High Five Cookies Post 2

Hi there! You are on Post 2 of High Five Cookies which has the Steps to Decorating the High Five Cookies and Dos and Don’ts of the recipe. Get the High Five Cookies Recipe here at Post 1.

Decorating High Five Cookies
Once you have the icing ready in various colours decide which colour will be used for text and which one for outlining and flooding the cookies. I used yellow for text and blue for other purposes. Have your cooled cookies ready and follow the below steps:

Step 1 – Put the blue icing in a piping bag or a zip-lock bag (like I did) to outline the cookies. Carefully pipe out along the edges of the cookie to create an outline.
Step 2 – To flood the cookies we need a comparatively thinner icing so add a few drops of milk to blue icing. Put a teaspoon full of icing on the cookie and spread it taking care not to cross the outline. Let this dry before you start piping text on the cookies.
Step 3 – Just like the blue icing put the yellow icing in a piping bag or a zip-lock bag to write text on the cookies. Carefully write your text and let it dry.

Dos and Don’ts of Sugar Cookie Dough
1 – Always sieve and mix the dry ingredients like flour, baking powder, salt, etc together before adding to the batter. This ensures even mixing of the lesser quantity ingredients.
2 – Use butter right of the refrigerator. Don’t use very soft butter as the mixture will not cream well and the cookie texture will be affected.
3 – Preferably use castor sugar if you cannot find or make very fine powder sugar. Fat grains of sugar will take really long to melt and cream along with the butter which will increase your preparation time. And half done sugar will leave specks on the cookie while baking (this happened to my cookies). Although, the taste is not affected but the look of the cookie definitely is.
4 – When mixing eggs in the batter remember to add one by one and only after the first egg has mixed well add the other. The mixture tends to curdle while adding eggs due to the high fat content (butter + eggs) and high room temperature. If your mixture curdles, don’t worry, quickly mix in the flour. Remember, the key is to be quick and not vigorous or else nothing can save your cookies.
5 – Once the dough is ready wrap and refrigerate it for good number of hours. You can even freeze the dough if not using in a day or two.
6 – While rolling the dough do not apply pressure, be gentle.
7 – Once you have cut cookies from the rolled dough sheet then don’t use the scraps again till they have been refrigerated for 10 – 15mins.
8 – Always dust the cookie cutter before cutting out the cookies; this prevents dough from sticking to it.
9 – If you are making the cookies on a hot humid day then I suggest placing the baking tray with cookies in the refrigerator before putting in the oven. This will prevent the already melted fat from the dough to further run out while baking.
10 – Never roll the whole dough at one go. Cut into portions and then roll one by one.

Dos and Don’ts of Cookie Icing
1 – Use very fine powdered sugar or store bought icing sugar. As the milk quantity is very less only fine sugar will melt and bind into a smooth icing.
2 – Always colour the icing using a paint brush this way the quantity of colour can be controlled. Trying to drop colour directly from the bottle is high risk.
3 – If using a zip-lock bag to decorate the cookie then watch out on the pressure you apply. Too much pressure will cause the bag to tear. For a first timer, a strong piping bag is recommended.
4 – Icing may appear different in the bowl and on the cookie. Always pipe out some icing on the cookie to check if that is the colour you need.
5 – Don’t leave the icing uncovered for too long. Always cover with a cling wrap if leaving it ideal for more than 15 minutes.
6 – Only practice can make you perfect at decorating cookies. Make a big batch of dough, freeze it and make different shaped cookies on a regular basis. Decorate them to master the skill.

I did love to see pictures of your cookies and read your comments.

Till then, love Being a Mommy!

P.S I got my inspiration from the blog SewLahTeaDough.