Words With Cookies

In my first post, I confessed that I occasionally dream about cookies.  Well, I also think about them while driving, or in the shower, or on an airplane.  I remember Sugarbelle once writing about “cookie vision”, and how once you have spent enough time making cookies, you start to see the world in cookies.  Long story short, cookie ideas can come to you in the strangest places.  But sometimes, they just come in an email.

It’s nice when you have a client who is just as excited about cookies as you.  Kaitlin ordered her first cookie from me last Spring, as a gift to her JD loving dad.  Here it is… thirsty??

Kaitlin also ordered some other great cookies over the summer, but her last order was “epic”.  Or at least that was what we called it in our emails back and forth to each other.  She wanted to give a Words With Friends cookie to her boyfriend for his birthday.  Brilliant!! Why didn’t I come up with that?!?  I gave Kaitlin the task of thinking about what she wanted the “words” to say on the board.  Thankfully for me, she even sent along a spreadsheet with the layout! So where to begin…. (and please excuse the quality of these pictures. I had not really intended to do a how-to blog with them, I was just snapping pics with my phone as I went along.)

I started with hand cutting a cookie to meet the dimensional ratios of an iPhone screen. (Don’t I sound smart?!) The final cookie size was about 5″ x 8″.  Then I piped the header, footer and grid.

I then used my handy, dandy Americolor Gourmet black food writer to make dots where the letters were going to be.  But to double-check the placement, I changed my mind and decided to write in the actual letters.  Good thing! Because as you can see, my dots were a row off. Even the Countess makes mistakes once in a while.  Then I filled in my letter squares with my yellow/orange (or is it orange/yellow?) icing, followed by the different colors for the double letter, triple letter, triple word squares, etc, and the big letter tiles and icon balloons at the bottom and top.

With a project like this you have to exercise patience, and not put wet icing next to wet icing.  So squares need to be filled in in alternating sections and allowed to dry, so that they do not run together and lose definition.  A few weeks before I started this cookie, I read a post from Anne at Flour Box Bakery about using a heat gun to speed icing drying time, and conquer craters in royal icing. If you have decorated cookies before, you’ve probably encountered those nasty little demons that can make the perfect cookie like the surface of the moon.  A cookie like this WWF one, with all it’s little sections, would be prime for the cratering.  But not with my herculean heat gun! So big thank you to Anne on this one! When all my colored squares were dry, I filled in the rest with gray.

Once everything was filled in and dry I was able to add the final details of letter, names, and game icons.  I’m a fan of the game myself, so making this cookie was kind of a trip.  But I did have to ignore all my real games temporarily to work on my game cookie. Sorry!

Kaitlin was very happy with her Words With Friends cookie gift, and from what I understand her boyfriend was pretty pleased too.  She tells me it is still sitting on his coffee table, in the original packaging, to show off to friends.  Guess I can add interior decorator to my resume now! 

Tagged as: Cookies, giant cookie, gift, heat gun, words with friends