I don’t bake. I don’t even like to bake, but I do like eating, especially baked treats that are so pretty. One of my favorite new obsessions is the Great British Baking Show, where amateur bakers whip up these beautiful look treats like they have been doing this all their lives. I love how much patience and artistry can go into decorating baked goods, as if they are all artists, so I decided to learn how to make great-looking cookies.
To start, I needed to get some tools, including cookies. As I mentioned before, I do not like baking, but luckily most groceries sell undecorated sugar cookies for relatively cheap that I could practice on my own. I did need to make my own frosting, but for this I enlisted my wife’s help, and as long as I promised her a treat afterward, she was willing to help. I also bought some disposable icing bags and ties, tip couplers, candy melt squeeze bottles and couplers, chopsticks, a variety of icing tips, food gels, toothpicks, needle tools, and a set of food markers.
Then, I went to YouTube. The internet is FULL of videos that make cookie decorating look like, well, a piece of cake. I decided to do a few cookies with specific patterns as well as a drawing of cat, specifically my cat Henry.
The patterned cookies were really fun because I could be abstract and obscure with the designs. I mixed and matched colors and shapes until I got something I liked. It was fun to use the needles and toothpicks to make shapes and dictate the design. The Henry cookie, though, was a bit harder. My squeeze bottles had a wider tip than I originally thought so lines turned out think and messy. When I was finished, my wife could not tell what it was.
While I wasn’t great at it, cookie decorating turned out to be really fun and a great way to enjoy an afternoon.