For Christmas last year, Jackie gave me a coupon for a cookie decorating class with Cass.  Cass is her friend that bakes all our birthday cakes.  She never takes any payment for them, so I usually give her a towel or two.  When we were sharing Jackie’s birthday cake last year, I mentioned that it would be fun to learn how to do some cookie decorating.

Finding a date for the class proved to be a little challenging.  Between our travels and Cass and Jackie’s schedules, we finally got the class set up for a Friday evening in September.  I chose the theme – fall and football – and Cass baked the sugar cookies ahead of time.  After a light supper with John and Tom, Jackie and I headed out for Cass’s house.

Cass started the cookie decorating class by showing us how to make a royal icing.  Royal icing has just three ingredients:  confectioners’ sugar, meringue powder, and water.  You can make it just about any color with different food coloring.  If the icing is the right consistency, the trickiest part, it is easily applied but dries quickly on the cookie.  We made a bunch of different colors and then filled the piping bags with each color.

The next step of cookie decorating is flooding.  This is putting the base layer of the icing on the cookie.  Using the piping bags, we started with an outline and then filled it in with the desired color.  After swirling to get the icing to the edge of the cookie, we shook the cookies to make the icing fill in the gaps.  Then we went on to the next cookie.

When all the cookies were flooded, we went back and added some details.  We were able to do this by piping on smaller bits of icing.  The white on the footballs and the details on the jersey are good examples of this.  Jackie also used an edible glitter paint.  She likes all things sparkly.  Cass showed us how to fancy up the cookies by using different colors in the flooding and then swirling them or adding lines.

Cookie decorating class was fun and I enjoyed spending the time with Jackie and Cass.  Jackie was really good at the flooding part – she could get the icing all the way to the edge of the cookie.  But, I’m afraid that cookie decorating will never be my favorite thing.  I do about five cookies, and then I am ready to move on.  Cass decorates dozens of cookies at a time.  I am thankful for her gift and the time she took to teach Jackie and me how to do it.