Decorative Snickerdoodle Cookie Tart

Hello everyone and welcome to today's live event. I'm Rachel Tupple. I am gonna be sharing one of my recipes for a snickerdoodle tart now. I know that this is not a traditional thing out there and it's, uh, really unique. It's decorative.

It's a lot of fun, but I, I'm telling you these, uh, this little tart is just fantastic. It creates something a little bit more special for mom. Um, if you want to make this for Mother's Day, it's a special treat. It's decorative, it's cute, it's fun. I have a recipe for you in the comment section.

You can find the link to download your recipe. There are some really great tips and tricks in here as well, so I'd encourage you to take a peek at that. I'm of course going to take you through each step of the process today and make sure that you know exactly. Exactly what you're doing when you're making this snickerdoodle tart. Um, I also wanna let you know that you can leave comments in the comment section for us.

So as I'm going through the process today, if you have any questions or concerns or just fun comments, feel free to pop into our chat and let us know uh what kind of questions you have. Are you guys excited or what? I know that I am. This is something really uh unique and different. This cookie recipe is originally just a Snickerdoodle cookie, um, but I've transformed it into this really cool cookie tart that you can make a little bit more decorative and fun.

So what's interesting about this one is that even though it is a Snickerdoodle cookie, it has. The ability to give you just a clear surface to be able to decorate with. So I'm gonna share my technique for using a sandy and sugar technique for decorating the top of your cookie. Now, you can absolutely use this technique on any type of cookie. It doesn't have to be the Snickerdoodle recipe, but you want it to be something that's simplistic.

So something like a sugar cookie, a shortbread dough, um, Obviously the Snickerdoodle recipe, normally you would roll your cookie in cinnamon sugar. We're putting a layer through the middle instead to keep our, uh, top surface nice and clean so that we can decorate it. So any cookie recipe out there that you have would likely work. You just need to make sure that it doesn't have chunks of things like chocolate chips or nuts or something like that. That's the only sort of limiting factor.

Although if you wanted to do uh something even more unique, you could also layer your cookie doughs and then, you know, leave the top layer clear so you could always do a chocolate chip cookie, um, and just reserve some of your dough to the side, mix in your chocolate chips, put it in your pan and then put your nice clean dough over top. So there's a lot of options and variations that you can do with this particular recipe. Um, which makes it even more fun in my opinion, uh, but the, the decorating process is of course, um, my forte and what I enjoy most about this, uh, but goodness, uh, putting together a recipe and baking is just, uh, warming to the heart and certainly, uh, one of those things that decreases stress for me as well. So it's a fun project overall. OK, so let's start first just with the recipe.

We've got some basic ingredients for a traditional sugar cookie dough. Um, I actually have some flour, and that's gonna, um, actually that's gonna sit right here. We're gonna put, um, our salt, baking soda, and then cream of tartar is our, uh, last dry ingredient. So that's gonna go inside there. Um, we'll give that a stir before we add it into our wet ingredients.

And then of course I have unsalted butter. The reason for the unsalted butter, I get this question all the time. It's just simply to be able to control the amount of salt in your recipe. So we have salt in our dry ingredients. If we also use salted butter here, we're gonna have even more salt, and there's no way of really knowing how much salt is in your butter.

So, um, it's the best way to bake in my opinion. So we're gonna put our butter into the mixer and then of course, our granulated sugar. And we're gonna get those going while I talk to you about the rest of the ingredients. So this is gonna go on low to start with, just to incorporate the sugar and the butter together. But we want it to be nice and light and creamy, so this is gonna go for a few minutes.

Um, in addition, we have 2 eggs, some vanilla, and then we have a cinnamon sugar mixture as well. That's gonna be what's going to go through the center of our tart. Now make sure you're using a high quality vanilla. My personal favorite is Nielsen Mossy, but use um whatever high quality ingredients um you can for your vanilla and also for your cinnamon. Your cinnamon is actually the star of the show, so I use an organic cinnamon.

I actually prefer the Saigon cinnamon. It just has a really bold flavor. Um, it's, it's the star of the show. You don't want to skimp here. Don't just grab any cinnamon off the shelf.

This is the star of the show, so make it the star and make sure that you're using something that's really high quality. All right, so this is gonna go for just a moment. Um, if you have any questions, feel free to pop them in the chat. I am making sure I'm not missing anything, um, so tell me, um, what cookie flavors you really enjoy and which one do you think you might try with this decorative process? You know, the cookie is just our base.

It allows us to be able then to decorate, so it's our canvas really. So what cookie dough do you think you're gonna try? Um, I actually love Snickerdoodles. It's a newer cookie for me. I, and I say newer like within the last few years.

I actually came to enjoy them. I know they've been around forever, um, but it's one of those, uh, recipes that, um, I just, I don't know, I always thought they were just plain and simple and not that great, um, but I have really grown to love cinnamon and of course that's the star of the show, so, um, this is a great recipe. All right. Once our uh sugar and butter is combined, I wanna show you what it looks like. You could probably even whip this a little longer, but for the sake of our live event today, I'm gonna keep moving, but this is nice and light now.

It's not nearly as yellow as it was with that butter. You could whip this um a little bit longer too, but at this point, um, this is completely acceptable. Scrape down your bowls just to make sure you've got all of that butter incorporated. And then we're gonna go ahead and add our eggs. There we go.

So I'm gonna add them and then turn on the mixer. I don't like to add too many things while the mixer is going. Otherwise I end up with all sorts of things all over the kitchen. And then our next ingredient is gonna be the vanilla. And you're really just trying to get this incorporated.

Um, it doesn't have to be fully combined, um, because we're gonna also add in the flour as well. So once it seems like the egg is pretty close to combined. We'll put it back down on low, scrape down their sides, and then add our flour, our dry ingredients. All right. Just gonna get that butter mixture off of the spatula in here, the beater.

All right. And then we're gonna go ahead and um I'm just gonna use the back of my spatula just to incorporate the Uh, dry ingredients together a little bit better and then I'm just gonna go ahead and put it all in here and remember we're just gonna start on low as it incorporates we can increase um our speed a little bit, but you don't need to overmix this cookie dough. um, in fact, you don't want it to overmix because it becomes um very tight it's uh develops the gluten once the flour starts to get wet. And so it could become uh really hard and dry and you don't want that so don't overmix this. You could also stir this in if you don't have a mixer um you can use your hands to incorporate it.

That's a great way to do it as well. But once it starts to come together, you're done. You don't even have to, uh, go much further than that. It starts to pull away from the sides and start to collect on your beater and then you know your cookie dough is ready. All right, so now comes, um, for me, the fun part.

We get to roll out our cookie dough, get it into our tart pan, and then start decorating, which I don't know about you guys, but that's always my favorite part. It's uh just a fun, super fun, uh, project. We're using standing sugar, so it's sweet, it's delicious. I'm gonna move this out of the way for just a moment. Hi Sandy from Australia or Austria, sorry, I have a little cursor right over there.

All right, so I'm gonna actually use a piece of parchment paper. Um, the reason I like using the parchment paper for cookie doughs is because it's, um, it just kind of releases a little nicer even from, uh, compared to like a silicone matte, for instance, um, they, the cookie dough is moist, so it can really. You know, start to uh get sticky and. I like the parchment paper, just peels right off. So I'm just gonna go ahead and put all of this right down onto my parchment.

And we're gonna roll this into a ball in order to uh divide it in half. And it really is one of those things that uh if you can give this a little bit of time in the refrigerator to rest. And chill. It'll be a little easier to work with, but if you're rushed on time, don't stress this is not a super gooey recipe that, you know, isn't gonna hold together well, so you can truly Play with it right out of the bowl versus chilling it. So I'm just gonna cut this in half.

So the reason I'm cutting it in half is we're gonna sandwich that deli delicious cinnamon sugar mixture uh in between the layers of dough. So I'm gonna get one more piece of parchment paper. Gonna roll it into a ball. And leave that there for a moment. So, uh, for instance, this one could go in the refrigerator right now.

Um, I am gonna actually uh just leave it out cause it's not that big of a deal. Um, so, roll this. If it's sticking, you can always use a little bit of flour, just allows you to manipulate it a little bit better. Now, if you want to get really particular and roll this out into a perfect circle that fits your pan, you can do that. But this bottom layer doesn't really matter a whole lot.

It actually is gonna get smashed into our pan anyway, to get all the way around the sides, but getting it, you know, somewhat close to a circle is helpful. All right. Then, easy trick, just take your pan. Right over top of the dough, flip it over. All right.

So now we have our first layer of dough into our pan and I'm just gonna use my fingers to make sure that I don't have any air pockets underneath. Just like that. And then I'm actually gonna work it up the sides just using the outside of my thumb. I'm just gonna make like a little uh kind of like what you would do with a pie crust, just a little lip. And the only reason I'm doing that is just to kind of hold in that cinnamon sugar mixture.

So the cinnamon sugar, uh, that we would normally roll our Snickier doodles in is gonna create this lovely layer. I wouldn't say caramel, um, and I wouldn't say, you know, jelly or anything like that. Um, it's a really light layer that does start to um melt down and so we don't want it to like ooze out the sides. So we're just creating like a little barrier for it. And again, this first layer doesn't have to be pretty.

So don't even think twice about it, just go for it. And then this is our uh cinnamon sugar mixture. It is 2 tablespoons of the Saigon organic cinnamon and then 1/3 of a cup of sugar. And you just wanna stir it together nicely. And then we're gonna just sprinkle it over the top.

And you just want to get it, you know, mostly distributed. We're gonna shake this tart pan a little bit as well. And I know it might seem like a lot, but I promise it's gonna cook down and it's gonna be just this like slightly gooey center. It's really nice. All right.

We're gonna set that aside for a moment and bring in our 2nd. Piece of dough here. And again, you know, use your hands as much as you can. That's sort of like a really cool tactile um piece that we have to our like, uh, ability to bake. So touching this and knowing what it feels like is actually really helpful when you're baking.

Um, mostly because it gives you a sense of texture, um, like I can tell, uh, right at the moment actually, that my sugar, it hasn't had a chance to really fully incorporate, um, into the dough. It's a little crystallized, I guess you can kind of feel that texture just a little bit. And that's mostly cause I'm rushing and I didn't fully incorporate my sugar into the butter. But I promise you, even when this bakes off, it's gonna be absolutely delicious. Um, but take the time to, you know, feel, touch, uh, know what your dough, uh, should look like, what it should feel like, and that's really helpful in the baking process, especially if it doesn't turn out.

You know, if you, if you thought, oh man, it still feels a little granular, uh, when I'm touching the dough, then you know that you probably should have creamed your butter and sugar together just a little bit better so that it doesn't, um. It'll just create a slightly different texture when it bakes off. So it won't be this like light creamy texture almost. It'll be a little bit more flaky, um, because the, the sugar will when it cooks off is gonna like take on a slightly different um cons consistency. All right, so I'm just going to shape up my sides a little bit.

I wanna kind of get it close, doesn't have to be perfect, but close. Um, but when you are, you know, trying to determine if your recipe, uh, worked or didn't work, you know, based off of the texture that you, uh, felt in this process, um, then you can adjust the process before this. So, you know, maybe I would cream my butter and sugar together just a little bit longer, um, just to make sure that, you know, you've got a nice light texture. All right, so once you have this evenly rolled out. Uh, take a peek and look and see what the top looks like because this is the surface that we're gonna end up decorating.

So if we have a lot of cracks in it, um, or it's really lumpy, it's not. gonna decorate well and when it bakes off, it's gonna get all sorts of different distortions into your pattern. So this is probably the most important part of the process is just making sure that this top is nice and smooth. Now, putting this in the freezer for a few minutes is ideal. Um, it will allow this to just set perfectly.

It gets a nice smooth top. I don't have time for that, so. Into the pan, we're gonna go. And this is a little um a little harder to flip when it's soft because it wants to take on your fingerprints, it's gonna take on um all the different textures and folds as this works. But if you don't have time and you don't want to put it in the freezer and you just wanna go for it, you can still do that.

Um, you just have a little bit more prep you have to uh do before you start decorating. So I'm just flipping it right over, getting rid of the parchment. And onto the crust, kind of like how you would work with a pie dough, um, it's very similar. And then I am just gonna use my fingers to kind of get all of this together. And then here's um the trick that I like to use is if you have a uh measuring cup that has a really soft bottom, you can just use your measuring cup very gently.

I'm just gonna push the dough into the corners. And it's sort of crimping it a little bit with that extra dough that was on the side, and that's just gonna lock in that delicious cinnamon sugar mixture as it bakes off. So just get this nice and smooth. Now, if you take the time to put this in the freezer, um, when it flips over, it just smashes right on top, really nice and easily. You don't really have to worry about the process of smoothing it, but if for any reason you have any areas that, you know, got damaged or um didn't flip properly, you can always uh smooth it out with your top.

Any questions? Everybody's being so quiet. Where are you from? Tell us, tell us what you got going on in the kitchen today. Are you baking or are you just hanging out?

What are you doing? I have um a full schedule this week. I'm very excited. There's gonna be lots of new stuff coming to craftsy and creative cake design, so be on the lookout soon. Alright, so once you have your excess cookie dough.

Out of the pan. Um, you just want to, no, don't throw this away. Bake this off. You could actually roll this in cinnamon sugar. You can have tiny little, uh, cinnamon cookies, Snickerdoodles.

All right, let me wipe my hands real quick. So once you trim off that excess dough, uh, you're gonna just make sure that your edges are nice and clean as well. And there's a couple ways to do that. Um, you can uh do that same process with the back of your measuring spoon. Uh, you can go in with your fingers and just make it nice and smooth, which is, you know, with the little ridges, it's a little easier to get in there compared to, uh, with the, um, the back of the measuring spoon.

If it's sticky at all, just get a little flour on your fingers, but you wanna make sure that this edge is fairly smooth. Um, let me pull in this cake for our tart for a moment. Um, you can see that the edges are really nice on the outside. baked up and then it, uh, deflated just a little bit and I'll tell you why. Um, I, when I was baking this, forgot to adjust for high altitude.

So, Don't make that mistake. Um, the instructions for high altitude are actually in the, uh, recipe as well. So make sure you look for that if you're at altitude. That is the downside, uh, to baking at altitude is things tend to rise very quickly, very easily, um, but if they don't have enough structure, uh, built up on the inside, then they also deflate very quickly and easily. So don't make the same mistake I did.

It's really just a matter of uh usually decreasing the leavening agent, so in this case, the baking soda. Or powder, one of the two. All right. Oh, we've got some working people right now too. Oh my goodness.

I'm sorry you're working. I'm working too though, so, but my, I don't know, my work, I think it's pretty fun, so I enjoy my work, that's for sure. All right. OK, so now we have this beautiful surface. I mean, you could absolutely chill this again if you're, you know, wanting to gather, um, any other tools or equipment or anything, um, you can definitely do that.

Uh, it's not a necessity though, and, um, in fact, I kind of like not chilling. This, uh, during this part of the process, um, mostly because we want the sugar to attach to the dough itself. So, um, making sure that your pie crust or I keep calling a pie crust because it's in a pie, you know, a little tart pan, but um it's a cookie. Um, just gonna clean this up just a hint, um, but you want it to have a little bit of moisture to it sometimes depending upon where you are, the moisture in the refrigerator is very high and so that could actually help you in that situation. So if you're in, you know, places like Florida, for instance, where it's hot and humid and um your refrigerator probably condensates, um, a lot, uh, with the.

Products that are coming in and out of your refrigerator, and that's actually a good thing for this particular technique. If you're in a place like Colorado, for instance, it's just dry most of the time. And so there isn't a whole lot of moisture, uh, on the surface and in fact, when I put it in the refrigerator, it actually pulls the moisture away from my cake. So, um, cakes, cookies, pie doughs, anything like that tends to dry out for me. So, um, I like to just work quickly.

Let's talk about the fun part we're there so excited you guys. Uh, so this is the design that we're actually gonna try to recreate, but you can do any design that you would like using the same process. So if you wanna skip the mom in the middle and put someone's name in there or you wanna put just a saying like welcome or happy birthday or whatever it is that you'd like. Uh, you can definitely do that. So don't, um, don't limit yourself.

The design options here are truly endless, and they're the only limitation really is the cookie cutters that you have. So, um, so let's talk about that. Let's talk about what you need in order to create, uh, this tart. Hi Molly, hi Ella. And Yvette, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, we have people from Lebanon and Colombia as well.

That's fantastic. Thanks everybody for joining us. I really, um, I love seeing people comment, um, and it's just so fun. OK, so here are some of the things that we're gonna need for the decorating process so. We baked our, um, or we made our crust.

Everything's in here. We've got our fabulous cinnamon sugar in the middle. Our dough on top is nice and smooth, and we're ready for the decorating process. So what you need are gonna be a handful of cookie cutters, whatever style you want, whether they're letters or florals or Maybe you want to make a choo cho train going all the way across. I don't know.

Options are endless. You can do whatever you want here. Um, I prefer the florals, it's just really pretty, uh, but, um, whatever occasion you're making this for, I'm sure you could figure out something to to match. And then I have some sand and sugar. Now, um, sand and sugar comes in a variety of uh uh granulation.

So some of them are very fine and some of them are very chunky and there's everything in between. Your goal is to find the really a fine sanding sugar you could absolutely. Just use granulated sugar as well. That that works very well in this process. Um, it just needs to be colored.

So I will show you how to color it as well and then um start decorating. OK, so I've got a variety of colors. Uh, the purple and the green came pre-made already in those colors. Um, but not every color is out there in your, uh, sandy and sugars, or like I said, even your granulated sugar works well, but just find a fine sprinkle. And I'm, I just save all my extra jars from my spices.

And then I'm gonna put a little bit of sugar. You don't need a lot, but um depends on the project, I suppose. And then this is just floral pedal, uh, pedal dust. And I'm just gonna take a little bit at first. Again, you don't need a lot.

This is like high potency powdered color. So if you want something that's really deep and rich in color, you'll put a little more. If you want pastel, you put a little less. Works really well. But then, um, we're just gonna give this a shake.

That powder attaches to the sugar. No other ingredients necessary. So, I know some people will put in like a little bit of alcohol or lemon extract to get that color to stay, but it stays perfectly. Look at this, it's absolutely gorgeous. um, it takes on whatever color you put with it, and so your options for colors within this project are endless as well.

So this is, this is the part that I just love is that it truly is fully customized to whatever. You would like. It does not have to be one thing or another. I do however recommend always putting your caps back on or you'll have sugar everywhere because, well, I always have sugar everywhere. I'm tend to um get ahead of myself and knock stuff over, so.

All right, so we have our sugars. Um, I have, uh, these fancy little spoons. Um, you could just use a regular teaspoon, but the reason that I like these particular spoons is that they have tiny little spouts at the end and they're usually used in uh different types of crafts, so. Um, you could actually use these with isomalt, you can use these with chocolate, but it just allows you to get into smaller spaces easier. I also have a couple of brushes.

This is gonna help us just kind of smooth out any of the sugar that's within our cutters, and then of course, I have our cutters. So, What I'm gonna do is take all of my cutters first and decide what my pattern's gonna look like, which I've already done, but this part of the process, um, is really fun and you should definitely take your time to create your own process and and design. Um, so I'm just gonna make my design on the table first, and the biggest reason for that is when we are designing, we wanna look at sizes and we wanna look at shapes and we wanna kind of plug different things. Together so that we can you know make a composition of a design that is balanced we want things that are um either symmetrical or asymmetrical depending upon your design preferences and um of course um. It just helps take away that like, uh, nervousness of going to the cookie itself when you're decorating.

Uh, so I like to kind of lay things out and look at it and kind of get a feel for what I might do um on my on the table first. And then you can start transferring this. When I'm working on something that has a central focal point like the mom written across it. I always start in the center with my design. And what I'm gonna do is start with the heart right in the middle.

You just want to make sure that you've got a little bit of distance and you're really just barely setting this on. Um, it is sunken just a hint and the reason for sinking it just a little bit is we don't want any of that sugar to slide out and underneath the cookie cutter. So if um if we don't push down just a tiny bit. Um, there's a chance that as you build up your sugar inside of here, it could slip underneath the cookie cutter and then your design isn't as crisp and clean. Uh, so definitely think about that when you're choosing, um, your cutters and making sure that you just tap them a little to go into the dough.

Now, I don't have um a smaller heart shape uh cookie cutter that matches this and so feel free to mix and match whatever you have. um you don't have to uh run out and buy special cutters or anything for this. Use whatever you want. You could also use a piece of paper with a cutout, um, that works just fine as well. Um, what you'll want to do with that is just make sure that it's adhered to the dough and then brushing off some of your sugar from any of the paper that's there too.

But the other thing that I did here is you can see there's actually sketch tape over top of this. And the reason for that is if I'm not super careful with putting my sugar into the uh circle that's here, the heart, And it, it again, would distort my shape and not look as pretty. So I put some tape on there just more as protection for me because I know I have a tendency, um, to go a little quickly with some of these things and I didn't want to run the risk of getting any sugar on the inside of my heart. And I don't have a second M, but no big deal. We'll do our, uh, our sugar laying first and then we'll just repeat the process.

So, um, you know, it's one of those things that Uh, there's a little bit of, um, forgiving, uh, when, uh when we're doing this process. Don't stress if it's not perfect. Nothing in life is, so give yourself a little grace. OK, so I'm going with the bigger pieces first. Getting that in here.

Stay away from like that half inch to 1 inch somewhere in there. Give yourself a border, otherwise, if you do have any rising, it's gonna kind of break your um Pattern And you can always, it's like that one's not gonna fit in there without hitting the edge, so I'm just gonna move it. No big deal. We'll just change up the pattern a little bit. So whatever you, whatever cutters you have that you're gonna use, go ahead and get them onto the cookie.

And then we will um. Once we put our sugar in here, we're gonna move them and use them again. So, OK, any other questions so far? You guys are a quiet bunch today. All right, so the next part is gonna be just putting our sugar on the inside.

And you can be as creative uh with this as you'd like. So if you want to mix colors and do like a line of pink and a line of purple, or you can do two tones of green, um for your leaves, for instance, um, there's a lot of options here. Just for the sense of simplicity, I'm just gonna do one color in each of my cutters and make it really. Um, straightforward for you, but you, you could absolutely be even more creative, uh, just by mixing and kind of changing things up. If you had multiple cutters, uh, you could, you could do a couple of different, uh, shades, for instance.

So if I wanted to, I could have left this heart open. And I could have put, you know, purple inside and then pink on the outside. So you definitely have options when you are um adding your sugar in to make uh different patterns and designs, um, and obviously it could be whatever you want, so there's no limitations on that either. So if you don't like writing words or you'd rather have, you know, um, something totally different, go for it. OK, so all I'm doing is putting a thin layer of sugar in there.

You wanna make sure that you have enough sugar in there that you're not seeing dough through it, but you don't want so much that when you lift off these cutters, it starts to overflow. And go outside of those lines, um, so that's probably the hardest part is just kind of getting that amount correct but that's why I'm using my paintbrush, you know, if it piles up in one spot you can just push it wherever you need it. And don't worry if the sugar isn't sticking to your dough, it's OK. It's helpful um when you remove, uh, the cookie cutter, it's helpful if it stays um on that dough, but as long as you're not jiggling this thing around, it's not gonna go too far, so no worries. And this is certainly for me, the funnest part of the process, but it's also the most time consuming.

So as you can see, it just takes a little while, you know, it's gonna take me a bit to get all the sugar into all of these little spaces, make sure that everything is covered properly, not too much, not too little, but you just want to go in, you know, add it wherever you need it, wherever you see fit. And then if, if you feel like it's too thick in some places, just come in with your paintbrush, thin it out. So, that's the general process. You'll continue to do that through um all of your stencils, but I'm gonna show you how to move this. Very carefully and you see how all the sugar is exactly where it's supposed to be.

It hasn't shifted off if you OK, there's if I'm real particular there's a few granules of sugar, but you can just either push it back or push it away entirely. And it just disappears. So don't stress if this process um doesn't work perfectly, uh, it's This isn't like a foolproof. You can, you can put too much in. You could definitely put too much sugar in, um, but, you know, just be mindful of how much you're putting in there and you'll be good.

All right. So as you can see, I just duplicated the M on the other side, super easy. That's how you can just reuse your cutters. You don't have to have all the cutters to get started, just, you know, reuse, put your sugar in, move it around, do whatever you gotta do. All right, questions now, anyone?

Um, all right, Sandy, you're asking about my paintbrushing. Um, are, are they the same that you would use for painting? So these are a, uh, this is a white nylon acrylic brush. Um, it is, uh, Basically it's not for baking, it is for painting, however, I've never painted anything that's not edible. So obviously make sure that you are keeping all of your tools separate.

So I do paint, um, but I keep that in a totally different area of my home compared to my uh baking brushes. So just keep that in mind. Um, I don't recommend using anything that is like a natural horse hair, for instance, would not be good, uh, in a paintbrush for using on edible items. Um, I'm sure they're clean and fine, but, uh, you know, you wanna try to eliminate um any of those. Uh, unnatural things.

I suppose horse hair is technically natural, but um, you get the point, right? All right. So our M is our second M is now done. And again, you could leave this in place until you're finished with everything. It's totally up to you.

Um, I have a tendency just to Leave them where I'm at until I need more of them, and then I'll move it. Be careful with your tinier um cutters. They don't need nearly as much sugar. What, what would we do if we had too much sugar in there and we were worried that it might spill over um and cause problems for us? Well, there's a couple things we can do.

Uh, the first thing is what I'm doing right now. I'm just sort of poking the sugar down into the dough, but it's actually capturing quite a bit of sugar inside the brush as well. And so that's how you kind of pull it back out and then you can just put it back into your sprinkle container. So if you've just got way too much, just give it a good push, and again, it's just gonna pull it it you can see, I don't know if you guys can fully see that, but it pulled out quite a bit of sugar, just in, you know, tapping at one time. It also is gonna adhere the sugar down into the dough a little bit more.

So. Um, you can definitely. do that to adhere it and to kind of remove some of the excess sugar. Definitely take your time in and pulling out um. Putting, I guess I should say putting in and pulling out the sugar.

So the other thing you want to see, so I've got, um, especially in these little blossom cutters, uh, it builds up in the side areas quite a bit. So just give it a little tap to make sure that it's not just all sitting. In those little petals. And then I just do a little shimmy to pull that out, and so everything stays where it's supposed to stay. So that's like the main, the main concern is just, are you getting too much sugar, um, not enough sugar.

If you pull it, pull the cutter away and there's just like no sugar on it, put the cutter back down. Put some more sugar on it if you need it. That's usually not the problem for me. I, if, if you're a little heavy-handed like me, too much sugar gets in there and then you're kind of trying to move it around and get it back out. But take your time.

Like, again, this is a time consuming process, um, depending upon the design that you've, you know, created. You could certainly do something very simple. You could do something a little more detailed. Options are endless. All right.

So once you have all of your sugar into your molds here, your little cookie cutters, basically it becomes a template. Um, we will go ahead and just bake it off. So you don't have to do anything else in this process, aside from Make your dough, roll it nice and thin, and then be able to um put your sugar in. And pull out all the cutters when you're done. Just like that.

Little jiggle kind of helps. And then again, if you need to, you can come back in and just shift any sugar if it's not where it's supposed to be. For the most part, it looks pretty good. All right, let's just do a couple more flowers just so you guys can see. What this looks like.

Without the cutters on top. And it, it's one of those things that if you, oh, see, that one wasn't pushed in, so I might have a little sugar on the outside there. It's one of those things that, um, you know, if you want to be really efficient, do all of your green, then all of your white, then all your pink, then all your purple, and that certainly is helpful, but I kind of get impatient and I wanna see what all the colors look like, so I just kind of bounce around. Especially if I'm just doing something for fun. If I'm not, um, if I'm not doing it for a client, then, you know, I'll kind of bounce around and be a little bit more creative and play with things.

If I'm doing it for a client, though, I tend to be very methodical, so. Do whatever works best for you. Um, all right. Wallace is asking, have you ever made this in a square or rectangular pan? And if so, what size?

So this particular pan, this is a 10 inch, um, and so I would do a 9 inch square. You kind of, uh, when you're switching from. Round to square, for instance, or even um rectangle. Uh, you just kind of wanna know your surface area so we could always figure that out, um, using our lovely little formula. Uh, oh boy, my husband would be really mad at me if I got this wrong.

um, but, uh, the surface of the circle is this this whole two PyR thing, I think. Um, could, could be different. Uh, somebody look that up for me. But basically, if you know the surface area that you have in around, um, you can then calculate the surface area of a square, um, which is just your, uh, I think just your two sides, and I'm not a math major, but, um, it's one of those things that you can definitely calculate. But usually my rule of thumb when I am.

Um, transferring recipes from one to another is I simply just, uh, decrease my size or increase my size. So if I have a recipe that calls for, it's like a brownie recipe that's a 9 inch square pan, that's a very traditional recipe, um, you could do a 10 inch round and you're gonna get the uh just about the same surface. It's not perfect, but it's kind of a general rule that you can do. Um, and it goes the other direction too, depending upon, you know, what, uh, what shapes you're going to. When it starts to get into things like hexagons and ovals, that gets a little trickier because they're not, you can't just decrease or increase your size very easily, but you could definitely um measure your surface area and know.

Um, and then as long as you're doing the same thickness of dough from one to the next, um, then, uh, you, it's very easy just to convert it based on. On surface area. So that's basically, you know, how you can measure for, um, even to know how many pieces you can get out of something. Just know the surface area on the top and you can divide it by whatever size piece you want, and then you can recalculate how many you have. All right.

um, so let's talk about what happened here with this green one. Just so you guys would know how to fix something and my white one a little bit too. Um, I put way too much sugar in it and if you remember, it was a little wiggly. I hadn't pushed it all the way down when I first started. So all I'm gonna do is use my brush to kind of push the sugar back where it's supposed to be.

And it usually happens very, fairly easily. You don't have to work too hard. Um, same thing happened with my white. I think I was just in a hurry, not paying attention. And so I'm just gonna use that brush to push it back.

Now, um, one other thing that I want to, uh, address is just, um, What happens again? So like, you want a nice layer of sugar. If you have a space like this one here, or even this little guy here, that's not enough sugar, um, so that when the dough starts to bake, it's, it's not gonna have sugar on it. It's gonna look uh broken. So, um, the right thing to do is to put this back on and put a little bit more sugar there.

Uh, if you wanna do a shortcut, you can just push your sugar, uh, from the center if there's enough. You just have to be careful not to get it outside of the edge of your cutter, and then again, little jiggle. And same thing with my little guy. The little ones are so tricky because it's hard to see inside and then um that was the one also that I was showing you how to get excess sugar out, but I clearly took too much out, so, um. Yeah, you just gotta play with it a little bit.

All right. OK, so that is how you make the decorative uh cookie tart uh with the sanding sugar. You just wanna make sure that you have enough sugar that covers the surface. You don't have any dough showing through. You also wanna make sure uh that you don't have so much that it's gonna spill out.

Um, and of course you can always add more if you need more, but it's a little harder to get that sugar back out, um, but that's the general process. What questions do you have now? Because, um, it is a straightforward process for the most part, but there are some little tricky pieces to it that will pop up. Um, if you wanna add more detail to it, you certainly can. Um, thank you, Yvette.

She says this is adorable. I am just, I, I love this little technique. It's a lot of fun. Um, and be very careful, uh, when you're going off to bake this, that you don't jiggle, uh, a whole lot. I am just using the back of a paintbrush to just put in a couple little dots in the center.

If you really wanted to, you could come back in with another color, which is what I've done on this one. So we'll put them side by side here. Uh, so on this pink flower, I actually put in a little bit of purple in the center, same thing with this white one. So you have the ability to kind of mix and match your colors together. Um, it's the same process.

Don't stress so much on the center if um. Like finding a tiny little cutter to do that, you could, you could. I don't think you need to. Um, just pour a little in the center. That's all you gotta do.

Just be really careful about how you are, uh, placing that in so that you don't put too much in. Oh, come on. You don't want too much, but you also, you know, if you don't put enough in there, it's just gonna blend with the other sugar. So be thoughtful about that process too. All right, so what you're gonna do is bake this in your oven.

And then let it sit, uh, set it to the side, um, and let it cool. And what you have is this. Let me just pull this away. Can you use uh a sugar cookie dough instead or does it spread? So you want to use a no spread cookie recipe.

So for instance, um, I know that on creative cake design and on Craftsy, uh, one of our instructors, Maddie Gartman has a fabulous no spread sugar cookie dough, uh, recipe that is tastes fantastic and it doesn't spread. That's definitely. Helpful. Um, if you don't mind having some of your dough raised up on the edge, again, this was an error on my part for not adjusting for high altitude. Um, but, um, this is, uh, this is what would happen if you had a dough that was not a no spread.

You're gonna have, um, just your dough's just gonna kind of grow. So, uh, it definitely is fine. You could do that. Um. And it wouldn't be an issue.

Uh, as long as you don't mind how it looks, right? All right, what other questions? I'm gonna cut into this guy and show you what the inside looks like. I'm gonna maybe not do the center of the M. All right.

Not the easiest thing to cut inside a tart pan. But we're gonna try it. You also could flip this out onto a platter without any issue. Let's see. I might do that.

Sorry, guys. So what's nice about this particular tart pan, I'm worried, oh there we go. Um, this cookie is not a very delicate cookie, so you could easily transfer it out of your pan. I don't want to scratch my pan. And it'll be way easier for me to get in there.

Um, the, uh, the little sugary piece that's in here, um, is just delicious. Let me show it to you guys. It's almost like a caramelization that happens, um, with that cinnamon sugar in there. Oh there that side's better. Um, it's absolutely delicious.

I love this particular recipe, both as a Snickerdoodle recipe as well as, uh, doing this as a decorative, uh, cookie tart as well. Um, it's tasty, it's beautiful. It's something a little different and unique than what people would expect, you know, I know we with pies can do all sorts of decorative uh designs on them, utilizing the dough itself, and that's a lot of fun. Um, but you could also decorate with sugar because it's pretty, it's tasty, um, and it's very versatile. You can color it, you can do all sorts of things with it.

So hopefully you guys have learned a ton in this, uh, tutorial today. If you have questions, obviously pop them into the chat. Uh, make sure you download your recipe and of course, um, we want you to, uh, tune in for all of our live events, so make sure you've signed up for our newsletter and, um, if you are a premium member, uh, I have another tutorial coming up in about a half hour, so stick around. Thanks so much for joining us today.