Easter is all about eggs. Colored eggs to hide for egg hunts, eggs to decorate one's home with, whether nested inside a compote or hung from a tree and, of course, plastic eggs filled with jelly beans, chocolates and other candies for Easter baskets are all a part of this holiday. Last, but not least, are colorful egg cookies decorated with royal icing and sanding sugars meant for gift giving. These eggs are just as fun to create as dyed eggs, yet the rewards are many times sweeter because one gets to eat them. I recently decorated a batch of colorful Easter Egg Cookies that I gave away to a few lucky individuals, and although they are just the thing for the Easter holiday, these charming incredible edible eggs will undoubtedly be welcomed at any springtime celebration.
Working with several unusually-shaped egg cookie cutters, I set out to to make a few flavors of cookies using my tried and true recipes. As I was getting ready to ice them I thought about my childhood and how I used to dye eggs with my brothers every single Easter. Setting out the colors, boiling some water and adding the vinegar, then dunking the eggs one by one were all tasks we took very seriously. Mom always made sure we had plenty of eggs to decorate.
Those are happy memories that I will always cherish.
Since it is the season, a few hen dishes made from porcelain and milk glass are out and on display in my kitchen and elsewhere in the house. Perfect for springtime or for use throughout the year, these inexpensive dishes can be purchased at many antique stores, flea markets and at housewares stores. The small chickens are from the 1950s and the larger hen in the foreground is from a few years ago.
I've mentioned before how I like to marble cookie doughs whenever I feel like changing things up a bit. You can see why this is so effective when creating cookies like this because they really don't need to be iced. A simple sprinkling of clear sanding sugar before baking will make them sparkle. Tasty!
Well, I just couldn't help myself. I grabbed colored royal icing and began to experiment. That upper photograph shows how I first began to marble haphazard designs. Piping rounds of colors throughout the cookie and then filling in the spaces is really all you need to do. Once you have filled the entire surface of the cookie, you can then run a clean toothpick throughout each color, dragging, circling and crossing them until you have what you want. Other cookies were given a fancy wave pattern very reminiscent of napoleon desserts. These too were very simple to create.
The majority of the cookies were iced in simple pastel shades which were then flocked with an appropriately-colored sanding sugar. Aren't these quirky shapes charming?
For that fancy wave pattern, pipe a bead of chocolate-colored royal icing around an egg cookie and then flood it with that same color. Using an alternate color, while still wet, evenly pipe lines across the cookie. Working quickly, drag a toothpick crosswise, down the middle of the cookie. From there drag it in the opposite direction going up. Do this while making sure you space your lines evenly, until you've finished half of the cookie. Go back and work in the same fashion on the other half.
The marbled egg on the left was colored with a pale green shade of royal icing along with a true teal. On the right I used a light pink along with a very light burgundy (just a few drops will give a nice bubble-gum pink shade that I love). All of them were dotted with chocolate-colored royal icing as well. You don't need a giant egg cookie to do this. Look closely and you will see a peewee egg that was given the same royal treatment.
Tucked into the large hen dish that's been lined with pink Easter grass, these four giant eggs are ready to be devoured.
Smaller eggs can get tucked into a pink nest inside the small milk glass dishes. This set up would be so wonderful for an Easter lunch right before an egg hunt.
As much as I wanted to keep the eggs, I ended up putting them into cellophane bags which had those adorable Spring Birthday Cookies for my niece.
Let your imagination take over this Easter when creating cookies. If you do make egg-shaped cookies for the holiday, make sure to make a lot of them and color them in shades that you love! I guarantee you will enjoy the process of making dozens of eggs just as much as I did. I absolutely love when I get photographs of what you are all doing in your homes, whether it's decorating or baking, so do send me your creations. Stay tuned for a post in the near future where I will share what one creative individual made for a recent music gala. They are adorable!
You have me so excited to start some Easter cookies! Soon!
ReplyDeleteOh good! I can't wait to see your Easter cookies.
ReplyDeleteHappy Baking!
Beautifully done, David (again, still, always!) and, what beautiful memories you have too... Thank you for sharing them and your cookies!
ReplyDeleteI love seeing your vintage Martha by Mail Easter cookie cutter set again!
Happy Easter!
xo
Merci beaucoup Janet!! You know, ever since knowing you, I've been rolling out my cookies much thicker than I used to. Can we say that it's a good thing? :)
ReplyDeleteI love all of this! The cookies, the milk glass, the styling.... Very inspiring :)
ReplyDeleteAh the milk glass.... :) I hope you make Easter cookies, Anette!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful cookies David, tell us, how do you make your chocolate colored royal icing?
ReplyDeleteThanks!
ReplyDeleteThe chocolate-colored royal icing is simply made with nut brown food coloring & black food coloring. Use a small offset spatula to take out a large amount of nut brown food coloring from your pot of food coloring; if you have gel food coloring, simply squeeze out a good amount. Mix it with a small batch of royal icing and add a few drops of black food coloring as well. If it's not as dark as you want it, add more brown.
Simple!