Bee Cookies

So anyone who read my royal icing - a beginners tale post will know that I recently attempted to decorate cookies with royal icing for the first time. For some reason best known to myself I decided to try decorating a bee cookie. I think I was inspired by how lovely these bee cookies looked on the sweet adventures of sugarbelle blog. Whilst it was probably a bit of a complicated cookie for a first time it did provide lots of opportunity for me to practice my technique. Sugarbelle has a enviably large collection of piping tips, icing bags and various pots to mix colours so here are a few tips on how to decorate bee cookies with more limited materials. This is what we are aiming for (I was quite pleased given they were a first attempt!):

Firstly you need to start off with some plain cookies to decorate (I chose gingerbread because they are so tasty!). Then take a pen with edible ink and draw on your design, Sugarbelle recommends you do this for every cookie, but after a few I felt I had got the idea:

Then you begin the icing process, with royal icing you typically use a slightly thicker icing to outline the various shapes and then a thinner icing to fill them in. The technique is called outlining and flooding. Fill your icing bags with pre-coloured icing and then using either a number 1, 2 or 3 tip (wilton) begin outlining you bees. Rest your arm on the edge of the table to steady your hand and try and keep the icing nice and neat:

Leave the outline to dry for 10-15 minutes and then begin to flood your cookies. You can refill your icing bags with a thinned down icing but I thought my icing was thin enough so I saved myself the extra washing up and stuck with the same bags I had used to outline. Whilst your bags are not being used keep them in a glass with some damp kitchen towel in the bottom to stop the icing crusting up. I flooded one colour at a time for ease but to give more dimension you might want to alternate between filling in shapes. Zigzag your icing across the area you want to flood and then tap the cookie to encourage an equal spread, use a toothpick to fill any areas not covered by icing.

Once you have finished icing leave your cookies for a few hours to dry before enjoying them.

Happy baking xxx