My parents, bless them, bought me a Cricut Cake (without checking that I even wanted one... I did, but how nice of them!!).

I've played with it a few times but not used it for an order, or even for actually decorating a cake, until today. I had an order for 100 cross cookies, with a flower and a monogram letter, so I thought it would be my chance to see what the Cricut could do.

I cut everything without too much drama (thanks so much to everyone who's contributed to the many threads, I'm sure it saved me many headaches!) But when I went to attach the flower to the cookie with royal icing - which normally grabs like No More Nails - it wouldn't stick at all. Obviously the shortening was the problem. I also needed to stick the letter to the flower, which also failed. In the end I rolled and cut the flowers by hand and piped the letter.

I'm feeling quite dismayed, since this is what I really thought the Cricut would be great for. Can I really only stick cut-outs with shortening like it says in the instruction? If so, that's not gonna work for me because I do a fair amount of cookies which need to be robust enough for packaging.

Any thoughts or experiences to share? Thanks (Sorry so loooong!)

I haven't got my Cricut yet....but if it is the shortening which may be keeping the RI from sticking, did you reverse the cutout to try to attach the side without the shortening? Don't know if that would even help.

Thanks for your suggestion. Flipping the piece might have worked, except that I then needed to attach a letter to each flower, so that part would still have failed, since the shortening side would then have been up.

I'm still hoping that someone else will see this and have some suggestions - there must be another way of attaching pieces rather than just using shortening...? I suppose BC would work, but wouldn't give that extra-firm hold you get with royal icing.

I'm wondering now about spritzing the Cricut mat with water to attach the fondant, rather than shortening. I'm pretty sure it will stick well, just wondering about being able to get the pieces off afterwards. I think I'll give it a try - nothing to lose...

More input still welcome! Please?!!