St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Cookie Tutorial - Gingham Style
Sharon from SugarEd Productions shows you how to make this lucky gingham clover cookie for Saint Patrick's Day. She shows you tricks to make this even if you don't have a clover cutter or an airbrush, you'll even make your own gingham stencil.
But I had two problems: 1) No shamrock cookie cutter and not enough time to order one, 2) Bent needle in the airbrush and not enough time to order one. What bad luck.
So I went to sleep, which is when I do my most creative thinking and problem solving. Yes, I actually come up with my best designs and ideas while in twilight sleep. Weird, huh? But I was feeling lucky, and I hoped that the little leprechaun muses were going to visit me in my slumber.
And it worked! I came up with a plan of attack to get my cute plaid shamrock cookies made. I used a heart cutter to make the three petals.
Slipped the stem into place and voila! A shamrock. (I do recommend gluing the edges that meet with some egg white or water to help them adhere better.)
Bake and cool as per normal. If you are lucky, your cookies will not come apart where the pieces are joined. But if they do, do not fear! You can glue them back together with some melted chocolate. You will not see the repair job once your cookie is iced.
Once fully cooled, outline and flood your cookie with royal icing. I outline and flood with the same
consistency icing, all at the same time, in order to achieve no visible outline. But you can surely outline
with a stiffer icing, and then flood with your thinner icing.
Let that dry 24 hours or so.
Next, I needed a stencil to airbrush the plaid lines. I did not have the kind I needed, and
not enough time to order one, so I tried my luck at making my own.
I used a pen to draw lines along food safe acetate in the width I wanted my plaid to be. I get my
acetate here, but you could try parchment paper or some other food safe paper.
After cutting the strips apart, I then taped them, equidistant apart, to card stock on each end.
Lay (lay, laid, lain, who really knows??) that atop the cookie with pen ink side up. See how I had to use
a little piece of cookie to prop up the card stock on the left hand side? You want to have the strips
laying (laying, lying, layning??) flat on the cookie top. If the card stock droops down on the two ends,
it will cause gaps between the acetate strips and the cookie, leading to the
very unlucky phenomenon known as underspray. (boo, hiss!)
I used the Wilton color in a can. Spray in light bursts over the cookie and stencil. Be sure not to blast
the cookie with heavy spray, or have the can too close. That will give you heavy splotches, pooling and
dripping of color. Just use a light spray and apply 1-2 coats as needed. Be sure the spray is
coming straight down onto the top of the stencil, at a 90 degree angle. Not from the side. Do not push
your luck. Trust me on this one. That will cause the spray to go under the strips of the stencil and you
won’t get nice clean lines of green.
Carefully lift the stencil straight off, and with any luck, you will have some nice clean green lines. Ta
dah!
Wipe off the stencil to get all the color off. After the color has dried on the cookie (10-20 minutes), put
the stencil back on with the strips going in the opposite direction.
Repeat the process, carefully lift off the stencil and………..
Were the lucky leprechauns smiling upon us?……..
Or did we push our luck too far?…….
Will luck be a lady tonight?……
Ok, I’ll stop.
Leapin’ lucky leprechauns, it worked!!
I love the beautiful simplicity.
I thought about piping a a border outline, but I thought it would detract from the cookie, so I skipped it.
If that little bit of green color on the edges of the cookie itself bothers you, you can pipe a small bead
border around the edges of the royal icing. However, that little bit of green does not bother me.
Three lucky shamrocks.
Almost too pretty to eat?
I hope you guys try your luck at making your own stencils. Send me photos if you do, and I will post
them on the blog.
Happy St. Patrick’s day everyone! I am off to make a pot of black eyes peas for luck. (OK, who am I
kidding; we all know I don’t cook. It sounded good though, didn’t it?
I absolutely love this!! Will most definitely be making these for the dessert table... however, I am inclined to use a smaller heart cutter and use four leaves instead of three..."Luck of the Irish", don't ya know!
Would also be a fun idea to have a shamrock hunt for small children over for dinner to have them find a 4-leaf shamrock cookie hidden somewhere in the house... they might win a special prize for finding it!
Thank you ever so much for the tutorial!
This is brilliant! Thanks for sharing your easy gingham techniques.
This is so great & so simple, all at the same time! I'm so glad you shared this! Thank you so much!
Many thanks for sharing this tutorial with us. God bless you.
Love this! Thanks for sharing. I always enjoys your Fun tutorials.
Thanks for sharing,but your greatest gift is your sense of humour .Awesome talent.Awesome personality
What a great idea, they are beautiful!!!
I made these for the holiday dessert table - they did turn out really cute. However, a few observations, if I may -
I ended up using a piece of a Foodsaver® storage bag as a template (one side, cut as needed), as baker's acetate sheets are extremely hard to find. It worked okay - did the job...
The food color spray is tricky to apply evenly - technique is everything here. And, (the biggest 'and' here) - make sure you lay down newspaper on your countertop to a distance of 2-3 feet, because overspray will be everywhere~
I did end up with enough nicely-decorated cookies to serve to a small group, but the ones that didn't look very good ended up staying home....which is not necessarily a bad thing.... :^)))
Will definitely make these again - for many other holidays, as well.
This is a wonderful idea!! It can be used soooo many different ways, thank you!!
You are amazing .. this is gorgeous .. I love it!!!
Thanks a lot for this..
Wow, these are just super cute! I've been looking around for some inspiration for simple shamrock cookies. St. Patty's Day used to be my family's favorite day of the year but we lost my mom on St. Patty's Day 2013 and it's going to be so very hard this year.We're having a mass said for her and I wanted to make a shamrock cookie for everyone at the mass, in honor of her. When she passed away I made pink doves for everyone and they were so touched by that. These will be perfect. I hope I don't screw them up! Thank you so, so much for posting the tutorial. Just perfect!