Hello Everyone,
Sorry I was absent last week. We were on vacation visiting family out of state. Twelve hour car ride with the little ones was an adventure to say the least! But, we’re back now.
On to cookies! For this week I have some dinosaurs for you. Why dinosaurs you ask? Because I wanted to decorate eggs and Easter is a long way off. Hey, it makes perfect sense to me. And I didn’t just want to decorate eggs I wanted to paint eggs. I bought some cookie decorating paint brushes and I’ve been thinking about how I could use them besides applying luster dust. Something in my memory was quietly enjoying the process of mixing dust with alcohol, finding just the right consistency, then painting it on. Like watercolor painting. That was it, I was taken back to my watercolor classes back in college and how much fun that was. Of course it got me wondering about how difficult it would be to paint in a watercolor techniques on frosting. I imagined that water/vodka was going to melt the frosting if I messed with the “canvas” as much as I did with actual watercolor paint and possibly make it look really bad or it might soak in just enough to make it look really pretty.
So I started with eggs frosted white and mixed up some gel food coloring and vodka for my “paint”. The alcohol is good because it dries faster than water. I was delighted to find the gel food coloring works just like watercolor paint as far as mixing goes. 
Because sugar and water are great friends and like to mingle… added to the fact that I use a glaze and royal icing mix that stays a little softer when dried, I found that a couple rules apply for watercolor painting on cookies. One, work very quickly. The longer the vodka sits on the icing the softer the icing gets. Two, work with conviction! Know where you want the color and do it. Sugar is less forgiving about pushing color around for long. Three, after you’re done let it dry for a few hours because there will probably be soft spots. Yes, I may have made all these mistakes… still, super fun and you should try it. I got the speckled look by turning the biggest brush sideways and running my thumb across the bristles. It is probably best to use a knife or something else that doesn’t stain for this. Not fingers! Ahem. Oh well, I was in the moment lol. 
I will definitely be playing a lot more with this technique in the future. Stay tuned, I’ve got some summer-ish cookies to show you in the next couple weeks.
Love and cookies,
Sherry
Frosted Bear Bakery 