These Aren't Really for the Birds!

Well, here they are: the birdhouse cookies. I was anxious to make these cookies because I recently bought the cookie cutter and couldn't wait to try it. I immediately thought of the brightly colored designs of Mary Engelbreit as inspiration for the frosting.

I actually went all out on these cookies: baking them the night before so I could really focus on the frosting, making 5 colors of frosting, and making two different consistencies of frosting- outline and flood. Here's a bit more on my sugar cookie baking strategy.

The basic ingredients of my royal icing are water, vanilla, powdered sugar and meringue powder. The recipes are from the Sugarbaker's Cookie Cutter Cookbook which is out of print and I bought used on Amazon. It was pricey but worth it.
I don't usually use raw egg whites because some people shouldn't eat them for food safety reasons (i.e. pregnant women and young children and salmonella risks). The difference between flood and outline consistency is the proportion of water to the powdered sugar and meringue powder. Outline is thicker and is used for piped borders and designs. Flood consistency is a flowable icing that will spread willingly without using a knife to spread. Sometimes I will use base consistency which is in between and then pipe outline frosting onto that...but I was going all out tonight!

So I piped some designs in white outline frosting to start...


and then flooded the cookies with the colored frosting in flood consistency. I actually only used one pastry bag and I used bowls and toothpicks to guide the flood frosting across the cookies and into the piped areas. I then piped more outline frosting on top as you sometimes visually lose your borders in the flooding. It was also great to add little dots and touches. I also used several colors of sanding sugar- which is a fine sugar that adds a beautiful sparkle.


I also varied the color by mixing in white frosting into the remants of the colors as I used up the darker colors...This gave me lighter shades to work with without using another bowl and spoon. Here's a shot of all of the finished cookies...note the pink blackberry in the middle of the chaos.


I have a hard time making the same cookie twice and I love to try out new designs each time.


This is why I have to be a cookie designer not a cookie baker...I love the creative part, not the repetition of the same patterns.

And this was the final chaos that was and still is my kitchen. I think the final tally was about 26 cookies, 5 sanding sugars, 5 frosting colors (red, blue, yellow, white and green), a ton of toothpicks, a lot of dirty dishes and one happy cookie baker!


Thanks for indulging me on my incredibly messy baking adventures...and reading this blog.