Sugar Dot Cookies: April 2016

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Tutorial - How to Use Sugar Stamps to Make Royal Icing Transfers

How to Use Sugar Stamps to Make Royal Icing Transfers

Sugar Stamps are design transfer sheets - different than any other sheet you've used. These were manufactured specifically for meringues. I've found that they work beautifully with candy melts! The sheets need gentle heat to make the designs transfer. Once transferred to your treat, there is no additional texture or any taste whatsoever. Love them!

Because I'm a cookie decorator, I've been trying to figure out a way to get Sugar Stamps to transfer onto royal icing. My first experiment was not successful. At all. I need heat. My question - What if I pipe royal icing transfers, then put them into a low oven? Let's find out what happened!

Supplies needed:
Sugar Cookies (Dough Recipes, Royal Icing Recipes)
Sugar Stamp design sheets
Printed out letters, numbers, simple designs.

Are you familiar with royal icing transfers? These are small shapes made from royal icing. They are piped onto acetate, waxed paper, or parchment paper. A print out is placed under that to guide your design. Once the royal icing has dried overnight, they can be peeled off and dropped onto cookies that have been just flooded with royal icing.

In this case, I used Sugar Stamp design sheets instead of the acetate/waxed paper/parchment paper mentioned above.

Place the Sugar Stamp sheet on top of your print out. Shiny side of the Sugar Stamp will be face down. Rough side of the Sugar Stamp will be face up. Cut the Sugar Stamp sheet if you'll only be using part of it.

Put your medium thickness royal icing into a small piping bag.

Pipe the letters directly onto the Sugar Stamp sheet.

Oooops! You want to pipe the letters backwards! The O, V, and E will be fine once they are flipped over. The L will be backwards once it's turned over! Before printing, mirror image your letters. I wish I had!

I taped this to my cookie pan because I use a convection oven with a fan. No need for this step if using a regular oven.

Bake in a low 200 degree oven for just a few minutes. I had no idea what was going to happen.

If you try this at home, run a test first to see how it will work in your oven - at what temp and for how long. You don't want to ruin an entire sheet!

Can you tell that the letters puffed up? I lost a bit of definition, but pretty cool!

Allow the letters to completely dry overnight.

Peel the letters from the Sugar Stamp sheets. (This is when I realized that the L was backwards and re-did it!)

Flood cookies with royal icing. Drop on your transfers. Allow royal icing to dry overnight.

Cute!

Can you see how the letters are raised up on top of the cookies? That's because they puffed up in the oven. It actually adds a pretty cool dimension to the cookies.

Sugar Stamp design transfer sheets are available for purchase through my website. Many more designs available. #SugarStamp

Check out the many other creations I've made with Sugar Stamps.

Tutorial - How to Use Candy Melts and Sugar Stamps on Sugar Cookies

How to Use Candy Melts and Sugar Stamps on Sugar Cookies

Sugar Stamp design sheets and candy melts make the cutest (and easiest) treats!

Sugar Stamps are design transfer sheets - different than any other sheet you've used. These were manufactured specifically for meringues. I've found that they work beautifully with candy melts! The sheets need gentle heat to make the designs transfer. Once transferred to your treat, there is no additional texture or any taste whatsoever. Love them!

Because I'm a cookie decorator, I've been trying to figure out a way to get Sugar Stamps to transfer onto royal icing or onto sugar cookies. My first experiment was not successful. My second time was better - a semi-miss and success. I wanted to improve upon that semi-miss, trying to clean up the edges, so here we go again......

(More on that "success" later.)

Supplies needed:
Sugar Cookies (Dough Recipes, Royal Icing Recipes)
Bright White Candy Melts
Sugar Stamp design sheets

Place Sugar Stamp sheet on a cookie tray. Shiny side down. Rough side up.

Place candy melts into a piping bag. Melt candy melts in the microwave - slowly according to package directions. You need heat to transfer the design. Be sure that the melts are warm to the touch.

Immediately pipe the chocolate onto the back of one cookie. No need to be neat or cover entirely.

Immediately flip it over and place on the Sugar Stamp sheet. Press down on the cookie to make the chocolate ooze out past the cookie edge.

Repeat with more cookies. If you're doing a lot of cookies, be sure to re-warm the chocolates (for only about 10 seconds) in the piping bag every so often so that the chocolate stays warm. (You need heat to transfer the design!)

Allow the chocolate to cool and harden. Place in the refrigerator or freezer for a few minutes if you're the impatient type.

Once cool, simply peel the cookies from the design sheets. As you can see, the design lifts off onto the chocolate.

Using a pairing knife, scrape the chocolate so that it's flush with the cookie edges. I have to admit - this was messy, and somewhat time-consuming. The edges aren't perfectly flush and straight.

It does work and it's super cute. If I were to do this again (and I will!), I would choose Plan B or Plan C.

Plan B is that "success" that I mentioned at the top of this post. In that case, I spread melted candy melts on the Sugar Stamp sheets. When they were almost cooled, I used cookie cutters to cut shapes. Then those were glued to the cookies. Much faster and cleaner! (I've been told that you can warm up the cookie cutters in hot water to help cut through the chocolate easily. Nice! Be sure to dry the cutters prior to cutting.)

Plan C is another great option. With this one, place cookie cutters on top of the Sugar Stamp sheets. Fill the cutters with warm candy melts. Once cooled, peel them from the sheets, pop the chocolate out of the cutters, then glue to cookies with additional candy melts. Tutorial for that here (except the part about gluing to cookies).

These are candy melt shapes made using the above method, Plan C, ready to be glued to cookies.

Sugar Stamp design transfer sheets are available for purchase through my website. Many more designs available. #SugarStamp

Check out the many other creations I've made with Sugar Stamps.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I earn a small percentage on purchases made through these links. Thank you for your support!

Interested in learning more about working with candy melts? Check out my Candy Melts Creations Facebook page.
Candy Melt Creations

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Tutorial - How to add Candy Melt Accents to Sugar Cookies with Sugar Stamps

How to add Candy Melt Accents to Sugar Cookies with Sugar Stamps

Let me show you how to add adorable accents to sugar cookies using candy melts and Sugar Stamps! They're so cute and easy to make!

Supplies needed:
Sugar Cookies (Dough Recipes, Royal Icing Recipes)
Candy Melt Treats made with cookie cutters. Tutorial for those here.
Bright White Candy Melts
Sugar Stamp design sheets

We're going to use two different methods for this.....
1. Pop candy melt treats into windows cut into the sugar cookies.
2. Flood solid sugar cookies with royal icing, dropping the treats onto them while the icing is still wet.

When cutting the sugar cookie dough, cut windows into the centers of some of them. Bake. Immediately after they come out of the oven, while the cookies are still warm, re-cut the centers. They will have closed up slightly while baking. You need the crisp center shape to drop in the treats.

Follow this tutorial to make candy melt shapes using cookie cutters and Sugar Stamp sheets.

Flip the cookies over so that the backs are facing up.

Drop the treats into the windows - face down.

Pipe warm candy melts on top to glue the treats to the cookies.

Allow to cool and harden. Flip the cookies over.

Outline the cookies with royal icing.

Use royal icing, if needed, to fill in any gaps between the candy melts and cookie.

On the cookies with windows, flood with royal icing all around the treat centers.

On the solid cookies, flood with royal icing. Immediately drop on additional candy melt treats while the icing is wet.

Allow royal icing to dry. Pipe additional details with royal icing if you'd like.

You can see that the candy melt treats are raised up on the solid cookies where we dropped the treats onto the wet royal icing.

On the cookies with windows, the candy melt treats are flush, or slightly lower than the height of the royal icing.

Either way - super cute!

.
Sugar Stamp design transfer sheets are available for purchase through my website. Many more designs available. #SugarStamp

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Tutorial - How to Make Candy Melt Cupcake Toppers with Sugar Stamps

How to Make Candy Melt Cupcake / Cake Toppers and Treats with Sugar Stamps and
Cookie Cutters

You can easily make the most adorable treats using candy melts and Sugar Stamp design sheets. Use them as cake or cupcake toppers. They're perfect for baby or bridal showers, birthdays, weddings, any occasion!

Supplies needed:
Cookie Cutters
Bright White Candy Melts
6" lollipop sticks
Sugar Stamp design sheets

Place Sugar Stamp sheet on a cookie tray. Shiny side down. Rough side up.

Place cookie cutters on top of Sugar Stamp sheet. (If using number or letters, be sure to place them backwards so that when the chocolates are flipped over, they'll be correct!)

Place candy melts in a piping bag. Melt candy melts in the microwave - slowly according to package directions. You need heat to transfer the design. Be sure that the melts are warm to the touch.

Immediately pipe the chocolate into the candy cutters. Make sure that the chocolate is touching the entire perimeter of the cutter. Use a toothpick to move the chocolate to the edges if necessary.

Tap the cookie tray lightly to be sure that the chocolate is touching the sheet completely and to smooth the top surface.

If you're filling a lot of cookie cutters, be sure to re-warm the chocolates (for only about 10 seconds) every so often so that the chocolate stays warm.

Here I'm using two cookie cutters so that the interior heart will have a different design.

Allow the chocolate to cool and harden. Place in the refrigerator or freezer for a few minutes if you're the impatient type.

Once cool, simply peel the chocolate from the design sheet. Push the chocolate out of the cookie cutters. As you can see, the design lifts off onto the chocolate. (Notice the backwards number one!)

Here's that double heart - peeled from the transfer sheet, then placed face down on top of another design sheet. Fill the center area with candy melts. Allow to cool, then peel off.

To make a cake or cookie topper: Pipe a line of candy melts onto the back of any shape. Place a lollipop stick into the melted chocolate. Allow to cool and harden.

Ta da! So cute and took minutes to make! Place them on a plate as a dessert, into treat bags, on top of cupcakes or cakes, or around the perimeter of a cake!

Another option is to "glue" these with candy melts onto corresponding sugar cookies. Adorable!

Here's that number 1 used as a cupcake topper. Use a larger cookie cutter for a cake topper. You can make numbers or letters. You could spell out a word using letters and multiple cupcakes.