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.