We are attempting to bring some fairy tales into our home this time. I have seen so many awesome versions of lil red riding hood cookies out there. One in particular really inspired me was created by a very talented cookie decorator in Instagram, unfortunately i can't put a link here to an Instagram stream but just trust me when I say she is very talented and there were many character cookies that she made which were just amazing! So this version of lil red ridinghood was totally inspired by her creations :)

It was really fun making this fairy tale set, my fave part is actually decorating the mushrooms! I just love LOVE love mushrooms, i would put it in everything i eat if i can, my hubby will tell you this is real life fact....and no doubt he will also scrunch his nose and tell you that he is not a big fan of 'fungus' (that's what he called them lol). Well regardless what he thinks, personally I love them & I think they are so cute!

This set is pretty simple to make, but because we don't have a cookie cutter to make Red Ridinghood we had to manually cut the cookie dough with a knife with a simple paper template. I didnt get a chance to take a photo of how to do this but Haniela has posted instructions in her blog on how to do this, if you want to check it out, click HERE.

So after we cut out the dough with a paper template the firtst thing we do is mark out the area to decorate with an edible marker.

We start with the hair area, fill the area we have marked with a brown icing. We used tip #2 and 20 second icing to do this, mainly because we couldnt be bothered making 2 different consistency icing so 20 second icing works well for things like this. Then we fill the face area also with a 20 seconds cream colour icing. Let it dry for a few hours. We let it dry overnight to avoid bleeding issues.

Next step is the hood, outline the area that we are going to fill with red piping consistency icing then fill it with red flood icing. This time we made 2 different consistencies as we want to make sure the outline will act like a dam to hold the flood icing without overflowing. Let it dry for a few hours. we prefer to let it dry overnight specially as red colouring have a tendency to cause bleeding issues.

While we are waiting for her red hood to dry we decided its a good time to put her face details. Using Tip #1 we put 2 black dots for her eyes and also with tip #1 we piped a brown icing for her mouth. Then we put a couple of pink round sprinkles in her cheeks.

Next step is her dress, we wanted a complimenting red colour with the hood so we made a slightly lighter red colour for her dress. Then we fill it with 20 second icing, then let it dry for a few hours.

Then all we need to do is put the bow in the middle of her dress and lastly add her hands on both side of her dress using the same cream colour icing that we use for her face.

That leaves us with the other pieces for red ridinghood cookie set. Lets start with the mushrooms, just because its my favorite :P

They are very simple to decorate, fill the top area of the mushroom with red icing and let it dry overnight. After the red icing dries add random white dots on top of the mushroom, then let it dry.

These cookies were specially made for my lovely cousin in Australia. She asked for a simple cookie, in fact she asked to send the cookies un-decorated. But where is the fun in that? The fun part is the decorating part so i choose a simple remake of the green owls that we made earlier this year.

Its pretty simple to make and this time we are making it the proper owl colours, not a green owl with left over icing LOL :P

Oh and we made them with a couple of different body shapes, they were inspired by Sweetopia's owl cookies but she made them in 2 different size - a big mama owl & a small baby owl. We decided we just want to make 1 size with two different body shape.

These are really simple to make because we dont have to use a special cookie cutter, just any round cookie cutters will do.

First step is to pipe and fill the body of the owl, some in just a rounded body shape and some in a kind of letter 8 shape body with pointy ears. Personally I prefer the letter 8 shape body, coz i think they look cuter but thats just me....my daughter doesn't mind either way :)

Once the body is dry, the next step is to pipe the white eye outline. It was supposed to be the easy part, just pipe 2 big round shapes on the face, but for some reason im having all sort of issues piping them.

I ended up with wonky eyes, either one was bigger than the other side or it was mishapen no matter how much i tried to fix it! So i just let it be and figured that the different sizes will give them individual personality LOL .... that was just my way of making myself feel better :P You can see them here...

We let the white eye outline dries for a few hours, just to avoid bleeding issues. Then the next step is to pipe the body with a green flooding icing. And while the icing is still wet, pipe the little V shape inside the body to give an impression of little cute furs. Leave to dry for a few hours.

The last step is to pipe the little details like black eyes, the beak, wings and feet. We use an outline consistency icing to do the little details.

And that's it, all done. You can pipe some leaves on the bottom of their feet if you want to, but we dont have anymore left over green icing so we decided to just leave it as it is. Im sure my cousin wont mind seeing that she wasn't bothered on what decorations we put on the cookies LOL.

Ps: my cousin just told me that she is enjoying the cookies and refused to share them with anyone else :P

Claudia's school has requested volunteers to bake for the Kapa Haka festival this weekend. So we decided to help out and told them we will be baking some cookies for the event.

We wanted to do something simple and decided that polkadot kitty and some love hearts cookies are the way to go this time.  The original idea for this was from Bridget, an amazing cookie decorator, check out her blog - Bake at 350, she does a lot of awesome tutorials on cookie decorating, very inspiring! :)

We only have one cat/kitty cookie cutter (apart from the Hello Kitty cutters but that doesn't count :P) so we just used what we already have :)

Now, on to the steps to make them....these are very easy to make in 4 easy steps: outline, flood, add dots & add bows. And what i like best of all is the fact that we only need to make 3 colours. The main body colour is purplish-grey with white polkadots and pink bows. The love heart is in a pink colour to match the bows :)

Step 1: Outline the cookie with outline consistency icing, we use a tip #2.

Step 2: Fill the cookie with flood icing of the same colour.

Step 3: While the icing is still wet, continue to put the polkadots with white flood icing. Then let the cookie dry for about 4-6 hours (preferably overnight).

Step 4 : Pipe the bows and let it dry for a couple of hours, we use PME tip#1.5 to do this.

You don't have to make the little love hearts, but we like having them to compliment the main cookie designs and it works well with these kitty so we piped and fill the love hearts with pink icing.

The last thing to do is packaging them for the fundraising, i made little tags with "Have a Purrfect day" written on it to match the kitty theme. We packaged them up individually so they will stay fresh longer and its easier to sell on the day.

There you go, very simple and easy :) Hope these kitty will go to a good home :P

These cookies were specially made for awesome my father in law. He is the most talented artist I know. He can create really beautiful drawings and paintings of beautiful things...i really admire his work. He was an art and design teacher at one of the university here, but he just recently retired. That just gives him more time to do the things he loves, like painting :)

So we thought we would make these little mini paint palette cookies. We have seen so many versions of these cookies but we like this one the best coz they are minis and colourful...so cute! :)

These are super easy and very fun to make. All you need is a small round cookie cutters and mainly just white icing. I love working with white icing coz that means that we don't have to put any colours straight after we made it :P

Then pipe a black line for the paint brush and then put the red tip straight away on top.

You dont even have to wait until this part dries, you can continue to put blobs of different paint colours around the palette. The best thing about this is that you can choose any paint colours you like, so when you have left over colour icings that you can use its perfect for this :)

Claudia had so much fun piping those colourful paint all around the palette :P

We have one very happy recipient of this mini paint palette, unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of him and the cookies after we gave him his little present. You'll just have to take my word for it that he was pleased to receive the gift :)

We didn't get a chance to post this yesterday on the actual Father's Day as we were out and about, so this post is a day late, but we still want to share anyway :)

My lovely daughter and I have been very sneakily baking these cookies when my husband is not around and then decorating them when he was not looking :P

Let me tell you that it is very hard to secretly bake something for someone when they are living with you and constantly rummaging the pantry for treats! LOL

We had to store these cookies in a special place where he would not be looking, and we are pleased to tell you that this time around we were successful in keeping this a surprise :)

These cookies are very easy and fun to make, you can play around with all sort of colourful designs and mixed and match any combinations as you please. Once the cookies are cooled, outline and fill the cookies with any colour icing you like, the good news is that you dont need a lot of icing to iced these cookies, but it does take time to make up the colours you want to use.

My daughter is really good at mixing colour, she also likes experimenting with mixing a few different colours together to get a different shade :) These are the colours she chose to make and after we piped the base colours we leave it overnight (hidden of course lol) to dry before we do the tie designs :)

We want to do simple designs for the tie, so polkadots and stripes are the easiest and some are just plain colour ties. We leave the tie designs to dry overnight before writing any letters on top of them just to make sure there wont be any colour bleeds.

The next step is to write the letters on top, we want to write "I LOVE DADDY" so this light blue polkadot tie is the first tie we decorate, isn't it cute?! :P

That is all...I'm sure its still father's day somewhere in the world...one day late is excusable lol ;-)
Hope all the dads out there are had a wonderful day spoilt with hugs & kisses from his family :)

We've just finished making beach theme cookies as wedding favors. The wedding is going to be in Rarotonga and the couple requested a beach theme cookies. So we came up with some samples of what kind of cookie designs we can make from the cookie cutters we already have and they have chosen these 4 designs from the beach theme platter we showed them. 

I hope everyone at the wedding loves them as much as we do :) Have a great weekend everyone!

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hope everyone is having a great day ;-)

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 ;-)

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.

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.

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