Victorian Cute Cat Cookies

These adorable kittens are from Victorian die-cut scraps. I made the cookies with Sugarbelle's sugar cookie recipe, using the middle cutter (2"x3") from the Ateco 3-Piece Rectangular Cookie Cutter Set. The borders I piped with a #16 star tip, with white vanilla-flavored icing.

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The wafer papers are available at my shop.

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Chinese Double Happiness Cookies

My friend Anna threw a bridal shower last weekend for her future sister-in-law. Anna wanted to gift her with some cookies that had the Chinese "Double Happiness" symbol or character, to honor the family's Chinese American heritage. The Chinese color for happiness, good luck, and weddings, is red, so color choice was easy. I made a set of twelve, but we trimmed them to eight for the red presentation box, 8 being a lucky number in Chinese culture. 

Using Sugarbelle's Sugar Cookie Dough, I made the cookies in three shapes: 

1. Rectangle, using the 2" x 2.5" rectangular cutter from 

the R & M Fluted Rectangular Cookie Cutter Set; 

2. Square, using the 2.5" fluted cutter (usable area 2.25") from 

the Ateco 5-Piece Fluted Square Cookie Cutter Set; 

3. Circle, using the 2.5" round cutter (usable area 2.25" usable area) from 

the Ateco 4-Piece Round Fluted Cookie Cutter Set. 

They were so pretty without a border, I decided to leave them plain. 

 

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The wafer papers are available for purchase in my store.
A step-by-step how-to for decorating cookies with wafer papers can be found here.

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Blue Japanese Traditional Pattern Cookies

Yes, I am on a blue cookie streak. One of my favorite customers, Diane, told me how much she loves all Asian-themed cookies, so when I ran across these traditional blue Japanese patterns, I knew I had to make them as wafer papers for her. These patterns have been in use for centuries in both porcelain and fabric decoration; waves, flowers, intricate squares.

I made the cookies with my favorite, Sugarbelle's Sugar Cookie Dough, and used a 1.75" square cookie cutter from the Ateco 5-Piece Fluted Square Cookie Cutter Set. If you wanted to, you could "cheat" and use these wafer papers on Lorna Doone shortbread cookies from your grocery store's cookie isle. 

After piping and flooding the cookies, I let them harden for 24 hrs, then wafer-papered them. They were such dainty cookies, I felt they required a delicate border; I piped round "pearls" in a string for a beaded border, using a #4 round tip in an icing consistency a bit thicker than regular border-piping icing, but not as stiff as if I had been making a border with a star tip. This is really more trial and error than anything else; roughly 8 second icing. I often have to remix looser, if my beads have a sharp tip that won't absorb, or thicker, if the pearls turn into shapeless blobs.

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The wafer papers are available for purchase in my store.
A step-by-step how-to for decorating cookies with wafer papers can be found here.

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Blue Chinese Porcelain Cookies

Last week, my neighbor Marcia's Delft Blue Porcelain Cookies, which I'd made for her nearly a year ago, finally met their demise; she had saved them on a platter in her dining room, but wafer paper is fragile and very susceptible to humidity, and its shelf-life is only about a year. After a year, the humidity here in Texas finally made the wafer papers bubble and curl, and she agreed to throw out her cookies. To replace them, I made her these blue Chinese porcelain cookies.

I'm not familiar with Chinese iconography and symbolism, so I couldn't tell you if the bird is a pheasant, a bird of paradise, or a phoenix; not whether the mandala-looking pattern is a lotus flower or a symbol of something else. Whatever the case might be, there is no question about its beauty and appeal. I bet she's going to keep these a year, too.

For dough, I used Jesicake's Gluten-Free Version of Lilaloa's Chocolate Cookies. I cut the cookies with the 2.5" round cutter (it's more like a 2.25" usable area, because of the fluting) from the Ateco 4-Piece Round Fluted Cookie Cutter Set, but any 2.5" fluted round or 2.25" plain-edged round cutter would do for the images. Iced with white, border piped with a #16 star tip using super-stiff icing.

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The wafer papers are available for purchase in my store.
A step-by-step how-to for decorating cookies with wafer papers can be found here.

Read more »

Victorian Dog Cookies

One of my aunts is a dog-lover to the extreme, so I made her these dog cookies. The images are from Victorian die-cut scraps. The baby (he's 2.5, but I still think of him as "the baby") liked the little white terrier and the border collie. I like the little cairn terrier and the yorkie... and the Jack Russell (if that's a Jack Russell, I'm not sure). My aunt will doubtless like the long-haired dachshund, because she had a mix who looked very much like him.

I made the cookies with Jesicake's Gluten-Free Version of Lilaloa's Chocolate Cookies using a 2.5" round cutter (it's more like a 2.25" usable area, because of the fluting) from the Ateco 4-Piece Round Fluted Cookie Cutter Set, but any 2.5" fluted round or 2.25" plain-edged round cutter would do for the images. Iced with white, border piped with a #16 star tip using super-stiff icing.

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The wafer papers are available for purchase in my store.
A step-by-step how-to for decorating cookies with wafer papers can be found here.

Read more »

Coffee Cup Cookies

My friend Brian has been on my "to-be-cookied" list for a long time and, since I finally found a good gluten-free cookie recipe, it was his turn. He is a coffee fiend, so coffee cup cookies were a natural choice. 

I made the cookies with Jesicake's Gluten-Free Version of Lilaloa's Chocolate Cookies, which is superb in both taste and in ease of baking. I used a 1.75" square cookie cutter from the Ateco 5-Piece Fluted Square Cookie Cutter Set, but if you weren't worried about gluten, you could "cheat" and use these wafer papers on Lorna Doone shortbread cookies from your grocery store's cookie isle. 

After piping and flooding the cookies, I waited the requisite 24 hrs for them to harden, then wafer-papered them & piped a border with vanilla icing (colored light brown with Hershey's cocoa powder) with a #14 star tip. Brian and his wife loved them :) 

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The wafer papers are available for purchase in my store.
A step-by-step how-to for decorating cookies with wafer papers can be found here.

Read more »

Asian Flower Porcelain Plate Cookies

My godmother was long overdue for cookies—but I had to wait until I had figured out which gluten-free cookie dough was actually tasty, and not like cardboard, before making hers. Since Jesicake's Gluten-Free Version of Lilaloa's Chocolate Cookies was excellent, my godmother has cookies on the way. She is a lover of porcelain and of flowers, so I made her this set of Asian porcelain flower plate designs from the late 1800s.

I used the 2.5" round cutter (it's more like a 2.25" usable area, because of the fluting) from the Ateco 4-Piece Round Fluted Cookie Cutter Set, but any 2.5" fluted round or 2.25" plain-edged round cutter would do for the images. Iced with white, border piped with a #16 star tip using super-stiff icing.

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The wafer papers are available for purchase in my store.
A step-by-step how-to for decorating cookies with wafer papers can be found here.

Read more »

Victorian Children Silhouette Cookies

These silhouettes of Victorian / Edwardian children playing are from early 1900s postcards by artist Bertl Werner. There is an innocence and a timelessness to them, which I found very appealing.

I have long planned to try my hand at gluten-free cookies, so that my gluten-sensitive friends could get some of my cookies, but I had a hard time choosing a recipe and an even harder time getting the ingredients, once I made up my mind which recipe to use. In the end, I ordered all of the ingredients through Amazon. I chose to do Jesicake's Gluten-Free Version of Lilaloa's Chocolate Cookies, and I'm glad I did; they tasted so good nobody could tell they were gluten-free! I used the 2" x 2.5" rectangular cutter from the R & M Fluted Rectangular Cookie Cutter Set. They were iced with white, wafer-papered, and given a border with a #16 star tip.

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The wafer papers are available for purchase in my store.
A step-by-step how-to for decorating cookies with wafer papers can be found here.

Read more »

Sweet as Candy Rose Cookies

I prefer small cookies—I like a cookie that is like a tiny jewel; a perfect mouthful. That way, eating one isn't a huge commitment and, if the cookies are especially pretty, one can eat many different ones in one sitting. In the end, I probably eat just the same amount of cookie, but I prefer to do it in smaller sections. Is that silly? Probably :) 

 Anyway... usually, I have a recipient in mind when I'm making cookies, but these were just for us. And, they were eaten in record time! They have roses, birdcages, and scrolls in pink, green, and blue—a modern take on Victorian themes.

Made with my favorite, Sugarbelle's Sugar Cookie Dough, using a 1.75" fluted cutter from the Fox Run Plain and Crinkled Double Sided Biscuit Cutter Set, the cookies were iced with white, wafer-papered, and then piped with a #14 star cutter.

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The wafer papers are available at my shop.

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Tiny Violet Cookies

Violets, or pansies, were my grandmother's favorite flowers. This spring, I have planters brimming with them on my patio, and I wanted to make a cookie I know she would've loved.

These are small, 1.75" round, made using a fluted cutter from the Fox Run Plain and Crinkled Double Sided Biscuit Cutter Set. The background cannot really be seen in the photo, but it looks like beige, water-marked taffeta. The border was made with a #14 star tip in parchment-colored icing.

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The wafer papers are available at my shop.

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Almost Tiffany Blue Bird Stamp Cookies

A follower named Beth wrote in and requested cookies with birds on a chevron background, if possible. Serendipitously, I had licensed art that fit the bill, to make cookies for my aunt. They are birds and bird nests on stamps, on a robin's egg blue chevron background. They are not Tiffany blue exactly, that Pantone color being patented for Tiffany use only; they are bluer, but they are pretty close. Beth loved the wafer papers, and I got to send the "sample cookies" to my aunt, so everyone was happy :)

I made the cookies with Sugarbelle's Sugar Cookie Dough, using a 2.0" x 2.5" cutter from the R & M Fluted Rectangular Cookie Cutter Set. I iced them with white, and when they were rock-hard, glued on the wafer papers with clear corn syrup, and piped the edge with parchment-colored icing with a #14 star tip.

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The wafer papers are available at my shop.

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Dutch Children on Delft Porcelain Tile... Cookies!

I'll admit it: I've grown extremely fond of Delft blue porcelain and of Dutch boys and girls in art postcards. This is a set of postcards from the early 1900s to the 19-teens; they are unsigned, but the consensus is that the artwork is by my beloved Ellen H. Clapsaddle. How could I resist! I made a batch of 12 (2 each of the six designs), but a toddler and a dog got to the cookies before I had taken my photos :D

I made them with LilaLoa's Chocolate Cookie Recipe, using the rectangular cutter from this plaque cookie cutter set from CheapCookieCutters.com, but they are sized in such a way that you could just as well use their 2.375" x 3.5" rectangular cookie cutter, or even cut out your own rectangles, if you wished to make them. I piped and flooded in white, wafer-papered them, and piped a border with a #16 star tip.

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The wafer papers are available at my shop.

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Mermaid Art Wafer Paper Cookies

I have been meaning to make vintage mermaid cookies for a long, long time, but only got around to it last week. These images are from mermaid book illustrations, postcards, and even an advertising card, all dating from the first two decades of the 20th century.

I made these with Sugarbelle's Sugar Cookie Dough, using a Rectangular Cookie Cutter (2.375" x 3.5"), which the nice folks at CheapCookieCutters.com made for me upon request last year. I piped and flooded the cookies with white Royal Icing and, when it was hard, wafer-papered them and piped a border for them with a #16 star tip.

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The wafer papers are available at my shop.

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True Love Engagement / Wedding Cookies

My friend Cait just got engaged, and I wanted to give her some special cookies to celebrate. I decided on these wedding or marriage proposal stamps. She worked all last year at a chocolatier, so I wanted to put the wafers on white chocolate, instead of my usual white Royal Icing. I know NOTHING about working with chocolate, so they had to be store-bought and ready to decorate.

The stamps were the perfect size for the new white chocolate "Little Schoolboy" cookies from LU, which I just grabbed at my local grocery store; I've long loved the milk chocolate Petit Écolier cookies, and figured the white chocolate had to be tasty as well. Oh, they were (I bought 2 boxes, so I would have some for eating as well as room for mistakes). Check your local grocery store—they should have them; if not, Amazon sells them in 6 box sets.

Alternately, you could just make these on 1.5" x 2.25" rectangular cookies. Country Kitchen SweetArt has a good-sized cutter in their 6 Crinkled Rectangle Cookie Cutter Set, or, you could just cut them by hand using a ruler and a knife (or pizza cutter) without too much difficulty.


First thing, I gently scraped the little schoolboys off the face of the cookies with a tiny, sharp knife, until the cookies were flat—I left the chocolate edge, because it gave a nice border. The cookies should be room temperature for this step, for the chocolate to be soft enough to come off nicely. After they were nice and smooth, I put them in the fridge to get cold.

Next, I cut out the stamp border from my wafers, but if I were making them on regular rectangular cookies, I would probably leave it on—it's adorable. When the cookies had chilled, I took my craft brush and corn syrup, and glued the wafers on. Voilà, they were ready! Here's the thing, though: once the wafers are on the cookie, DO NOT PUT IN THE REFRIGERATOR! I did with my first batch, and the (minimal) moisture bubbled up my papers and I had to make a second set. Remember, moisture is your enemy when working with wafer paper, and the fridge will make any latent moisture bead up and ruin your wafer papers.

Luckily, I did this last month while it was still cool. Now, it's too warm in Texas already, or to ship chocolate cookies, and it will be too warm for me to use this "cheat" until next winter. But I will! They were gorgeous, and took very little work.

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The wafer papers are available for purchase in my store.
A step-by-step how-to for decorating cookies with wafer papers can be found here.

Read more »