Cookie Art - Photos and Tips
Here are three ideas for cookie art - but first a couple of notes.
1. We used store-bought cookie dough, and that could be responsible for any or all of the problems we encountered.
2. These projects can be messy - you may want to cover your countertop with newspaper first.
"Jackson Pollock" inspired cookies.
Source: http://www.marthastewart.com/
Our tips:
1. Make them by using a straw to blow drops of food coloring over a cookie dough "canvas."
2. If you blow hard on the drop just as it comes out of the dropper, it breaks into little droplets.
3. Really it would have worked better to use much bigger cookies - cutting the dough three inches across or more. A drop of food coloring is too large for these, which were just two inches wide.
Egg Painted Cookies
Source: http://library.thinkquest.org/15215/Resources/Crafts/cookie.html
Our Tips
1. Make "paint" by coloring egg yolks with food coloring. Paint the cookie dough.
2. The pictures you paint before baking have a disquieting habit of spreading apart during baking in unpredictable ways. Note how the sails on our sailboat lifted away from the boat.
3. Since the cookies are going to spread out during baking, the finished cookies are less covered than you expect. The striped caterpillar at the top is a good example - it was completely covered with paint before baking.
4. If you work on top of a chilled cookie sheet, the dough will stay firm while you work and it will be easier to transfer to the baking pan.
4. Unpredictability aside, this is really fun to do.
Swirl cookies
We made these out of our egg-yolk paint failures. We pulled the paint through the dough, rolled it into a log, twisted it, and attached the two ends to form a doughnut shape.