Fixing Mistakes

I had some extra icing and dough from the birthday ladybug cookies that I didn't want to go to waste, so, along with a batch of black, red, and white butterflies, I took the opportunity to try out a little apple cookie cutter I'd not used yet.

One thing I learned pretty quickly when I picked up this new hobby is that mistakes are inevitable with a medium as fragile as sugar. Often these mistakes just get eaten by Andrew, one of our friends, or myself, but sometimes a messed up cookie can be salvaged.

A common problem I have is when flood icing leaks off the edge of a cookie. This happened with one of the apples.

To fix the mistake, I first waited until the icing had hardened for a few hours. Then, I pulled the cookie off of the baking sheet.

I gently rubbed off the icing to the edge of the cookie with my clean fingers.

Because I had added the white stripe to the cookie before it leaked, I had to cover up part of the stripe with red icing. I piped on just a tiny bit and worked it into the right place with a clean paint brush.

After allowing the new icing to dry for a few minutes, I piped on a new white stripe.

It's still obvious that one cookie is messed up, but not as obvious as before. After it dried completely, it looked even better.

I never actually finished the apple cookies; I just didn't want to make a tiny bit of green icing for only three sets of stems and leaves. Maybe in the fall I'll make a whole batch of red, green, and yellow apples!