Photo Cookies and Edible Frosting Sheets: A tutorial

Warning: This is a fairly dense tutorial post.  When I started doing photo cookies, I had a very hard time finding cohesive information and had to put together bits and pieces from a bunch of different sites. Hopefully this puts it all together in one spot.  Drop me a comment if I've missed something or you want more information on something, I'm more than willing to share all the hours I spent trolling the internet and talking to people to get this working!

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A girlfriend of mine asked me to make her some Pokemon character cookies for her son's 6th birthday. When I looked up the characters, my jaw dropped. How was I going to ice this figure onto a cookie?!

Holy Gliscor!
And then I remembered - photo cookies, of course!

Photo cookies use printed images on edible frosting sheets, just like you would print an image on paper using a regular printer. Edible frosting sheets are basically frosting/icing pressed really thin to paper width. 

Printed sheet of edible frosting which will later become...

"Photobooth" style wedding cookie favors!

So for those that want to experiment with edible images you can do one of 2 things:

1.  Buy the printed sheets from your local bakery/supermarket
2.  Buy all the equipment and materials and do it yourself.

For option #1:
I know for sure that the A&P in Fort Lee (right by GWB, next to McD) will print out images on frosting sheets for you. I know because I've done it! They charge $10 per 8.5" x 11" sheet.  You need to bring a USB with your image ready to print.  It's pricey, but you'll see that unless you're printing a lot, it's not worth buying all the equipment and materials to do it yourself (just you wait and see when you get to option #2!). 

The only problem I had with this method though is that there's less precision and control to get the images to print exactly how you want. Jpegs seems to mutate from computer to computer so when I got it printed at A&P the actual images came out a little smaller than what I had measured them out to when I created the file in InDesign/Photoshop. So be flexible. You can go in the morning and get your images printed right then and there with a 5 minute wait. Done!

Another option for those with more time is to check out this shop on Etsy: EyeCandey.
The woman who runs that shop, Joy, was THE most pleasant person to deal with! I used her the very first time I tried photo images on cookies for my friend's then boyfriend (now husband)'s birthday.  You send the photos you want printed and she will print and send you your edible prints in the mail. Prices are comparable but you have to pay for shipping. (argh that blasted shipping!) I will say that the quality of the frosting sheet through EyeCandey was better than the one from A&P (thinner, more flexible and easier to work with in general).  Plus she also offers images you can choose from. How cute are these!

Other sites also recommend checking in with your local bakery, especially if they offer photo cakes and cookies and such themselves.  I think Minnesota bakeries must be much friendlier than those in North Bergern, NJ because the 2 bakeries I went into denied my request.  One even went off on me on how I was so brazen to come in to try to use their equipment to steal their business? .......wow. All I wanted was to make 12 cookies for a friend....

For option #2:

You'll need to go big or go home!

• You'll need a printer. I bought (and recommend) the Canon IP3600 Inkjet.  Basically, you want a printer that will be used SOLELY with edible inks. DO NOT use an old printer that has already be used with regular (TOXIC) inks.  Let's keep it clean folks! There is no "special" printer, you can buy any old printer but I would just check to see that your particular model has corresponding inks to buy for it. It seems that Epson and Canon are the most popular and widely used brands in general (for edible printing).

Look at all the pink stains on my desk from messy ink cartridge handling! BOOOO.

•  You'll also need edible inks and frosting sheets.  Make sure you get the right inks for your particular printer. I'm linking you to ones that compatible to the printer I bought and listed above.

Edible Ink Cartridges for the Canon IP3600 (5 cartridge set)

Frosting Sheets 8.5" x 11" size from Kopykake

 You can also check out the site for Icing Images: they have a slew of products and information regarding printing edible images. 

A couple of caveats for those that want to plunge into option #2:

• edible inks clog fairly easily (for some reason, its always my yellow ink that gives me a problem!!!) so they recommend that you print something (anything) at least once a week (you can just use regular paper instead of wasting valuable frosting sheets!)
• edible inks also get used up fairly quickly and they're not cheap. One solution is to buy refill inks and to refill them yourselves. You can refill your cartridges up to 3 times before you need to swap out the entire cartridges and buy new ones.

Refill inks. Make sure you buy the appropriate refills for your model ink cartridges.  Mine actually came with 4 bottles - black is not shown in this picture. 

That being said, i LOVE my edible printing system! You can make endless designs and pretty cookies relatively simply. I don't love it when it clogs on me, or jams my paper feed or just feels like doing nothing. But a few coaxing words, a refill here and a swift karate chop there and we're good to go!

Once your sheets are printed, you'll want to let them dry a little bit (I wait around 30 min to be safe) and then you can start cutting out the images to work with.  If you're not going to use them immediately, make sure you store them in an airtight container or ziploc so they don't dry out.  Frosting sheets last pretty long as long as they're store correctly so this is a good step to do in advance is time is against you.  (I believe the expiration on my package of frosting sheets is 12/2012 and I bought them in July!)

Now that you have your images, you'll want to:

1.  Outline your cookie

2.  Flood your cookie (flooding just means filling in the outline with icing)

3.  Apply your icing image on the wet icing. 

Just place your image where you want it and drop it into the wet icing. As it dries, the frosting image will magically meld together with the wet icing. Carefully smooth it down so the image touches the frosting but be careful because the image is very delicate and senstive to moisture.  If a drop of water falls on it, watch the colors run as you cry out in anguish (reminds me of the execution scene from Braveheart, 'cept you won't be screaming FREEDOM!!!!)  The image will become more and more "wet" as it merges with the moisture from the icing...if you try to move the image once the moisture sets in, the image might tear.  So try to do any manipulation within the first few seconds of application. 

4.  Let dry (at least a few hours)

This for me is the "danger' period.  For some reason, a stray cookie crumb always happens to find its way on top of a freshly iced cooke. It's like the one day you wear a white shirt - of COURSE this is the day you spill black coffee on yourself. Of course! Show restraint and DO NOT TOUCH! Wait until it dries and then flick it off with a toothpick. Handling the wet icing with photo image is never a good option. 

5.  Pipe a decorative border (or not!) of your choice. 

For the photobooth style wedding favors above, I purposely did not any additional borders to give it that photograph look. You have to be really careful about application of the photo if you choose not to do a border.  Most times a border is preferable - it adds a little oomph AND it covers up a not so even edge.

Variety of "picture frame" style borders. The one on the right has no border at all!

Classic "dot" border. Also shows you don't have to use photographs...can use any kind of image. Anything you can print you can eat!

Line border with accent sugar pearls

"Double dots" wide border
There were the first ever photo cookies I did! I ordered the sheets from the Etsy link mentioned above. I actually thought the photos would come out much larger. Lemons --> Lemonade! Made the difference into the design.

Simple piped line border

Go crazy! Play with different piping tips. This was the first time I tried the star shaped tip - make sure your icing is fairly thick so it can hold it's shape!

6.  Let dry COMPLETELY. 

If you don't let the image dry completely, it will stick to the packaging and fall apart. I've had cookies dry for the full 24 hours but still seem to stick later in packaging. Not sure why so give yourself plenty of time.

Voila!

So do you want to see how those Pokemon cookies turned out?

From left to right, top to bottom:  Pikachu, Azelf, Mesprit, Uxie, Gliscor, Snivy.
Yup. I know the names of the Pokemon characters now. I am not proud.

Pikachu! I see you! (omg, so cheesy I just barfed a little!)