Cheers to 2012!

Since I wished you a Happy New Year's just yesterday, it follows in my warped world of time that today is the 2nd day of the new year.  Cheers to 2012!

Yup. The cookie is as large as it looks. I baked together the 4 numbers to create one monster of a cookie.  Obviously whoever eats this cookie is not listing a reduction of sweets into their list of resolutions. 

I had a chance to make a package of New Year's Eve themed cookies and I jumped on this opportunity to go nuts with the sparkles.  Above, I used disco dust on the 0 and the second 2.  I think it came out pretty, no?  I just tapped some onto the icing while it was still wet and let the icing and the disco dust set together.  By the way, the disco dust gets EVERYWHERE.  I was sparkling for days. I was pretty careful with it too so for those neat freaks out there, this is NOT for you.  It's edible in small quantities but I'm told that it does stick to your teeth so maybe you don't eat sparkly cookies before a first date.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Some more blinged out cookies:

And the entire set together:

The best part about this set? No fancy cookie cutter shapes needed! I just used a mix of circles and rectangles to create the cookies above (minus the ginormous 2012 of course). 

To make the champagne glass cookies, you'll need the following:

• pink, white and ivory icing of medium consistency (should be like runny toothpaste)
• #2 tips
• white non-pareils
• white sugar pearls
• ivory satin bows - I pre-made mine out of 1/4" ivory satin ribbon

Start out by icing simple rectangles with a pink base. Let these dry overnight before adding the details below.  I used a 2" x 3" cutter for mine from a rectangle set that you can get here (the largest of the set).  Leave about 1/4" icing free on the sides like this:

You should be working with a completely dry cookie.  Pipe in the outline of the champagne glass with white icing fitted with a #2 tip:

Now flood the bottom half (or 1/3 or 2/3 - you lush!) of the glass with ivory icing. This is your "champagne":

While the icing is still wet, drop a few "champagne bubbles" (ie. sugar pearls) into the wet icing and let it set together:

Flood the upper remaining void with pink icing (or if you chose a different color base, use the same color to have that see - through- the glass effect:

Here I would like to insert a comment - notice that when you flood colors next to each other before one of them has dried, you get that seamless effect as the icings somewhat meld together.  If I had waited an hour before I flooded the upper half pink icing, it would look like 2 different segments of icing, like this:

Note the green awning of the stroller - by icing in alternation and waiting between sections, you can sectionalize your icing for more texture

Nothing wrong with either way. Just something to be mindful of if you're into the anal details like me. Oh, and be wary of melding together light and dark colors (for example, a white and a red) - your colors could potentially bleed into one another.

Ok- back to champagne!

While the pink icing is still wet, drop a few non-pareils for "fizz" - I dropped them on both the pink and the ivory sections as the ivory sections were still wet enough for the sprinkles to stick:

Almost done...

Add a satin bow at the base of the glass, top of the stem.  Your white icing is probably still wet.  (I only worked with 6 cookies at a time so most of my colors were still wet. If you're working with more, I'd work them in smaller batches at a time and then rotate though).

Finally, I just added a dot border with the pink icing along the 1/4" borders we left empty. In hindsight, you could have done this at any point BUT I'm a little clumsy so I left it to the end. I'm pretty sure I would have touched a dot before it dried and smushed it while doing the other details.  Know thyself.

And the final product:

Especially in pink, these could be cute for a bridal shower or bachelorette party even.

Cheers to 2012!