Jackie's Birthday Cookies

As a continuation from my last post, these are cookies I made for Jackie's birthday.  Jackie's good friend, Judy, and I were in charge of getting together the list of people and setting up the dinner so we could celebrate her birthday and engagement.  We ate at a restaurant at Downtown Disney and decided to decorate the tables.  Judy got her balloons and I decided to make these J cookies not only as party favors for Jackie's friends to take home but also to double as decorations for the table top.

When I stuck in the skewers in the J's there was this really ugly dent right where it went in.  There really was no avoiding it unless I made the cookies 1/2" thick.  I try not to make the thickness of the cookies no bigger than necessary.  Otherwise, it looks too huge and bulky.

My remedy for this was to try and cover it with the icing.  The great thing about royal icing is that you can do almost anything with it given the right consistency.  

You can see in the photo above how I created an extra space right where the dent of the cookie is.  As long as the icing isn't as fluid as water, you don't have to worry about it leaking through the cracks.  That is, unless you're trying to use it right out of the fridge.  That's a whole different story.  In this case, let's just assume you're using fresh royal icing.. which is generally a good idea whenever you're starting a new decorating project.

I filled the J then let it harden.  Then I went back and created a grid pattern in this order.

Outline first, then one set of parallel lines, then the other set of parallel lines going in the opposite direction.  The first cookie I did had about twice as many lines and it just looked too cluttered.  Experiment and see what you think looks best.  Maybe if my lines were super thin it could have looked good but not in this case.

For an added accent, I put these sugar pearls at the cross sections of the lines. 

That's it!  Just bag and tie a pretty ribbon around it... stick them in a tall glass jar filled with marbles and there you have it!

Congrats again James and Jackie!