I have an order due Friday for 1 dozen campfire cookies and 1 dozen beer mugs. I used Toba's glace for the first time which I really do like, but I wasn't used to it and made it too thin so, 1.) it ran off the cookies which makes it look sloppy, 2.) in the outlines it's like there were bubbles but not really bubbles, it just caved in along the whole stream of icing, if that makes sense and 3.) since this is the first time I've made these shapes they just don't look as "professional" as I would like them too. They are for my Aunt's co-worker and I was going to charge her $1 per cookie which is what I'm doing for everybody before I'm officially open for business, on the down low of course.

So my options are start over which would really kill me this week, there is just no more time to fit in a whole cookie making/baking/decorating day or even a few hours for that matter. Or I could just offer to give them to her for free and apologize for them not being as amazing as they should be, and keep my fingers crossed that she would give me a little money for supplies and time.

I mean, at their worst they are still better than any frosted cut-out cookie you can get in my town. However I don't want to give them to her and not say anything and then before I even open have people talking about how my cookies aren't really that good, KWIM?

What would you all do? I'm leaning toward just giving them to her but it kills me that I spent that much time on them.

First of all....breathe! It sounds as if you are getting a bit panicked and maybe just doubting yourself. There's no reason to rush to refund promised money or give things away for free. Let's see what you can do!

(Bear with me here, I'm not familiar with Toba's glaze recipe...but there must be some universal cookie-saving techniques around, right? )

Okay, now are you sure you couldn't devote just one hour for the next 4 days to re-making them? It's only Monday today and there's only 24 on order...no?

If not, is the icing soft enough that you could scrape it off? If you could do that, it might still be possible to use fondant instead....to repair these without having to re-bake them? That's an instant-drying option. No need to waste a day drying them, wouldn't that help?

Could you just fill in the holes with extra glaze to patch them up? Can anything that spilled over the edges just be repaired by carefully trimming it with a paring knife?

Just as an aside to let you know that we are all human, I once did an entire wedding order of Chinese symbol cookies with the symbol BACKWARDS! I had stencilled them on the cookies with food colouring paste and thought I was utterly screwed. I had my freak out, calmed down, got out a clean J-cloth and used it to "erase" what I had stencilled. I re-did them, thinking they looked awful....but nobody was the wiser in the end.

OMG, backward Chinese symbol, YIKES! OK, so maybe mine are all THAT bad, lol. I do remember another baker here who made Super Mario face cookies (sorry, I don't remember who) and the black bled and the customer could have cared less.

And the thing is, is that these people are going camping for the weekend and if they're ordering beer and campfires, I'm assuming they're more of the fun crowd, especially if they're friends with my Aunt, so anyway, they may not mind as much as I'm making it out to be. I just hate that I tried a new frosting with new shapes for an order before I was really comfortable with it. Now if I would have used your RI which I had a half batch of on the counter (grrrrr) there would be no problem. I wonder if at least for the bubbly lines, if I could thin out some RI and just pipe it over the bad lines and hope for the best? As the glace was dripping off of the cookies I did try to scoop it off with a toothpick the best I could and rub the rest off with my finger.

As for remaking them, it could be done, but I hand cut all of them since I didn't have those shapes and I think I'm more mentally talking myself out of starting over, plus my 2 & 3 year old boys just make it sooooo hard to get cookies done. Whine whine whine.........I know, lol.

Thanks for the advice, I may just see how they look tomorrow on a fresh day and maybe I'll try to take pictures to post. I love all of your ideas and really appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Oh, I forgot to add that I have never made/used fondant and it's not something I want to learn on deadline, like my using a new frosting for the first time for an order, what was I thinking??

If the order is due Friday, there is still plenty of time to just RI the cookies over the glace. Use a little thicker consistency (thicker than flood) to cover the bubbles or imperfections and then decorate on top of that.

If you are getting Toba's recipe here it is the flood icing. You'll need to thicken it up for piping. I wouldn't re- cover the cookie, but pipe details over the glace with RI.

DO NOT give your cookies away. Decorated sugar cookies are expensive because you do each one by hand!

I buy these little thumbprints at the grocery store. They pipe a rose/ football/ shamrock/ etc. in the center with buttercream. You can tell they piped about a dozen a minute (or more.) They are small and they are a dollar each. I just love them. Tried to duplicate, but no luck so far. If they can charge $1 for that cookie, you can charge at least that much for yours. Drippy or not.

You have plenty of time. Try to fix these as soon as possible. But first, have someone else look at them. We are our own worst critics! If that person passes out at their sheer horridness, then you can re-do them. If that person remains conscious, your cookies are fine. You'll be fine. Take the money.

I will post some pictures later today for you to get a visual.

Also, I think I have it in my head that I can't redo them by Friday because my usual method is, one day mix them up and refridgerate overnight, next day roll/cut out and freeze overnight, next day bake and let cool, next day make icing and decorate. I do this because I can't usually do more than an hour at a time before my boys go ballistic. I could condence the first three steps into one day but it's always the icing that gets me. Maybe if I look at them fresh today they won't be as bad as yesterday becuase I was stressing myself out something terrible.

Thank you for your opinions, I really appreciate it!

I've scraped off bad icing before in order to re-do. It works fine and takes out a whole job you don't have to do again (that's if they really are that bad).

Are there no "edit" buttons for our posts anymore? I couldn't find one for my original post. Anyway, I couldn't add the photos as an attachment so i just put them in "my photos." They look much worse in real life, I swear!

Heidi -

I just looked at your photos......don't you even DARE do them over or accept less payment or give them away for free. THEY ARE AWESOME! The few places where the frosting dripped over the edge will simply be a more yummy bite for someone because they'll get double the frosting!!!

DO NOT STRESS OVER THESE!!! THEY'RE WONDERFUL!!!!!!

OMGOSH!! Those are so cute! I agree with bakinccc, don't even fret over it. Those little piggies are the cutest! People won't even notice the tiniest of mistakes, they'll only notice how cute they are and how great they taste! Do not re-do them! TAKE THE MONEY!

HoneyDukes, the piggies were for something else. It was the pictures of the campfire ones and the picture with only the beer mugs in it. Those are what's due on friday. Sorry I didn't specify when I re-posted, my bad. I liked the piggies. They were the BBQ part of the party my mother in law had. Of course I would do it different next time, but they were ok. The campfires on the other hand, ugh.

Those are cute, too. I love how you used nonpareils for the foam/bubbles. And your flames look good -- they're hard to do.

Both the beer mugs and the campfires are adorable!!!! I, personally, didn't notice any imperfections -- I know you had mentioned that some of the icing dripped over the sides.

Just tell yourself that you were trying to make them more authentic, because beer spills and fires spread, right?!

I think we're our own worst critic, but don't stress! Your cookies look great, and for $1 each, they are getting a great deal!

Thanks you guys! You really can't see the messed up frosting in the pictures though, especially the grey piping along the mugs, but I guess after looking at them today, they're really not so bad. I just like all of my cookies to be "perfect" and I feel like these aren't. They are good, but not perfect. I really think I overreacted yesterday but I was just in a panic that I wasn't going to be able to make more if I needed to. Today I mixed up a batch just in case though but I probably will do other shapes with those. Maybe flowers or shamrocks or something springy. Thanks again, you all made me feel much better.

Heidi,

They came out really cute! I promise you no one will notice! Like someone else posted, we are our own worst critics.
Those campfires are really cute, and they will be eaten up long before anyone notices any little inperfections LOL!!!

You definitely DO NOT need to redo these! I had to double check to make sure I wasn't looking at the redone batch!

You say they look worse in person than in the pic. Well, they look worse to YOU than they do to the average cookie customer by the same proportion. People who don't do this as a hobby or a business never see the little imperfections. Even what you may perceive as a big imperfection is nothing to the average customer considering what they're used to seeing at the grocery stores!

As for the 'cratering'... that's caused by too much air in the icing. The air dissipates as the icing dries, leaving those indentations.

P.S. Your cookies are absolutely adorable. But, am I the only one who sees what appears to be the design stage of some sort of adult novelty toy in the campfire logs?????

Oh Diane, you're too funny! Hhmmm, naughty designs, maybe something in my subconscious leaked through? Sorry, I have no idea how to spell that word, lol. But, I am going to look again and see if I can see what you see!

Also, for the cratering, it only happened when I did the thin likes, not the flooding. Wierd, and it was all the same batch.

Oh my goodness, I was expecting terrible cookies and these are SO cute! You are your own worse critic, honestly. I'd buy these from you, no problem!! Adorable.

I can't see where they flopped at all. You haven't seen bad RI until you've seen my cookies! LOL! I died and went to heaven when I started using fondant on my cookies. I just can't pipe RI on a cookie for anything. Your cookies look great!