There’s something about decorating food that’s just great fun. I have hosted many cookie decorating and cupcake decorating parties for my kids! Heck, back when I was in college, we used to have make your own pizza parties where people brough toppings and we all made French Bread pizzas. Perhaps slightly less artistic but equally tasty and enjoyable. My kids are older now, of course, but I had a sense that my youngest, who just turned 17, wasn’t too old to enjoy a cookie painting and decorating activity, so when bakers Sam & Nancy from Color My Cookie asked if they could send along one of their signature decorating kits, I said “you bet!”
They sent Trucks & Tractors, as you can see. A kit is comprised of six thick iced shortbread cookies to decorate, a cookie paint palette with edible watercolors, two types of sprinkles, a little bag of icing, paintbrushes and even tiny little cups, all in a festive box:
Going from everything neatly wrapped for shipping to ready to paint and decorate took maybe two minutes or so. Here’s how that looked with the sprinkles in their little cups, an ounce or two of water in one of our glass ramekin, and the very tip of the icing bag cut with a pair of scissors. Well, with three of our six cookies ready to decorate, at least:
The company has a series of how-to videos where they demonstrate the basics of how to decorate, which I found quite useful. If you’re curious, here’s their Trucks & Tractors decorating video for your viewing pleasure. Key is that you need to dip the brush in water and then gently go back and forth across a color dot on the palette to use it as a paint, and that if you get the icing on the cookies wet (either with paint or just plain water) the sprinkles will stick. Or, of course, you can use the icing and then put sprinkles on that before it dries.
In fact, pretty darn easy. And so we began our artistic endeavors with my daughter K- painting her dump truck:
Interestingly, I gravitated towards the orange and yellow colors while she was a big fan of the blue and green. They go on unevenly, as you can see above, but that’s part of the charm of these home-made cookie decorations.
Here’s my contribution, my orange tractor:
You can see that I used the icing to fill in the front wheel (a tiny bit messy!) and add spokes to the rear wheel and used sprinkles to fill in the driver’s window. Fun, easy, and relaxing.
The paint palette ends up looking pretty cool after a bit of use too, and remember, it’s a cookie too, so it’s edible when you’re done:
It was a great stress relief for us and my daughter had a really fun time painting her dumptruck and traffic cone. You can see, she’s pretty delighted with the process and project both:
Finally, the end result, I think we did pretty darn well with our decorating efforts!
K- was the one to have the inspiration to use the icing to add the driver to the dump truck, by the way. Props to her! I think my orange and yellow traffic cone looks better, but her dump truck beats out my tractor. Of course, none of that really matters because we had a fun time sitting in the kitchen, decorating our cookies and chatting before we took these photos and gave ’em the big chomp. I am happy to report that they are delicious shortbread cookies!
My only caveat is that these cookie decorating kits are fairly spendy so are best for a very special occasion or a surprise from the grandparents that comes in the mail one afternoon: This Trucks & Tractors kit is $35 direct from Sam & Nancy’s Dallas bakery, though that does include shipping costs. Their kits include You’re a Gem, Flower Power, Superhero Comic Book, Happy Birthday, Let It Snow, some special Valentine’s Day kits and some mini-kits that are at a lower price. Fun, entertaining, darn tasty and a great surprise gift, particularly from someone far away who can’t be present for a party or just to remind the kids (or your special someone) that you are thinking of them.
Learn more about the bakery, their kits and the chefs behind the business at ColorMyCookie.com
Disclosure: Color My Cookie sent us the Trucks & Tractors cookie decorating kit free in return for my write up and review. Thanks, they’re delish! 🙂