Jane Austen Month, Day 10: Silhouette Cookies

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"If my children are silly, I must hope to be always sensible of it... "

-Mr. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice

My kids have certainly been silly these last couple of days, and I am very sensible of it. Therefore, this is not the most perfect batch of decorated cookies, but I defy you to produce something better with these little munchkins wreaking havoc all around you :)

I took a cookie decorating class from this amazing lady a couple of years ago. Mind you, it was like an hour long, so she couldn't teach us enough to make us pros or anything, but I did pick this little gem up from her, and what is more Austen-esque than a silhouette?

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Royal Icing!

From "The Good Apple"

1/2 lb Powdered Sugar (WEIGH THIS, or you can double the recipe and use a 1 lb. box instead.)

2.5 TBSP Meringue Powder

1/4 C water

Beat this for about 5 minutes with hand beaters.

 

It will get fluffy and gorgeous like this:

 

Add water a teaspoon at a time until it is just on the cusp of softness but still basically holds its shape. Take some out. This will be your stiff icing, and you will use it for outlining. Now add a little more water to the rest until you can see that it doesn't hold it's shape. You will use this to "Flood" the cookie once it is outlined. Add food coloring gel as desired. You can use regular old food color drops, but I recommend incorporating them with the water, because you don't want to get the perfect texture and then have it ruined by adding too much coloring fluid. Just a pointer.

 

Now for the silhouettes (Or whatever shape you are doing), print them out to a size that will fit on the cookie you are making. Now place that paper underneath a silpat or parchment paper, and trace with the stiff icing.

Fill it in...

and DRY! Overnight. Don't try to pull them up too early- they will break. Just ask the 8 that I broke and therefore *Had* to eat. :)

The next day...

Make your favorite cookie dough (I like the super soft kind for this kind of cookie), make rectangle shapes, bake, and cool according to your recipe.

 

Okay see the outlined cookie?

See how it's been flooded with the softer frosting now? And if you need to move some around a bit with a toothpick, feel free. 

Now pick up your pretty little silhouette and drop it into the wet frosting. It will just kind of sink in and the whole thing turns into this hard cookie. 

Then, if you are me, you go and ruin it by piping letters onto them that look weird. Oh well, you win some, you lose some :)

And I still think it is the cutest little placecard I have ever seen :) 

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