Chocolate Snowflake Cookies

Hello, happy holidays and welcome to my cookie demo of snowflake cookies. I'm so excited to show you these cookies because, well, first of all, they're my favorite to eat in both chocolate and vanilla form. Um But they are so versatile. You can use them as ornaments, you can use them as gifts. You can obviously show off at your holiday party.

Um And each one is so exquisite, you'll see all the different designs. And as my mom always says, there are no mistakes in art, right? So if you know how to pipe Royal icing, which we'll get into and you can make a few dots, then you can do these cookies. You could have fun, you could layer them up, you could actually make these into a Christmas tree. Um But I didn't even think of that until just now because this is two layers.

Not sure if you could see that anyway. I'm ELISA Strauss. I'm from Confetti cakes. I'm a long time crafty um instructor. I've done a whole bunch of cakes, um sculpted cakes, sugar shoes, things like that.

Um And I've been making cookies and cakes for over two decades and truth be told and maybe don't tell people this, but I actually love cookies way more than anything else that I do. Um, not always the best business model because especially when they're highly decorated, but we could get into that more. So, today I'm going to show you, um, how to roll out the dough because I think that's a really important and really make it or break it moment. Um, and then we'll talk about chilling it and decorating it and how to jazz it up even more if you aren't sure if you've never made royal icing, which is the icing. I've used to decorate these cookies.

That's what we call our decorators. Glue if you will. Um, then I have a free video on youtube. I bet creative cake design has um, videos on that as well. So just that is royal icing.

Um And then you should have the recipe for my Royal Icing and also the chocolate cookie dough. But as I said earlier, there's a vanilla version that you can also access online. So let's get started and I'll try to manage the chat and the cookies, but I'm going to take these away for just a little bit while I roll out some of our dough. So what you need to roll out the dough is you'll, you'll um, turn out the dough from the mixer and you'll have about four times this amount. Um So you'll cut it into fours.

It's really soft as you could see. And then I wonder how many people have only rolled out cookies with flour. That's not always the best because let's say this is my perfect dough. I don't want to add any flour to it. So a ways back I learned to roll it between two pieces of parchment paper.

If you don't have parchment paper, you can use wax paper for this. Um You cannot use newspaper, please don't do that. But um you know, parts and paper is a wonderful thing to have. I use it for craft projects and all other types of things um to keep your surface neat and it's just great because it doesn't stick and it also won't add any extra flour, sugar, anything to your dough. OK.

Then I don't know if you guys have seen this, I'm sure you have because most of you are experts. But um these are these bands, the cookie bands. I don't know if you could see and they come in different heights and I like them with cookies. I, I actually don't like using them so much with rolled fondant um, or gum paste because I feel limited. But with cookies, I wanna make a sheet that I can make as many cookies as possible if you don't have these or if you're in another country, some, sometimes they call them spacers which are two long pieces of either plastic.

I actually in our bakery used to make them out of cardboard, um, depending on the thickness of letters so that everything's even, and just in case you didn't get that, it's so that everything stays level. Right. It stays even when you're making cookies. The last thing you wanna have are some thick cookies and some thin cookies. Now, if we were in a studio audience, I would ask you all why, why is that?

Um, and I'm sure you all know you don't want some of your cookies to be raw and some of them to be burned. So, um, and we'll get into that soon when I show you the cookie cutters because as you can imagine, we have many different sizes. So I won't belabor this. But um, we have so much to get to, but I just want to show you how beautiful the dough is. When you roll it out, it's nice.

And even, um, if you needed to turn the dough, you can take the parchment paper and go this way, flip it over and then go this way. And I know this might be a silly thing to spend a lot of time on. But I really think rolling all the, all these basic fundamental, um, you know, techniques are really what make your cookies look perfect and professional and all the right size. And you don't run into those issues of, you know, things being frozen or raw or burnt. So I'm going to then take the dough and I'm going to stick it in the fridge.

This dough is so nice and moist. Same thing. If you're doing other cookie doughs, I always stick it in the fridge before I cut them out. Here we go. Here's mine from fresh from the fridge.

Um, and you could see even cold, the, um, parson paper comes off very nicely. And now let's talk about cutters. So normally when you give a recipe, you say, oh, it yields 24 cookies. It yields, you know, 15 cookies. As you see on this recipe, I can't really tell you how many because it depends.

If you're making a huge snowflake. Can you see that? Just give a go a huge snowflake or one of the smaller ones? And so this is a set I have, um, I actually love the middle ones the best. Um, and it's this set, let's see, it says a few frosty flurries.

Um, and it's cookie cutter.com. So they clearly know what they're doing and we could put this in the chat later. Um, and one of the things that's really nice is it comes with two other little, um, metal pieces that help get the indentations trying to see the be my fingers are in the way. But you see like little snowflake indentations that said if you have any kind of cutter, honestly, even if you had just a round cutter or a square cutter, you can make these cookies, right? Because it doesn't matter I have these little push cutters.

Um, and, you know, my favorite thing to use are pastry tips. So, where are my pastry tips? And just use what's in your house? Right. So if you don't have snowflake cutters do not panic.

Um, but obviously it makes things easier. Um, and then again, because this dough is on the stickier side, um, because it's so nice and moist. Um, I like to dip my cutter into flour so it won't stick. That said, could you get away with it if it's super cold without flour, you could. But, um, and remember if you're making, um, gluten free cookies for someone don't accidentally then use flour to cut out the cookies, right?

You have to use the same kind of whether you're using, um, you know, Bob's Red Mill or Cup for cup, things like that. The other thing when you're thinking about the size is where is that cookie going? Right. So, again, if I'm having a cocktail party, am I going to make 50 snowflake cookies of the largest size? No.

In fact, the other night I had a party and I made all the little ones because I knew a lot of people were going to be coming over and sitting around and eating my cookies. Yay. Um, but, you know, I don't want to make such big ones if I need to feed a lot of people that said if you're using this cookie as a decoration let's say you're using it as an ornament, then go for it. Right. The bigger, the better, um, you could hang them from a string and I'm gonna show you how to put the, um, holes in them and things like that.

Oh, and did this one come right off? No worries. It will just go back together when we bake it and then, um, I don't have a tray with me, but I'll just show you how to push it out. Now, if for some reason you're having trouble getting them out, then what you can do is I usually grab something not sharp, right? Not um, not a bing tool, but a ball tool of some sort.

So here we go, here's a, the small one. Again, I'm going to dip it in my flower and at this point, if my dough is chilled nicely, I can go ahead and work right on the cookie. So I'm gonna show you what I mean by that. I could go ahead and start making all my decorations and things like that. If the dough is getting warm and you're going to hear me say this a lot, just stick it in the fridge.

And by the way that goes for cakes too, if you're working on a cake and your cake is not cooperating. It, it basically means a time out and so it should go to its room. Um So of course, I forgot to take out a ball tool, but that's ok. I'm just going to use the back of my paintbrush. And the beauty of being prepared is that I have all the cookies already baked off anyway.

So, um, but you get the point, grab a ball tool if you can. Oops. And then that came out. No problem. The dough is so nice and chilled that it made it a little harder, but I'd rather it be chilled than not chilled.

Now comes the fun part. So this is totally up to you. You, I promise you you can make these cookies with no indentations again. You know your schedule if you have to make 50 of these and you just have time to pipe the royal icing later. Fine if you have time and you wanna make some open kind of lacy looking cookies like we have here, right?

So you could see there's some oops, I don't know if you could see but there, let's see. What can I put behind it that you could see it. Um I'll put this mat hopefully you could see it ta da anyway, they have holes in them. Can you see that? Yes.

Yay. Um And they also like the, this one that has the lines. I used the little metal pieces. So I'm gonna show you how to do that right now. Let's see.

Instead of like all my cookies, I always say something always happens in a demo because that's just how it goes All right. So here are my cookies. And so at this point, I would have trans, I transferred my cookies from the cookie dough and if this starts getting soft, what are you gonna do? You're gonna put it back in the fridge and I put them on a mat just so I can show you. But at this point, I would have put my cookies on a sheet pan lined with parchment and that's what's going to go in and out of the fridge.

If you don't have room in the fridge and you only have room in a freezer, fine, that's totally fine. Um And you know, I just, but the other thing I want you to be aware of is size, right? So it's ok for when I refrigerate it to have all the different sizes of cookie cutters on one sheet tray. But when you go to bake it, you want all of the same size, right? Because of what we talked about, the larger cookie is going to take longer to bake and the smaller cookies hopefully will, will uh bake faster.

So, um, so I usually get them all on a tray lined with parchment, which is how I'm going to bake them. And at this point, they're still nicely chilled. So I can go in with my piping tips and I can start taking the dough out of the cookie. So I'll just do a few and then I'll try to hold up the cookie. Um, this is a number 10 tip.

Again, pastry tips are our best friends. Um, and if you don't have this, I mean, you could even use, you know, any kind of kitchen knife, any kind of supplies you have, you can use bing tools for this. Um, now I'm going to use this little, um, I guess, is it quadrilateral that has four sides? No, I don't know. It's like a teardrop shape.

Um, and so that's the advantage of using a set that comes with all these special sizes that said if you love any kind of cookie cutters, I bet they would work. Don't let that stop you from making these great, great, great cookies. And if you are just a chocoholic like one of my Children and you're like, I'm going through all this rolling out what? You could just take the cookie dough, you could ball it up and flatten it and throw some, you know, sanding sugar on it and they're delicious. So whether you like to decorate or not, I assume if you're here, you like to decorate.

Um, but if you don't like to, then you can still use the cookie dough, right? And the important thing also, I wanna tell you is all of these scraps we can reroll, right? You can't reroll forever because the, the cookie dough does get a little, um, it kind of, it gets like a cheesy kind of consistency. Um, but you can roll it a few times, I'd probably roll it up to three times. So here, let me pick up this cookie to show you.

Can you see? Yes. Awesome. So, yeah, so all of these, um, little doodads, um, any kind of shapes that you have are fun and if they get stuck, you could use the back of a paint brush, you could use a ball tool. And so at this point I would throw it back into the fridge before I bake it.

That is probably the most important thing I have told you right in and out of the fridge. Yes. But before you bake it, and I would argue and we can ask, um Rachel Tofel from um cake design, creative cake design. But I do that with all of my cookies that are cut out. So if I'm making gingerbread, if I'm making, um you know, any kind of shortbread, I always refrigerate them because it helps it keep the shape right.

The only time that it probably won't work is if you're using a mass produced cookie, like nothing against it. Pillsbury dough, that's literally what my mom would be using. She would not make the dough from scratch. So, um if you're using one of those commercially produced cookie doughs and they're like, oh, you know, and they show on the cover, they're perfectly baked, like it's very hard. Um because I've done some food styling in the past where I've had no one's eating it, but I needed to get dough and it, it wasn't successful for me.

So maybe someone else has a trick about that. So, again, all the same size on your trays, trays into uh the refrigerator. If you run out of trays, you can use cutting boards, you could use these plastic mats, which I love so, so, so much. And you're going to bake them. Now again, it depends on your oven.

I usually bake them between 1215 minutes. Again, based on size. Now, the thing that is the very difficult about these cookies, usually on a shortbread, we don't want any kind of color or vanilla sugar cookies. You start to get that light golden brown. How do you know when these are done?

It's very hard. I won't lie, but in general, you can tell it's about 1215 minutes. Um, again, depending on your oven, sometimes I'll turn the pan to get a nice even coat and um, they'll have puffed up a little bit, but in general, they will, you know, smell done, they will done. And remember when you pull them out of the oven, they continue to bake on the sheet pan. So I just leave them on the sheet pan, let them rest for 5, 10 minutes.

Um, before transferring them, which I understand makes it frustrating if you're working with two cookie trays in your kitchen. But, um, you know, just you, you have to be creative and you have to be willing to put in the time and effort. If you're going to do decorated cookies, they are not for people that wanna rush through if that's the case and you need to get a lot of, um, gifts done. I suggest, you know, either, um, you know, rolled up ball cookies or brownies or chocolate chip cookie, any kind of like scooper type cookie that you can just mass produce. you know, people are still happy, but these are really special and really beautiful.

Ok, so I'm gonna get rid of my dough. I've now bake them and I just wanna make sure, are there questions in the chat? If anyone has a question up until this point about baking since I've been talking so much? No. Ok.

Well, just tell me I'm not the most techy person. So if I missed you just holler. Um, so don't be confused. I know I said don't put the same size, but now they've all, um, cool. And so these are my cookies and so again, you can go from lots and lots and lots of holes to a few holes to guess what?

You don't have to pick holes, right? Because we're going to use the beautiful royal icing to get all the different decorations. Now, last night, I was making a few more cookies and my daughter who may or may not be watching, um, broke off one of the after it was baked and I was about to throw out the cookie or give it to one of them to eat. And I said, you know what? That is a happy accident, right?

I love when this stuff happens when I'm teaching because now what do I do? So you could do two things. One is you can just use the royal icing because that is our glue. Now the royal icing will be white, but you can be creative and um get it in there. And I'm going to talk more about royal icing in a second in the pastry bag.

But you can use the royal icing to just glue it together and then you'll just know that you'll start the design right there. The other thing you can do, which I've been using more and more is um satin. I now has this edible glue and in the past I had to make it. So when I was making my shoes, um if I was working on a cake and I wanted to stick things onto the roll of fondant, I would make my edible glue way back when I used to use pasteurized egg whites. You could use water sometimes, but this edible glue is amazing and it actually works on cookies too.

So, um it's and it's clear, which is nice. So um here's the bottle of it's just called a Decorator decorators Pantry edible glue from satin. I, I mean, they're usually in, you know, Michael stores, obviously, everything's online now and just take a little brush and we're going to use this later also with uh the sanding sugar. So, um anyway, if you didn't want the royal icing to show through or you had like a little crack on top, you can just use the edible glue and it will help it adhere to one another and then let that one dry and we can start decorating on the other side. So pastry bags.

So my pastry bags, I usually use cloth pastry bags for butter cream because it has fat in it. So I don't wanna use the same pastry bags that I use for butter cream for Royal Icing. Why? Because there's no fat in it. So I wanna fill these disposable bags, which I do feel bad for the environment, but I do try to be um you know, I I do wash them out sometimes if I'm using the same colors.

Um But you know, I it's just in the name of pastry, I I compost, I do all these other things. So this is my, this is my, one of my downfalls. I use these plastic bags. Um And if you're a beginner to piping, then I suggest not filling it full. Like I usually fill it about a third full.

If I'm just starting piping, I have a coupler and a tip. And so just, you know, yell at me in the chat if you already know all of this but why the coupler in case you're new to sugar cookies or decorating sugar cookies, then you have a coupler that you put into the pastry bag first, then you put your piping tip. Let's see where you can see this. And then you put the ring right on top. And what is so wonderful about that is if something goes wrong with this pastry tip, if you said, ah, I put something, it's too big for this cookie.

And then I'm going over to the smaller cookies and I want a smaller pastry tip, then you can just change it out without changing the bag. See, I told you, I'm an environmentalist. Just keep one bag, one bag for the whole day. I've been working with this bag for days. You see, um, and you don't want the royal icing to come out the back.

So I just use something like either a bench scraper. You can use the back of your hand. Um, and then I twist it. So when I first started these cookies, I did put on, I believe a number three tip. Um, and it just for the thickness of the royal icing that I made, um, for the size of the cookies, I just felt like it looked too big.

Um, again, if you're doing big swirls, you gotta get these done quickly. Um, then use a bigger piping tip. There's no harm in that. And again, I love to use parchment paper to just, you know, test out things. And then one thing I'm really going to be a stickler about with the piping and this is going to help you no matter what you're doing is when you pipe, you want the tip, the royal icing to fall from the bag.

You don't wanna drag the bag along the cookie. So I'm going to show you, but I just wanna point that out before I do anything else. So you can use those circles as a guide, right? You can start with, let's see if I do this as close as possible. Maybe I'll do it on a big cookie.

There we go. So this, this cookie here, here. You still can't see that. Hm. Where did I put my little?

Here we go. Excuse me. I just wanted to be able to show you things. So I used this metal. I don't know if that's metal.

Um this little metal insert to make it and you'll notice it kept its shape because I refrigerated them before I decorated them. We're sorry, I refrigerated them before I baked them. I did not refrigerate them before I decorated them. In fact, I like them at room temperature. So once the cookies come out of the oven, I let them sit, I let them, you know, cool off and then you can leave them on the same tray or I'm always looking to consolidate.

So I'll put all of my, what we call naked cookies onto a sheet with parchment paper and I'll double wrap that if I'm not decorating them right away. Um, usually it's too much to do in one day you want to do everything, you know, over the course of a number of days and I'll just leave them, make my royal icing and then I'm ready to go. So I'm hoping you can see this again. You can do it as much or as little as you want. Um Let's see if you can see, I'll try to go as close as possible, but just yell at me if this is not successful.

Um So anyway, so I'm just going to squeeze some out. So I have a nice clean tip and then I'm going to pipe and you're gonna see it's, I mean, I think the fancy word for this is drop string or drop piping string piping um on those fancy Fancy English Royal wedding cakes. Um But I just find that you get a straighter line when you drop it versus when you drag it. So I'm going to make a series of these. I find that that's a very snowflake type shape.

Um And I've been looking at snowflakes, the nice thing to remember is that no, two snowflakes are the same, right? I think it's like fingerprints. Maybe twins have the same fingerprints, I'm not sure, but snowflakes, each one is supposed to be completely different. So, um so it's just a matter of a series of lines, a series of dots to make each one and you get into a rhythm. I don't get scared if you spend, you know, maybe, I don't know, five minutes on the first cookie, it doesn't mean that every cookie is going to, um, going to take you five minutes.

The other thing to remember is like, make it easy on yourself. Right. So, in general, what I'll try to do is if I do one design on one side, I'm going to try to replicate it just like, you know, don't be so hard on yourself where you have to come up with all these like, you know, new designs, especially when different people are getting the cookies, you can do the same design on each cookie again, if you're, you know, either selling them or you're giving them as gifts. If they're all sitting on a plate like at a party like this, then you know, the artist cake designer in me wants them to all look different. OK.

So I'll just do a little bit more a series of lines and piping and dots and sometimes I go into the center. Um You could do edging, you can outline the cookie really, however, you know, you feel I usually hold my breath when I'm piping, but obviously that wouldn't be so much fun for you guys to watch me holding my breath. Um But really there's no, there's no wrong way. That's why I love this. I mean, you can probably paint the royal icing on with a palette knife or a paint brush.

Um, and then we're going to get to sanding sugar and I'm also going to show you how to, um, tear them. So any questions for me while I'm holding my breath and piping, I must have said something that didn't make sense now, although I've kind of been teaching a long time. So, anyway, um, well, please let me know, please let me know if you're, you know, baking, even if you're not baking these cookies. But you have a question on another cookie. I may not know it, but maybe someone else in the chat will or maybe I will.

You never know. I do love my cookies and I love as weird as it sounds, I love mass producing things that are still beautiful if that makes sense. Let's see. Abigail can I use a different type of chocolate instead of bittersweet? You absolutely can.

Um, you could also use semisweet. I mean, you, you know, it's, it's really up to you. I, I would not replace, you know, all the chocolate and go with like a butterscotch or something. But, um, you can use a different kind of chocolate. That's just more I think my preference of the cookie not being too sweet and I use Valona Cocoa or Verona chocolate or Girardelli or um, you know, Lin, I mean nothing against Hershey's but I try not to use Hershey's.

Um, but any kind of good child, there's, if you live near a good, you know, chocolate tier or someone, um, but if you're just going to the grocery store then you can just get chips. You know, I, I mean, I usually grabbed your deli, um, I think when I'm baking with my kids and things and when I'm using cookie cutters of different shape sizes, do I need to adjust baking times? Well, I mean, yes and no, I mean, you, the, the most important thing is that you need to have all the same size cookies on the same tray. So, um, in general, I'm superstitious and I don't like to open the oven, like I don't put in a tray of cookies and then put in another tray of cookies while the other ones are baking. But that said sometimes when I'm in a rush because who isn't?

I'll have one tray of the smaller cookies, one tray of the medium cookies, one tray of the bigger cookies. And if I do have three or two, you know, probably two, racks, then I will put them in and I'll just notice the smaller ones should be done because they have less surface area. Um, they should be done a little sooner. This cookie really does have a nice margin of error a because it's already dark. Right?

And it's so beautiful whether you use white Royal icing or hot pink or um you know, any kind of icing, it's just, it's a, such an elegant cookie, right? Like no matter what background you put it on, whether you put it on a, a tray with a or a plate with sanding sugar. If you put it on just, this is a cake board that I just got from Michael's. Um You can, again using the pastry tips, you can make a hole at the top or even here, I can use, um, you know, the little indent of the V and you can put a ribbon through and you can have them all different size hanging as a, you know, any kind of decoration you can make them into really anything you want from ornaments to hanging in the window to, I'm sure there's some game out there with cookies that, um, that you can, you know, you can use cookies for everything. Um, let's see more.

Um, I think I got all the questions. Ok. Well, I think I, that's all the questions for now. If I missed you, I'm going to just finish this one cookie and then I will get back. Let's see if I could get back to the chat here, I think.

Yes, Rachel agreed with me. Oh, are there Mary? Are there any recommended egg sub substitutes for this recipe? Dietary restrictions? I mean, I, I have not made these cookies with an egg replacement.

Um, I have a friend who's vegan and to be honest. Instead of using this recipe, I would probably use a vegan cookie recipe because, you know, it's, it's chemistry and so it's all adjustable. Um, if you're making gluten free cookies, then you can absolutely, um, you know, just replace the flour, things like that. Again, you could replace your choice of chocolate. So there are ways to, um, you know, make the cookie yours, but I would not start messing.

I, I haven't personally with this, I've done it with my cakes, but with this recipe, um and with cookies, there's such few recipe, such few ingredients that um, you know, there are egg replacements. Um, some people are ok, eating eggs once they're cooked but not raw. So you, you know, depending if you are vegan. Um I love patty page. If you know her, she's a great cake designer and she is a great cookie book.

Might be at your local library. Um, if you don't have it and you can look up her vegan cookie because I've tasted them and I know they're delicious. So hopefully that let me just double check before I go back to, I think piping. Yes, I think so. By the way.

Thank you guys for being here. Oh, Columbus, Ohio, Jacksonville, Florida. Um I've actually been to Jacksonville. I went and played a tennis tournament there. Um We got the chocolate just double checking.

Do, do do. Ok. Well, yes. Um Rachel, my fearless leader from Creative Cake Design. Said that she likes to watch the change from shiny to matte to tell when the cookies are done, especially when they're this dark.

So I love that. And I pro honestly, I'm, I'm that old that I probably do it, but I didn't realize that that's what I was doing. Um, and how important is it to sift and so this is, that is so funny. So don't tell anyone. But sometimes like if I'm making it for my family, I skip it.

Right. Um, that said if I'm making it for a whole bunch of people, I don't and really recipes that use, um, you know, like, again, they have such few ingredients. Um, but one thing that has made my life much easier. Well, when I was in my, you know, commercial bakery, I had, what is it called? A Shin was, which is a big, it's like a, a big sieve.

Um, but recently at a hardware store, I was out with my husband and I'm like, oh, and I mean, I think it was $5 but it's that container with the crank handle and you just throw all your dry ingredients in there and, um, and it comes out so fast, it's not a pain and you'll be glad you did because the texture of the cookie will be so much better. So that, and then if you are doing other things, um, like cocoa powder, you should always s so if you're making chocolate cakes or if you somehow are doing a different chocolate recipe that uses cocoa, you should always sip cocoa because it just, it just cakes up and things like that. Um All right. So let me go ahead and just finish this cookie a little more. Um, any questions about royal icing and then after the royal icing dries, you can, um, paint it, you can, um, you know, I mean, I think they're so beautiful just as they are because of the dark background.

Um, but if you wanna do sanding sugar, I'm going to show you that and if you want to, um, double up your cookies, right? So I have a, a medium size cookie and then I have one of the smaller cookies, I'll just put it right on top of each other. It's kind of hard to see, but I'll just put a little ring around the middle and right away when you put Royal icing down, you may think. Oh, no, this royal I it's not gonna work. It's, you know, it's, it's a little slippery.

Um, it will harden. Ok. So right now I can almost do this like a, a pinwheel which is nice. I can turn it right. Can you see that?

Um, like a pinwheel? But then once it's glue, you know, once I leave it to, to stay, it will be glued like rock hard. Um, and then you can go about decorating. I would tend to decorate the cookie together rather than two separate cookies and then put them together because then you end up wasting time and you don't want the top cookie to bang into the bottom cookie. Um, and there really is no, um, wrong way, right?

The, you can stack them up as high as you want, you can out find them. Um, I was going to show you some sanding sugar. Let me just double check because the whole point is that I'm doing this for you guys, which is so nice because I'm usually in my bakery by myself. Um, can I freeze the baked cookies or should I freeze the dough before baking? I'm a huge fan of, um, of freezing the d not the baked cookies.

Now, if you are like, you know, you know, you're going on a trip and you're only gonna have one day to decorate them before you give them out. You can freeze them. I would put them in a Tupperware or into a box and saran wrap it many, many, many times, three times. Um, and then let them come out of the freezer and leave that plastic wrap around it. So the condensation will stay on the plastic wrap and then you'll open your cookies and then I would decorate them.

I used to share a bakery with a friend who did tons of cookies every once in a while. She would freeze them and it's just, it's, it's so, it's so scary. Right. Especially after you spend all this time decorating the cookies and then they start sweating, sometimes colors bleed into each other. Um, I could see like even the chocolate coming through or discoloration.

It's, it's honestly, it's just not worth it. So if you can freeze the dough, um, and I usually make a whole bunch batch of dough, roll them out between the parchment. That's why I freeze it. I don't freeze it in blocks because then you have to wait for it to come through temperature and it's just, it's so nice to roll it out while it's soft. Get in the freezer.

It's also easier to store because it's, you know, on, on the straight pan between the parchment and, um, and you could wrap all the dough at once. So hopefully, and I know from our little, um, talk the other day, Rachel Colette and I did, um, I know Rachel feels the same way. Um OK. So who's ready for sanding sugar? Yay me say me.

Um So here's a cookie that has no cutouts. See, no cut outs, no problem. I'm in a rush, I'm a mama and I don't always have time. So what I like to do with a cookie that has no cut outs. I don't have to worry about going over any of the circles or outlining the circles.

So I just go the traditional like a star. I go one down this way. That's OK if the royal icing breaks. There's so much going on that no one would know. Although it's actually good that that happened because you could just scrape off the royal icing if you make a mistake.

What I do is I let the royal icing dry for just like a minute or two and then just take an offset or any kind of knife, anything you have in the kitchen and just, um, just take it off. Now with the chocolate cookie you make see a residue if you do it too soon. So if you can be super patient, wait until the royal icing has really dried and then it will just come off um without leaving marks on the chocolate cookie. That's just something you always wanna be careful of. Right.

So now I'm just making like uh I don't know, what is that? A star like that? That's super simple. And then I'm going to go back in and use almost like a teardrop. Um I know the cake designer Margaret Braun had a term for this but it's, it, it's um a dot And it's uh thick at the top and then it kind of has a tail.

So it's like a paisley. I'm sure I'm guessing someone else knows. Um just put it in the chat if I've lost my mind. But anyway, I'm going to do thick and then come to the line and do thin. Does that make sense?

See, this is why the craft C classes and the um creative cake classes are so cool because we film them in studio and we have three different cameras and so you get all the close ups and things like that. So now you're just gonna have to deal with me and my little studio in New York. But um that is the beauty of those classes is that you can, you know, really feel like you're sitting there with me making a sculpted hamburger, let's say anyway, so just so you could start to see. You see, I went from like thick to thin and then I'm going to do that on all of the sides and then I'm going to Sprinkle it with sanding sugar just to show you another look. And really, I mean, I'm showing you the most basic right?

Here's a chocolate cookie with white, so elegant, so beautiful. You can um punch it up with just some white sanding sugar. Um I love, you know, adding a color of course. And when I go to put on the sanding sugar, what you're going to notice is that I'm piping the entire cookie and I actually don't remember the glue doesn't dry or the royal icing I should say doesn't dry instantaneously. So or instantly is instantaneously a word.

I don't know. Anyway, um instantly and so what you wanna do is give the royal just a little bit like a, you know, as we say a beat so that it can dry and then you put the sanding sugar on so it will stick. So it's enough for the sanding sugar to stick. But it's not taking away um, the design that you've made, it's not crushing it if you will. Um So here's my little and then I'm just because I'm, I'm a huge fan of dots.

Like I just love little dots. If you've seen my cakes, I usually write people's names. Happy Birthday. And then I put dots all along. It's like Broadway letters.

Um, anyway, so here's my cookie, right? Just quickly piping it. And then when you do yourself a favor, if you're using sanding sugar, I'm actually gonna take this away. I'm gonna show you something that is so, so, so simple. But you can use in your life if you don't already know you fold the piece of parchment paper.

If you guys are rolling your eyes at me, that's fine because I have a teenage daughter and she does it all the time. But so my feelings aren't hurt. But if you're working with something from sanding sugar for your cookies or disco dust, um, whether they're cookies or cakes or whatever, um, anything where you wanna get the sprinkles back into the jar. Do yourself a favor before you start and just do this simple thing, right? Just down the line and then here's one that's already been sprinkled.

I don't know if you can see it anyway. It, I have to, it's just so much prettier in person. It's really not coming through here. Can you see? It's so pretty.

Anyway, so here's some blue. So here's my royal icing. Remember? So I wanna use fresh royal icing, right? That just went on and where's my sanding sugar?

It's back here. Um And any sanding sugar will do. You can use granulated sugar if that's all you have at home. Um, just for a white wintry appearance. Um And let's say again, we're all busy.

We all have other jobs. So let's say I pipe all my cookies and then I saw this amazing demo, my Lisa or someone else. And you're like, oh I was talking too much and like the sanding sugar is not sticking. What can I do? I mean this kind of stuck a little bit but it didn't stick all the way I can go back to that edible glue.

If you're just joining us, I was talking about the satin, I edible glue and I let my royal icing dry a little bit more, but I can just go back in with a brush and just get some more stickiness. I would not use water and I would not use egg whites because that just eats at the royal icing. The edible glue works nicer and it gives like a little shine and it will just have everything stick a little better. So the the biggest thing to do when you're making cakes, cookies and also, especially the holidays. You want this to be fun.

You want to be excited about giving it to people. You want to include your kids, your nieces, your nephews in doing it. And if it's too stressful, then what is the point of doing it? Like? It's just not, I mean, I still would rather have my cookie than a store bought cookie.

But, um, you know, just make it fun and, and I actually brought out some other things that I almost forgot to show you. I have these pearls little pearls. Again, this is if you're giving, you know, each cookie as a gift. So you're gonna spend time and add pearls to the edges to give it an extra oomph. Um And then the way I package them is I put them on a cardboard like I cut out.

Um It's almost like that cereal board. You can buy card stock or I just use old cake boxes. Um, and I cut them up. So I just have lots of remains and then I slide it into a plastic cookie bag and you really do want to get a special cookie, but you want a food safe bag. You don't want, you know, something from a factory that's not good.

Um And then you can just put it in but make sure your cookies are dry. Ok? So after you do the Royal, after you add pearl sanding sugar, whatever, let them sit overnight. I'm going to say, uh, not, it doesn't have to be a full 24 hours, but a good 12 hours would be best. So you could do that.

You could do colorful sprinkles. I mean, really, you can do whatever you want. So, um, I think I've covered everything. Please tell me if I didn't. Um, same thing of if you're boxing them, um, you want them to dry and I usually put parchment paper in between layers.

Again. If you don't have parchment paper, you can use wax paper. The time I don't use wax paper is when I'm baking because you just never know what's gonna come off. Well, I guess, you know, it's gonna be wax. But anyway, um let's see if I have any other questions.

Anyone, anyone, you guys have been so awesome. I can't believe. Thank you for coming and staying and asking such um great, great questions. Um So we're freezing the dough. All right.

No questions. Anything else? I don't think so. Going once, going twice. No, just kidding.

Um Well, anyway, I hope you'll check out the other classes. I hope you'll check out the other cookies. I'm honored to be one of the 12 that um is part of the creative cake, 12 days, cookie days of cookies, whatever. Um And I hope you guys will do this. You can always find me at Confetti cakes.com.

You can email me, you could find the crafty classes. Um um But I think, you know, that's it for me. Unless there are any other questions and I really hope you have a happy and safe holiday and just remember, just enjoy it. Don't work yourself to death because then it's just, it's just not worth it.