. Because we did it at night we just leave the icing to dry overnight.

After the blue icing is completely dry, add a few little lines at bottom of the dress to give it some dimension, just to make it looks like a dress has a little bit of a ruffle at the bottom.

Next step is to outline the white cape with tip#2 again and then fill it up with white flooding icing. While the white icing is still a bit wet, we sprinkle it with white sanding sugar to give the look of snow and add a bit of spakle to the dress.

Here is the step by step visual to give you an idea of the work in progress.

Then give it a few hours to dry completely. When its all dry and ready to be packaged up we put it inside a clear plastic cellophane, sealed it and put some ribbon to dress it up. I just love pretty packaging :)

Then we move on to the snowflakes. Here are the first batch of snowflakes after they have cooled-off

To decorate the snowflakes, we used tip#2 again (this is probably out favorite tip for outlining) and use a piping consistency icing to outline the snowflake, then fill it up with flood icing. Let it dry for 4-6 hours.

Here is the step by step visual to give you an idea of the work in progress.

When all the snowflakes base colour icing are dried, then you can get creative and try out all sort of different snowflake designs to give them a pretty and unique look. You can also mix and match the icing colours. They are really fun to make and they look amazing in a platter. This is what our snowflakes look like in a platter...

Here is a closer look at some of them

Now these cookies are going to travel a fair bit so i had to make sure that they are well packaged with lots of safety bubblewrap. And a lot of prayers, so that they will arrive safely without any breakages.

However this time i remember to take a photo of the packaging before i wrapped them for shipping.
If i didn't have to ship it overseas i would love to have given the package to them just like this...

Unfortunately seeing that they will have to travel a long way, we had to choose safety over pretty packaging :)