Apparently, I can make them 5 more ways than I already have. And I've already made them a lot of ways. Wet-on-wet, with colored dough and dipped in pumpkin butter cream, I've made them with gold specks and with tiny little daisy dots on them. Actually, that's not that many ways. It's only four. And today I tried them five more ways. Which is way more than double. I have more than doubled the number of ways I can make fall leaf cookies. I'm like a fall leaf making machine.
But the real question is how many ways can a person make fall leaf cookies EASIER?
But first, let's talk about how once a month, I get to rifle though my amazing cousin's super creative paper project blog and make one of her designs into cookies. Like these leaves and umm... autumn type nut things. My goodness! What are they called? Acorns. Whew. That was close.
I originally thought I would just whip out the airbrush I've been hiding in my basement for 7 years. (That is the actual number of years I've had an airbrush without using it.) Then I got all experimenty and couldn't stop myself. I started by flooding all the cookies in white icing and adding brown leaf veins. Then I had a snack. And kind of forgot about them for a day or two. I have a baby. Those things happen. But when I came back....
1. I tried airbrushing. I actually thought it looked pretty good. And I got cocky.
2. So I decided to try airbrushing with a polka dot stencil and more than 2 colors. And that turned out to be... ummm... interesting.
3. So I moved on to luster dusts. But they were a lot more low key than I was looking for.
4. So I tried mixing some food color with water and dabbing it on with a paper towel.
5. And just because I had made a couple leaves with red and brown... I used luster dust on one of them.
6. And the paper towel method on the other one.
Which one is YOUR favorite?
Hands down... I love the paper towel dabbed leaves. They take 5 seconds to color and look super realistic. Well, I mean, as realistic as a royal icing cookie leaf is going to look. AND... it's super fun. It's like kindergarten and coloring all over again. And you don't have to be careful. Except, you might want to wear gloves because that food coloring is not kidding around and you will end up with stained hands for longer than you'd like.
1. Flood the cookie in white and add veins.
2. Scrunch up a paper towel and mix some food color with equal amounts of water. (I know my food color looks radioactive, but truthfully the real picture is with blue food coloring. I didn't think to take pictures while I was doing it this time.) (So I photo shopped it so you could get the basic idea.) (I know it's so hard to tell. What with my mad photo shop talents and all.)
3. Dab it all over the cookie.
4. Add another darker color around the edges and randomly in the middle.
Make more cookies than you need because you are never going to want to stop. It's almost depressing how soon it was all over. I might make some more next week just so I can do it again. And then after that, I'll probably take a nap or something. You know, anything to avoid actual laundry or dishes.
NEED MORE?
Check out which cookie of mine Pam made into a card.
Wet-on-wet Fall Leaf Cookies.
Glittered Fall Leaf Cookies.
The tiny daisy dotted leaves. There's no tutorial. Just proof that I might be insane.
No-icing Fall Leaf Cookies and a recipe for Whipped Pumpkin Spice Butter Cream.
