A BUTTERFLY

A butterfly is so fragile and beautiful - I think it's hard to translate one into a cookie. If you research butterflies the design possibilities are endless. I have a big butterfly in my Nut Tree cookie cutter collection that I've tried in the past to make into a cookie but haven't been happy with the way it turned out. Last year I found a smaller butterfly cutter and tried again with better results.

I did a scan of the cutter

 and removed the background in Photoshop.

Then I filled the shape with gingerbread brown using the draw tools in MS Publisher. There are many more sophisticated programs you can use to do this but I've been using Publisher for so long it's easier and faster for me.

I decorated the shape using the draw and color tools thinking in terms of what I could do with frosting.

And finally I decorated the cookie. It's fun and sometimes it translates well and sometimes it doesn't. There are usually some changes to the final design.

I like to keep my cookies simple - not too much going on. If you decorate on wet icing it helps to keep the look fragile. I waited too long to make the final dots and they didn't smooth out. 

Soon I'll try Butterflies again.

- posted by Momsu