I tried something new with these cookies. I planned them. Okay, so most cookies I at least think about before I start making them. Sometimes I don't though. Sometimes I just start putting icing or fondant on a cookie and see where it goes. (Have I mentioned that I'm a "rusher?") Anyway, with these cookies, I scratched little lines on the cookies with a toothpick before I even picked up my royal icing. (Can you do that with regular sugar cookies, or is this unique to chocolate sugar cookies? If you do this on vanilla sugar cookies, let me know, I'm super interested. As opposed to, you know, regular type interested.)
Anyway, back to my story about me and my cookies. I drew the pattern on the cookie with a toothpick and then filled it in. And surprisingly, they turned out rather uniform. (And by that I mean it wasn't surprising. At all. If you could hear me say it, then you would know how funny I am. Or at least you would know when I'm being sarcastic. Maybe not though, because sometimes my husband doesn't know, and he thinks I'm just being mean. Although to be fair, sometimes I am mean. And even when I am, he's usually pretty nice about it. Which makes me feel worse in the end about pretending to be sarcastic when I was really being mean. But I wasn't being mean just now, I was trying to illustrate my point that I should have been trying this whole "planning your cookies out" thing a long time ago. Which has nothing to do with being mean.)
I also tried outlining one of my cookies with a food marker. I kind of like it! It reminds me of cartoons in the Sunday paper. Oh, and did anyone notice that I added white to the color palette from yesterday? Its amazing how much of a difference a little white and/or a little black can make in a cookie.