iPhone App Cookies
I thought of making an iPhone cake for Jak’s birthday, then I realised it was probably a little out of my league and I didn’t want to mess up his birthday cake (maybe next year), so my alternative was to make some iPhone app sugar cookies.
I used a sugar cookie recipe from the first Hummingbird Bakery cookbook which was simple to follow and is supposed to produce 18 – 20 cookies. I ended up with about 35 because I rolled the dough out quite thin, plus I wanted extras in case I made any mistakes. I don’t own a square cookie cutter and I couldn’t find any inexpensive ones either, so I ended up taking an old circular cutter and bending it into a square shape, with rounded edges. This was probably more effective than a square cutter as it gave the rounded edges which the apps have.
The cookies are covered in Wilton buttercream,which uses Trex, i.e. vegetable fat, it’s supposed to be healthier but it’s not the nicest ingredient to work with because it makes washing up a pain! The original batch of buttercream is white, so for each colour, I took small amounts and added colouring paste/food colouring to it. I prefer colouring paste because it doesn’t water down the buttercream mixture and it keeps the consistency right. I used to food colouring when I couldn’t get dark enough colours (especially for the dark blue/red) with just the colouring paste. I thought about perhaps mixing in a little black colouring paste (if I had any) might have helped, but not so sure how well this will work until I try it out.
- Light blue buttercream – Sky Blue colouring paste
- Dark blue buttercream – A combination of Sky Blue colouring paste and normal blue food colouring
- Green buttercream – Leaf Green colouring paste
- Orange buttercream – Orange colouring paste
- Red buttercream – A combination of Red colouring paste and normal red food colouring
- Yellow buttercream – Yellow food colouring
I began by covering the cookies in the colour of the app’s background, then letting them set in the fridge before I added more buttercream. I found it useful because when I traced in the pictures with a sharp knife, the buttercream didn’t pull away with the knife. With the majority of the cookies, I piped the outline before I filled it with a larger nozzle. The white writing on top of the calendar looks good in the pictures… what you didn’t see were the ‘after’ pictures, when a few hours later, the red from the background had seeped into the white buttercream. I ended up piping the word again before I took them over to Jak’s but the red seeped through again pretty fast! If I had used fondant, this probably wouldn’t have happened.
I suppose the cookies would have looked more polished if I used fondant, but I thought it might taste too sweet and sickly, so decided to use buttercream instead. The only exception is the ’20’ on the calendar which is made from fondant because I didn’t have any black colouring paste. I thought about using modelling chocolate as it would taste nicer but after the problems I had with it falling apart when I made the birthday cake, I decided against it.
I made some additional cookies that weren’t iPhone apps – the letters were carved out with a knife (no alphabet cutters) and I used the same star cutter as I used on the birthday cake. I didn’t end up using all the cookies I made, mostly because I didn’t have enough boxes to transport/keep them in – you can’t stack them on top of each other because the buttercream doesn’t dry out completely.
I think they were a success.. at least everyone knew what they were, so I know they looked close enough to the original apps!
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