Edible Art - Fun Cookie Platter

I am a home baker and I love working with edible art works on my bakes. So here I am showing few painting and edible art on cookies. In this instructables, I have done stencil work, painting on candy melts/ melted chocolate and cookie painting. This is absolute fun project and doing with your kids is a lovely experience. It's very simple with just few ingredients and edible paints.

So let's get started.

I am doing 4 different design on cookies:

1. Stencil Art

2. Pineapple

3. Ice-Cream

4. Easter Egg

Cookie Recipe:

2 and 1/4 cups (281g) all-purpose flour (spoon & leveled), plus more as needed for rolling and work surface

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup (170g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Art Supply:

Edible Glue

Edible Golden Glitter/Dust

Bakers Spirit or Rejuvanator Fluid or Evaporex

Sugar Paste or Fondant

Edible Gel color

Edible Oil Candy Color

White Compound Chocolate/ Candy Melt

Equipment:

Piping Bag

Spatula

Paint Brush

Stencil template

Cookie Cutters

First take the softened butter and beat it with a hand mixer for 2 minutes till soft. Make sure that the butter is at room temperature.

Scrape down the sides and add in the sugar and beat again for about 2 minutes.

Add in the egg and vanilla extract and beat again till well combined.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low until combined. Dough will be relatively soft. If the dough seems too soft and sticky for rolling, add 1 more Tablespoon of flour.

This recipe needs chilling.

So take a small ball of the dough and with help of rolling pin roll it to a 1/4 inch thickness.

Things to take care while rolling is the rolling pin and the silicon mat should be lightly dusted with flour. Else the dough will be sticky.

Now take the cookie cutters and cutout with it. After that refrigerate it for at least 1 hour in the fridge in an air tight container/ cling wrap it.

Here I am planning to make 4 designs so I need a round cutter, round cutter with scallop edge, Easter egg and an ice-cream cookie cutter.

With cookie cutters make sharp edge cuts and refrigerate it.

Since I do not have a pineapple cookie cutter I had to cut the shapes manually.

So first I made a circle cut out and then shaped it to a small oval with the help of my palms.

Now for the crown of the pineapple, I made cut out with a sharp knife as illustrated.

Once chilled, preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line 2-3 large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

Bake for 11-12 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Let the cookies cool in the baking tray itself for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack for cooling.

Once cooled transfer to an air tight container or cling wrap it

Take sugar Paste/ Fondant

Sugar paste is used for coating of cakes, making of roses and figures as decoration of cakes. You can buy it or make it from scratch at home. I usually buy it as it saves time.

Add edible gel color. Here I have used Blue and you would need just 2 drop of it as it will be very concentrated.

Mix it in the sugar paste. Roll it to 1/4 inch thickness. You can dust the silicon mat with corn flour too to reduce sticking.

With the cookie cutter make cut outs.

Now for the fun part. Take the stencil and place it on the cut out fondant. With the help of a rolling pin you can also imprint it on the fondant.

Add some bakers spirit to the edible golden dust. The edible spirit will evaporate and that's why after you paint with it on the fondant it becomes dry soon.

Now with the help of a paint brush, paint over the stencil as illustrated. Wait for 1 minute and then lift the stencil.

The design has now been imprinted on the fondant circle. In this way you can imprint any design with help of a stencil onto a fondant.

Now place the fondant over the baked cookie. You can secure it with edible glue onto the cookie.

First step is to melt white compound chocolate. There are different ways you can do that. I am doing the microwave method.

Chop the white compound chocolate and place it in a microwave-safe bowl. Set your microwave to 50 percent strength. Heat the white chocolate for 30 seconds, then take it out and give it a stir. Depending on your microwave, you might not see much change yet. Continue microwaving in 30-second bursts at medium power, stirring as needed. Once the pieces are mostly melted, remove from the microwave and let the remaining bits melt in the residual heat.

Color the melted chocolate:

You can color the melted chocolate with oil candy colors which will dissolve easily with chocolate and gives a good shade.

Mix it well. Keep different colored melted chocolate ready for coloring.

Now with green colored melted chocolate fill in the scoop portion of the ice-cream. This is done with a piping bag. I have given a small cut in the piping bag and filled it with green melted chocolate and filled the scoop of icecream. I also added few sprinkles on it. Let it cool.

For the cone portion, I used a paint brush dipped in edible gel color. Made strokes along the cone lines.

Your cute little ice-cream cookie is ready.

Using melted chocolate which is colored in light orange/ yellow fill in the oval cookie. With the help of a spatula fill in completely.

Also draw leaf lines on the crown part of the pineapple. When you place them together they will look like a pineapple.

Now for the painting part.

As we did before, take edible glitter mixed with bakers spirit and make few lines on the body of the pineapple.

Makes stoke lines as per illustrated. You can fill in the gaps with dots to depict the eye of pineapple.

With easter egg cut out I had made cut outs. Now for the edible painting part, I have used edible gel color for this. With the help of a paint brush I drew through the cookie imprint. I also added sprinkle to decorate it.

I have shown 4 different ways to decorate a cookie. They are very simple to do if you have access to certain cake decorating ingredients. I hope you like it.