Paintbrush Cookies Redux Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

Do you paint cookies before or after baking? ›

Paint the unbaked cookies before baking using a small paintbrush. For more fun, press cookie dough through a garlic press to make "hair" for gingerbread figures. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Bake for 9 to 10 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned.

So, it's not only a good paint for watercolor paper but also dirt cheap. I only used one drop of food coloring color per color. You can mix colors too. The blue and yellow made a wonderful bright green.

The secret to colouring cookie dough easily is to mix the food colouring with the eggs, just before adding these over the creamed butter and sugar. This way, there is 0% risk of overmixing your dough and you will always get delicious and tender cookies with vibrant colours!

Use any shortbread cookie recipe (see ours below) so that the embossing doesn't bake out of the finished cookies. Then, grab a few paint brushes and (of course) some sprinkles, and have at it!

You can bake fully dried acrylic paint in the oven safely. You will achieve so called Baked finish, which is the effect of baking acrylic paint at temperatures higher than 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just dilute your gel food coloring with a little water or vodka, and paint onto your rice floured loaf.

You will need a surface to paint on; you cannot paint directly onto the cookie. Once you make your cookies (I definitely recommend my Perfect Sugar Cookie Cut Out recipe), use Royal icing to flood the cookie. I like to keep the icing pure white so that all of my colors stand out.

Chocolate chip cookies are done when they have a firm golden edge or bottom and appear slightly set on top. If the edges become dark brown, they are overbaked. If edges aren't golden and tops are soft and shiny, bake a little longer.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

When you think cookies, you likely think of sweet ingredients, but salt is essential. It balances the flavor of caramelized sugars. We even love sprinkling a little extra flake salt on our cookies to awaken the tongue and complement the sweetness.

How do you use food coloring pens on cookies? ›

Refrigerate the fondant, icing, or frostings to have a very dry solid surface before the edible pen touches the surface. The edible markers are great for Christmas cookies. The flat surface of classic gingerbread cookies and the hard royal icing make it the most favorable surface for the edible oink pens and markers.

It's best to stick to gel/oil based colours, and avoid any water based colours. Generally, they are too weak and can ruin a bake! If you have any questions leave them below!

All you need is to flood a cookie with icing, preferably a dark color. Let it fully set overnight. Then, use a mini-projector or any other method you like to get an image on the surface. Keep in mind that the final drawing will be made by hurting the surface of the icing with the tip of the scribe tool.