The Crab and the Octopus

The Octopus and the Crab Cookie:

I was inspired to make these cookies when I was trying to come up with a game plan of what to make for my sister, Chelsea's Baby Showers in August and September. My sister and her husband have decided to do the baby's room in all things Ocean. I thought these turned out super cute!

I used a wonderful sugar cookie recipe from the Martha Stewart "Cake" book and a cute crab a octopus cookie cutter. A little royal icing, okay a lot of royal icing, and food coloring gel.

All in all, these cookies took me about 3 and 1/2 hours total; that is from the time I stepped into the kitchen until the time I took the very last picture. Not toooo terribly bad for a 'newby' to the decorating world. :)
Things I learned from this little cookie project:

1. Cookie dough works better if it is cold... not TOO cold though, or it will break apart. Cookie dough is very difficult, especially when you are trying to cut out a little octopus with thin little legs! At first, I thought I did something wrong, but a little patience was worth it!

2. How to 'flood' a cookie with the royal icing to get that smooth, hard look. Flood? Seriously, I never would have imagined that word would be used in decorating, but it is... Basically all you have to do is have one thick batch of royal icing to use for the outline and one thin batch of royal icing to flood in the cookie. First, I outlined my cookie, well I tried to outline it! Then I took the thin icing a spooned it in and then using a toothpick I spread it out to smooth over the cookie. TaDa! The flooding is complete. :) I think that this skill definitely takes practice, but for my first time, I feel like it went well!

3. Patience is sooooooooooooo important! This is where I have a major problem. Normally, during the school year, my patience is completely shot by the time I make it home. Mainly because I have repeated, redirected, and waited one thousand times over for things to be complete, but also because I have my homeowner/wife/ ME responsibilities that I know I have to do! So, with summer being here it is MUCH easier for me to wait for cookies to cool, wait for the icing to thicken, take my time cleaning allllllll of my dirty dishes. When we have patience, it just makes the whole baking/decorating experience much more F-U-N!

That is all I have for now...