I had a bunch of cookies to decorate for wedding favors, and I was looking for a way to do them quickly and without having to pipe as much (since that kills my hands.)
Using candy clay is a good way to do this, and it tastes good, too.
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I’d seen this technique for decorating cookies a few places before, using modeling chocolate or fondant instead of royal icing, but I hadn’t tried it.
I decided that these dark blue dress cookies would be a good time to give it a shot, since I didn’t like the thought of the flavor of dark blue royal icing.
Since it’s generally not a good idea to try a technique for the first time when you have a paid order, I did a round cookie first as a test run.
It worked so well I’ll never go back to royal icing again! (For an article talking about royal icing on cookies, click here.)
I cut out the circle of modelling chocolate using the same cutter that I used to cut the cookies.
I brushed corn syrup on the back of the chocolate circle to help it adhere to the cookies.
You can brush it directly onto the warm cookies, but I decided to do it this way so that everything would be ready to go when they came out of the oven.
For another article showing how to do layers of color on cookies using this method, click here.
When the cookies came out, some of them were wonky and had developed bubbles on the surface, so I turned one over to use the flat back as the top.
(That’s a good thing to do anyway, you’ll always have a nice flat surface to decorate that way.)
I put the chocolate disc on top of the hot cookie, and it melted right into it.
When it cooled off it had adhered to the surface of the cookie and wasn’t going anywhere.
Remind me why I ever used royal icing again?? This is so much easier on the hands.
For an article about rolling out cookie dough so that your cookies bake flatter, click here.
So since that worked, I cut out the dress shapes, brushed them with the corn syrup and then applied them to the dress cookies when they were done baking.
I ended up piping them with more chocolate decorations later.
A couple of things to remember is that the chocolate will melt and then reharden, so don’t touch the piece once you apply it to the cookie until it’s cooled off some.
You’ll leave marks where you touched it if it hasn’t hardened up enough.
Also, it seemed to be harder once it cooled off than it was when I started, so if you want to imprint any patterns on it, either do it before you put the chocolate on the cookie, or don’t wait until it sets up completely to press the pattern into it.
People also do this technique with fondant, so if you prefer that to the modeling chocolate you can use that instead.
