My Mad Science Cookies

Whenever I see a beautifully decorated sugar cookie, I always feel so inspired.  So when I was planning my latest birthday party with a Mad Science theme, I wanted to give this cookie art form a go.  As this was my first attempt, I had images in my head of the beautiful cookies I was going to make and a much smaller dose of reality that I've never done this before. 

The recipe I used for my sugar cookie dough was as follows:

Ingredients
100 grams of butter, softened
1/2 a cup of icing sugar
1 egg
1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla extract or essence (optional)
1/2 a teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 a teaspoon of salt
1 and a 1/2 cups of plain flour

Instructions
1. Cream the butter and sugar together
2. Beat the egg into the butter/sugar mix with the vanilla
3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and lightly mix together until it looks like breadcrumbs
4. Push the dough together until it forms a ball
5. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and leave in the fridge overnight

 

6. When the dough has chilled, pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).  Then either cut the dough into 1cm thick slices or roll it out on a floured board.
7. Cut appropriate shapes into the dough and bake the shape in an oven for 8 - 10 minutes or until golden on the edges of the cookie.

I originally did the dough with a white sugar which was fine.  But I ran out of white sugar after the first batch, and found icing sugar was a good alternative.  The cookie is smoother with the icing sugar. 

Also rolling out the dough on the board with flour was fine, but after a while I found the dough was getting over-worked.  So what I did, was chill the dough in a shape that allowed me to slice the dough into disks. I then used the cookie cutter on the disks.  This worked well and I didn't over-work the dough.

Decorating the cookies was the fun part. 

Icing
3/4 cup of icing sugar
1- 2 tablespoon of water
colouring to tint

In a bowl, mix the icing sugar with water until it forms a paste.  Add colouring to tint the icing paste ready to "paint" your cookie with.   Imagine the paste's consistency being a bit like clover honey, soft and easy to spread, but not runny.

Once your cookie is cooled, you can pick it up and add some icing.  You don't need a lot.  I used a teaspoon and added about 5 ml of the icing to the top of the cookie.  I then used the back of the spoon to move the icing around, coating the top of the cookie.  I scrapped off any excess afterwards, especially around the edges of the cookie.  I guess if you wanted a tidy look, you could pipe the shape outline and then use something finer to move the icing around, like a toothpick.  But I found it wasn't needed and once the icing settled and dried, most of the imperfections were gone.

Caution - the next part may offend - gross cookie alert!

Dissected Frog Cookie

I cut the dough into this fun frog shape.  I then coated the cookie with a pastel green tinted icing.  I found this great berry flavoured fruit leather.  I cut a bowtie shape out of the leather in order to look like the skin flaps of a dissection.  I attached the bowtie to the wet icing.  Then I selected a fun looking gummy organ.  I had hearts and lungs which looked quite freakishly realistic.  I used a dab of icing to glue the organ to the fruit leather and WAH-LA Dissected Frog anyone?

Lab Mice

Using a cute mouse shaped cookie cutter, I made a selection of lab mice.  These were fairly straight forward.  I coated the top with a white icing paste and then added a dab of red writing icing for the mouse's eye.

Beakers of Doom

This was a Wilton cookie cutter from the Halloween range they have.  I used the beaker shape, and painted the top to represent the glass, I used another colour for the potion in the bottom of the beaker.  I added some cachous to represent the bubbles coming out of the potion and then used writing icing to add the measurement marks on the flask.  I was really happy with how these came out.

Thanks for reading along.  Hope you enjoyed my cookie creations as much as I enjoyed making them.

Introducing Flax and Leaf

It's been a while since my last blog post.  Though I said that life would likely get in the way of my sitting to write this, I still feel like I'm letting this new creative outlet down.  Funny how human that is. 


As previously discussed in this blog, my eldest daughter loves birds. She reads about them, whether fiction or non-fiction and uses birds in all her creative play.  For the past 6 months she has been wishing on anything at hand (dandelion puffs, first stars, fairy wands), that she could have 100 birds of her very own.  Of course, 100 birds is a little over the top.  But it was her fondest wish to own birds of her own and so when a deal came up on a kitset aviary, we decided to get it. 


Last weekend, in order to round out her school holiday break, we pulled the kitset out of its box.  With the help of a family friend, and Daddy, Leandra was able to build her aviary.  We then set it out on the deck and went to the pet shop to pick out her birds.  Two Zebra Finches called Flax and Leaf.  As I type that I can hear my own voice sing-songing those words!  If you clicky click on the youtube link, you'll understand why.

My daughter is one with Nature in a way I wish I could be.  The birds' names are a reflection of this.  I wonder if it's a good reflection of future grandchildren's names as well.  Perhaps.  For the moment, she is 6.  Wonderful 6.  The world is full of wonder.  She is full of awesome.  And now, she has two birds and dreams of a massive free-flight aviary on a patch of land, where she will live in a caravan with the birds all the days of her life, writing, drawing and giving tours of her aviary.