St. Patrick’s Day Cookies

Where is this year going?  It’s already St. Patrick’s Day?  What??!!!!  Well life has been super busy – yes, wah wah, wah – but really it has.  I forgot how much work it is to have a baby at home!  These St. Patrick’s Day cookies were thrown together at the last minute.  I wanted something gold and something green… but with zero time I came up with this design for these simple St. Patrick’s Day Cookies.  I used a can of Wilton  gold spray and scrapbooking stencils to make a fun gold chevron background for these cookies.  No, these St. Patrick’s Day cookies are not perfect – but t hey are fun!  And I was able to decorate them in no time at all!  Next year my St. Patrick’s Day cookies will be amazing!  I promise.

Keep reading to see how I made these St. Patrick’s Day Cookies!What is it about March?  Why is there no time?  For us it’s all the time spent enjoying ski season here in Utah.  I really haven’t spent a lot of time decorating cookies but I did want to make St. Patrick’s Day cookies.  Here is a quick summary on how I made this particular set of St. Patrick’s Day Cookies.

Step 1 – How to make  St. Patrick’s Day Cookies – Bake the sugar cookies

To start, follow your favorite sugar cookie recipe and cut into round shapes.  Actually just about any cookie shape would work.  The recipe that I have been using can be found here.  Be sure the cookie dough is not to sticky so that the cookie dough does not spread too much during baking.   Circular cookie shapes look simple, but in reality it is rather challenging to keep them from looking like amorphous blobs.  To combat this problem I always freeze my dough and my cut cookie shapes before baking.  This minimizes the spreading that may or may not go on when you are baking your St. Patrick’s Day cookies.

Step 2 –  How to make St. Patrick’s Day Cookies – Decorate with Royal Icing

When using a stencil to decorate a cookie you have to make sure the icing is completely dry.  This is why I choose to use royal icing on this particular cookie.  The white icing on this St. Patrick’s Day cookie dries very smooth allowing me to place a scrapbooking stencil on top of the cookie.  For this cookie I either use traditional royal icing, recipe found here, or I choose to use royal glaze icing, royal glaze recipe found at this link.  In my dry climate the addition of corn syrup and glycerin help to soften the royal icing after it dries.  We do not want to break  our teeth on a St. Patrick’s Day cookie, now do we?

Outline the cookies in icing thinned to a soft, flowing peak stage to outline the cookies.  Use a thinner icing to flood the cookies.  I use icing that is the consistency of honey to completely cover these St. Patrick’s Day cookies.  Simply fill in the area between the outline using icing bags or plastic decorating bottles.   Allow the icing to dry completely before continuing with the stencil design.  For these St. Patrick’s Day cookies I let the icing dry overnight.

Step 2 –  How to make St. Patrick’s Day Cookies – Use the stencil to add the gold chevron pattern

Now that the St. Patrick’s Day cookies are completely dry I am ready to add the gold chevron pattern.  I have been thinking about an airbrush to do this.  I think the next time I sell cookies I will have to use a coupon to buy the Duff’s airbrush from Michael’s.  For now, I am happy trying out this gold spray available at my local Walmart.  I found the scrapbooking stencil at Michael’s – I may soon have a stencil problem to go along with my cookie cutter problem.  Oh well – it’s better than a designer shoe addiction, right?

Now for the fun part!  I love a good kitchen mess!  Well making these St. Patrick’s Day cookies was not quite as messy as I thought it would be.  I simply placed the cookies on the back of a cookie sheet – placed the stencil over them and sprayed the gold Wilton color mist over the cookies.  A few things I learned – the Wilton color spray mist comes out very fast!  So be sure not to put the spray bottle too close to the cookies.  Some of the lines were not very clean, but I’m not to worried about making perfect St. Patrick’s Day cookies this time around.  Also, the shamrock will hide a lot of the flaws.

Carefully take the stencil off the cookies and let the gold patterns set for a while.  If I were doing these for a special event or a cookie order I would be sure to make extra (for the kids… ha ha) no I would make extra cookies just in case the spray design did not quite work out.   Between different cookie sets carefully clean both the back and front sides of the cookies to keep the pattern clean.

Step 3 – How to make St. Patrick’s Day cookies – Add the shamrock design

Once the spray design has completely dried add the shamrocks to the cookies.  Very carefully outline the shape of the shamrock and fill in.  I used just one consistency icing for this job – out of laziness.  The icing was a bit thinner than my normal outlining icing and thicker than the flood icing.  I used a leaf green to get the bold green on these St. Patrick’s Day cookies.

The nice thing about this St. Patrick’s Day cookie design is that the shamrock is able to hide a lot of the mistakes during the spraying/stencil step.  I have seen so many beautiful cookies made using stencils and airbrushes.  This is not easy!  In the beginning (where I am) be sure to stick with St. Patrick’s day cookie designs that are somewhat forgiving.  In this case the shamrock does wonders in hiding any flaws on the cookie design.

So there it is – a simple way to decorate St. Patrick’s Day cookies.  I promise, your friends and family will love these cookies and you will have saved hours and hours of time in the decorating process.  Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  Enjoy