Butterfly Cookies

I made these butterfly cookies for the Seminary bake sale last November. The colors aren't my favorite, but the pinks, purples, and sprinkles turned out to be very popular with little girls.

To get the flat, smooth surface on a cookie like this you have to flood the cookie. To flood a cookie, you first outline it with royal icing, as I did with the pink icing.

Then, you thin out the icing you want to fill the cookie with. I used a light purple icing for this cookie. If you use the same color as your outlined icing, the outlining won't be very obvious. I wanted it to stand out with this particular design.

To make sure you have the right consistency for your flood icing, run a spatula through it and count how many seconds it takes for it to smooth out. If it takes more than 10, add a couple drops of water & try again. If it takes less than 5, add more powdered sugar.

When piping in the flood icing, use your piping tip or a tooth pick to spread the icing. It should even out and dry flat when you are done. Also, look for air bubbles and pop them with a tooth pick. The icing will fill in those spaces if you do this before it dries. If you wait, it will leave holes.

If you want to add dots or other designs to the flat icing, use another color of flooding consistency icing and pipe in those designs after the original color has had a few seconds to set.

Anything you pipe onto the flood icing before it while it is wet will dry flat.

For the butterflies, i used a toothpick to make the design on the wings.

Let the cookies dry about 24 hours before you package them or stack them (I've ignored this and put them in plastic bags after they felt dry, but my colors bled into each other and it wasn't pretty.)