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Nicole Simeone
A Video Said It Was Easy
Anyone else get those cake and cookie decorating videos on their social media feeds like me? The ones that have fantastic end results and, more often than not, camera speed ups. Sometimes with an appealing soundtrack accompanying the building of visually stunning products.
They are modern-day sirens as far as I’m concerned. Gorgeous treats beckoning to bakers from afar. Calling to our curiosity and need to create. And yet, intent upon throwing us down hard against the jagged rocks of baking fails.
Often, I can tie my creativity down and prevent falling for their seductive calls. When a video has more than one spread up sequence for decorating sugar cookies, it can’t be anything other than a trap. Who wants to spend that kind of time on something that’s going to be eaten in a bite or two?
Not this girl.
Mom did give me all of those cookie cutters, though, and I haven’t used them in forever. And some cookies around the house wouldn’t kill anyone. You always used to make cookies for Halloween…
See, this is how they get you. Damn it. Fine. I said a lot of the time, not all of the time. So, you can probably guess how I spent some of my time this weekend.
I didn’t put forward a meticulous effort. Rather than dedicate all day or half a day to the project, I gave myself an hour and a half. I didn’t make three or four batches of royal icing in various degrees of stiffness. Nor did I use any piping tips. Frankly, I didn’t want to have to sit by the sink afterward, brushing out the dried up icing from the narrow openings.
If I had done all of these things, I probably would have ended up with a much more polished, video worthy result. Time is perhaps the most important of all the things I listed above. More time would have allowed me to practice, practice, practice.
I wasn’t super strict with my time management. I did end up running over my hour and a half by about a half-hour. And then there was clean up, which was significant since my baking/decorating style most resembles the Tasmanian Devil.
What came out of my time spent dabbling in decorating came out pretty darn good. I left my practice cookies in there so you can see how this whole mess started. But nowhere near the level, I’ve seen on Pinterest/ Facebook/Instagram. Frustrating is the best word I can use to describe the piping and filling method I was trying to recreate from the videos.
‘ve taken decorating classes, so I understand the mechanics of the process. But the translation of technical understanding to application isn’t a smooth or quick thing. I’d have had to baked double the number of cookies and spent probably all week doing nothing but piping practice.
Where’s that in the video? Or stylized still?
I know it wouldn’t make sense to overly advertise failures. These creators have worked hard for their prowess. But damn it, sometimes it’s hard to remember that and keep my expectations of my own abilities realistic. Anyone else have that problem?
As my cooking decorating experiment came to a close, I did what I usually do, revert back to my seven-year-old self. I started playing around with the remaining frosting, dipping a coated toothpick into one of the other colors.
I then dropped a cookie onto the surface of the frosting. I let it sit for only a few seconds before lifting the cookie back out of the bowl. When I did it the first time, I figured I’d get some ugly cookies I wouldn’t mind eating. No one ever wants to bite into their best cookie. The end result of my nonsense was disappointing in that goal.
The tye dye/borderline flocked result was beautifully fall.
These cookies were the ones I had the most fun with. If pressed, I might even say they were the best ones.
Well, shit, now I have to feel bad about eating most of the cookies. But I found a highly accessible way to decorate cookies that produces a neat result.
The hardest part about this technique is twisting your wrist in just the right way to get the dripping tail of frosting not to goop over the edge of the cookie. If you don’t manage it, no worries. Keep a toothpick handy and run it along the cookie’s edge.
I may not have the picture-perfect cookies I was trying for, but they were picture worthy all the same.
