Birthday Cookies

Happy Birthday!!  Who doesn't like balloons, presents and cupcakes?  Made out of cookies!  Yum!

I used are the cookie cutters above for the shapes.  I used baked cookies, white royal icing that was also dyed green and blue, and edible markers.

Let's start with the presents. I outlined and filled the box part of the present with blue icing and let it dry for about 30-40 minutes.  When it had crust over enough I made the triangle shaped bow part and the "ribbon" down the front of it.

**Now this is important, I needed to let those parts crust over so when I pipe the rest of the bow, there are lines separating the different parts.  If I didn't do this the icing would just merge together and I didn't want that look.**

After those parts crusted, I filled in the middle part of the bow, let that crust, and then the 2 tails.  Let it all dry for about 24 hours and it is done!

Looking back, I would have done the tails first and then the middle, I think that would have looked nicer.

Onto the balloons.  To get the balloon shape, before baking I used the ice cream cutter and used a pizza cutter to trim off the side ruffles of the ice cream and it kind of looked like an upside down rain drop.  So since I had a blue and green theme, I used those colors for the balloons.  I used an edible marker to draw a circle on the rounded part of the cookie.  I followed that with the royal icing to outline an fill the round balloon part.

**Now I didn't do this, but I wish I had.  Here is a good time to add the white reflection on the balloon.  I waited to do it and so the white didn't sink into the icing.  Personally, I think it would look better if it did sink into the icing.**

When that is crusted over I make the tied off portion of the balloon by piping and filling a triangle on the bottom of the balloon.  Then when that is crusted over, add the white string to the balloon.  This was when I also added the white reflection, but as I said above, it would have looked better if I added earlier.

Now we have the cupcakes.  I looked at different cupcake clip art to find the style I wanted for the swirl on top.  I used blue for the wrapper and white for the frosting.  Before pipping I drew what I wanted the cupcake to look like with edible marker.  When you ice a cupcake the wrapper is already on, so that is how I did the cookies too, the wrapper first and the icing second.  That way if the icing bulges over the wrapper a bit that would look just fine.  I then picked blue icing and pipped every other section.  After it crusted for about 20-30 minutes (depending on how runny the icing is) I finished the other sections.  This gave it the lines between the sections like a real wrapper.  When the wrapper is crusted over I did the same technique for the frosting.  Every other section at a time and allowing it to crust before filling sections touching it.  And there are a cupcakes!

Here is the Happy Birthday sign.  After outlining, flooding the cookies and letting them dry, I decorated around the edges keeping the space open for the words I wanted to write.  With a black edible marker I wrote my words.  And there you have it!

Happy Birthday Cookies!