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Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

My building had a holiday party last week.  The invitation included an optional cookie swap.  I'm not a baker.  At all.  In any way.  But I did want to meet people in my building and I figured that participating in a cookie swap was an easy way to do that.

It was not easy.

I give serious props to anyone who is a baker.  It is hard work!  And cookie decorating turned out to be a little more difficult than I anticipated.  Steep learning curve.  But I had fun on what turned out to be a three-day journey.  Read all about it:

DAY ONE: Bake the Cookies

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
I scoured the internet looking for a sugar cookie recipe and finally decided that you can't go wrong by trusting Martha.  Two observations about my personal wimpiness based on my adventures in baking:

  1. I think I actually hurt my back rolling out dough.  It is hot and sweaty work.
  2. I received a stand mixer as a gift almost ten years ago.  This is the first time I've ever used it (never had the space in NYC).  Thank God I own a mixer because mixing dough by hand would have made me give up.

We were instructed to bring six dozen cookies to the swap.  I was afraid I would mess some of them up, so I made 104 cookies.

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

I used two sizes of star cookie cutters to create a little variety.

DAY TWO: Frost the Cookies

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
Otherwise known as Adventures in Royal Icing!  I used the recipe from the Wilton site and how-to instructions I found on YouTube.  This was my favorite video:

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I made the icing too thick at first...

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

...which made it very difficult to pipe and it dried all chunky and textured.

Then I tried to see if I could get away with not piping the outside...

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

...and as you can see, the answer is no.  You  must pipe.  So, I did.

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

And then I flooded the cookies:

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

DAY THREE: Decorate the Cookies

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
The Royal Icing needed to dry overnight.  So the next day I dragged out some clean never-before-used stencils (important when dealing with food) and some food color sprays.  Unfortunately, I didn't like the results.  The sprays weren't very intense in color and the images were softer than I wanted.  So then I tried stamping with some gel food coloring.  I tried clear stamps and unmounted rubber and finally settled on a set of wood mounted alphabet stamps.  Again, these were brand new never-before-used stamps.

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

I filled a piece of cut & dry stamp pad felt with the gel food coloring...

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

...in order to create a food safe stamp pad to use with the stamps!

I returned to the stenciling, but decided to go with the gel food coloring and a cosmetic wedge sponge in order to create more intense colors.  I also decided to create some quick holiday stencils using my ScanNCut.

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

Once I had gotten control of the method of decorating, I started creating colorful cookies!

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

I chose the six dozen prettiest and loaded them into the biggest platter I own...

from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies
from the Balzer Designs Blog: Stamped & Stenciled Holiday Cookies

...and carried them over to the party.  They were well received -- both attractive and delicious!  The perfect combination!

I had a lot of fun during this cookie decorating adventure.  And now I know why cookies are so expensive at bakeries!  Definitely worth it!

Are you a baker?  Any tips to share?  I'd love to hear them!

Thanks for stopping by!

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