Safari Cookies and Chanelling Your Inner Artist

All 4 2When my kids were little, they used to imagine that while they were away at school all day, I lay in bed reading magazines and scarfing down bon bons. Haha! Nothing could be further from the truth. I wasn’t eating bon bons in the bedroom. I was eating cookies in the kitchen. Actually to be more accurate, I was eating my iced cookie mistakes.

Truthfully, I don’t really like eating iced cookies. I find them too sweet, but I just love creating them. They are just so freaking adorable to look at. I’m not a very good artist when it comes to the traditional medium of pencil or paint. But put a piping bag in my hand with a #2 tip and my inner Jackson Pollock is unleashed.

I made these safari animal cookies to take to a friend’s dinner party. We are planning a South African safari trip for the spring and she thought it would be fun to get the group together to kickstart our planning. I volunteered to bring a dessert.

I ordered the cookie cutters from coppergifts.com. With over 2000 cookie cutters to choose from, it really is the ultimate cookie decorators site. They ship quickly and offer inspirational decorating ideas for every cookie cutter they sell.

I baked Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Cookies as well as a batch of Sugar Cookies with Brown Sugar. Then I mixed up a batch of Royal Icing .elephantsThe super talented Suzanne of suzsdaily.com, provides a very thorough tutorial on how to create these precious baby elephants.

To create the lions manes and tail, I mixed yellow, orange and brown sprinkles. lionsI took a free style approach with the zebras, and to be honest, I think they look more like horses.zebrasThe giraffes were the most difficult to create. Once again, I used Suzanne’s step by step tutorial. The background colour of the giraffes was crafted by mixing Americolor’s warm brown and ivory into the royal icing. The colour of the spots was made by mixing icing with tulip red and warm brown. giraffesThese cookies just make everyone smile!All 4

5 thoughts on “Safari Cookies and Chanelling Your Inner Artist

  1. Susan Armstrong

    Cindy that’s utterly amazing ! That’s a pure artistic endeavour! There is virtually nothing in the culinary arena I won’t try, except that! My hat is off to you! I am off to South Africa in January and there is a terrific article in NY Times (Sunday Travel) on Cape Town and surrounding area.

    Reply
  2. Linda M.

    Wow Cindy, they must have been a hit at the party! After returning from the ‘real life’ safari, your animals look pretty close to the real ones. I love the lions!

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