Life's A Beach Cookies

 

Every year one of my girlfriends has a beach party.  It is something I look forward to every year.  This year it is scheduled for next weekend; unfortunately this is my busiest week of the year and I will be working during the party.   Before I knew I would be working next weekend, I had already planned on making beach themed cookies and bought a palm tree and planned on using a circle for a beach ball. I thought that cookies would hold up better at the beach, rather than cupcakes or something else that would melt.  I  couldn't let a perfectly good palm tree cookie cutter go to waste, so before I started what I am calling "hell week" at work I decided to make the cookies I had planned for the party.  

Making the beach balls was easy.   I have a collection of various sized circle cutters and I justed used a medium sized cirlce.   I sketched out ahead of time, how I wanted the balls to look.   Once I settled on a design I liked, I outlined the circles in white royal icing using a #2 tip.  I then made the circles slightly off center in the cookie and outlined the triangles for the different colors.

 

After the lines were set I flooded the parts I wanted white using a #3 tip.   Here is picture of the balls in the process of being flooded.

 

Once the white had set, I flooded the other triangles with red, blue and green.   I used a #2 tip to flood these areas because they were so small  and I wanted to becareful not to get any on the white.  I then let the cookies sit over night to dry.  

When I got up the next morning, the cookies looked nice, but there was nothing special about them.  I contemplated a few different ideas to spice them up and finally decided to do the outlines around the colors in sparking sugar.  I had plenty of white icing left, so I just retraced the cookies and then sprinkled them in sparkling sugar, and I was much happier with the results.  

 

This beach ball is ready for his close up!

 

I worked on the palms trees at the same time I did the beach balls.  The palm trees were very easy to do.   I outlined the top in green, and the bottom in brown, each time using #2.  

 

Then I flooded the the trunks and leaves in green and brown using a #3 tip.    Again, I let the cookies sit over night.  

The next morning, I put the detailing on the trunks using a number #2 tip. Just two Xs, very easy.  And it finish the palm trees, I outlined the green in leftover green icing, and then sprinkled green sanding sugar. (I would normally use sparkling sugar, but for some reason I had a ridiculous amount of green sanding sugar in the house).  I then let the cookies dry for 6 hours.  

I love how the trees and beach balls look together!