I had a bride approach me for gold brush embroidery cookies. Now, I love brush embroidery and in gold it will be even more special but the cost of one of those tiny gold highlighters which I use with vodka and piping gel is $10US. That one pot will probably safely cover 2 to 3 cookies maximum with all the gold piping. I use the gold piping recipe from CC most saved recipes and the yield is next to nothing I find. Any other suggestions on how to make gold piping?

Do you ever tell a bride it is not worth it or go on and still quote that high price that you know might just seem ridiculous. In the end her one round cookie with gold piping is probably going to retail for $15 - $20US to be worth my time to do all that work and incur the cost of all those pots of gold and she is in need of hundreds of cookies.

What do you all think? Her cookies might cost more than her cake in the end!

I would explain it to her and let her make the choice. She knows her budget and wants best. Tell her about the costs, then tell her that's before labor and overhead. Give her the total cost per cookie, and total cost for all of them. If you can think of something similar, tell her and price it out for her, too. Then let her decide.

I'm not familiar with the gold highlighters and piping gel - but I would do the piping in RI and then paint it with gold lustre dust mixed with vodka/clear vanilla.

It takes very little "paint" for each cookie that way....

Hey thanks yall. I must give the RI a try and paint over. That would be most cost effective.
 

On a side note, gold highlighter is NOT edible.  It is for decoration, only.

The gold offered by sugarpaste.com (Crystal Colors Crystallized Pearl Colors) is an edible, FDA approved, Kosher gold that when mixed with lemon extract or grain alcohol is just lovely:

http://www.sugarpaste.com/catalog/orderPearlColors.htm

If you buy it in bulk, it will last you 2 lifetimes.

HTH

Rae

I just looked up that recipe and I've never heard of such a thing.  That would get rediculously expensive unless you just needed a tiny bit.  Of course you would do what everyone else has suggested - paint the royal icing with a small amount of gold after it dries.  I've even seen people (Collette Peters, for one) tint her royal icing a gold color first (with food colors, not luster dust) , pipe it and then brush the metallic gold over the dried RI.