Snowflake Cookies

So here's my second attempt... Notice that there's no red to be seen.The cookies above were my "test" cookies.

For cookies 1, 2 and 4 I was using probably close to a 20-second Royal Icing for the flooding. I was hoping for a nice, puffy look. 1 and 2 were outlined and flooded together. 4 was iced using a spatula. Eh. I just wanted to see what would happen with that one.

I didn't like any of the results. The icing wasn't evening out enough. Too thick. Maybe I needed more icing. I'm not sure but I was worried that I'd run out of icing if I used more on each so decided to thin it out for the rest of the backgrounds.

The flooding for 3 was outlined with a thinner icing and then left to dry for a while before flooding. I decided against this for 5, 6 and the rest of them. Instead I piped and flooded together.

I piped the snowflakes on 1 and 2 but the icing was way too thin so I thickened it up for the rest.

On 5 and 6, I tried to see how it would look if I added a few more spokes to the snowflake. I didn't like what it did to the centers. If I had some silver dragees or something, that would have fixed it right up. Bummer. A smaller tip would have helped too.

Soooo....experimenting over, here's what I came up with. A thinner icing for the background, maybe 10 seconds, piped and flooded together. A thicker icing for the piping, maybe 15 seconds. #2 tip. Next time thicker piping icing and smaller tip.

Anyway, I love how they came out... The largest snowflakes are actually from a flower cookie cutter. The other is a snowflake cutter but I lost some of the detail on the shape. I never chill my dough before baking. I think that I'm going to do that next time to see what happens. Maybe the shapes will be more defined.

I placed a big ol' order from Karen's Cookies. Food coloring, small bottles, a 1.5 tip, some cutters...Can't wait!

Dotty