Monday Munchies: Learning to Decorate Cookies with En Ocasiones Veo Cupcakes!

Hello everyone! Long time no see! I think that it's been a month or so since I last updated the blog, with my trip to India and also with a week to trip to get back into the routine of work and the likes...

Getting back to work and getting used to be away from the boyfriend, again, is always a bit of tough work, so I was really looking forward to attend a workshop on decorated cookies with the same awesome lady from En Ocasiones Veo Cupcakes: Gloria! I landed on Monday, went back to work on Tuesday and attended the workshop on Wednesday!

It really was exactly what I needed! Gloria is not only a great instructor/teacher but she also is a lot of fun! The theme for the decorating workshop was First Communion, since over here in Spain it's the start of the season for it, and we'd learn about recipes for the cookies, the royal icing used to decorate them, how to use  fondant and textures for decorating them.

We started the morning with a cup of coffee and some cookies that Gloria brought so we could try the taste of them and see how we liked the recipe and texture. And they were so very tasty!

Then it was time to start with the decorating itself, so we all got one boy, one girl, one cup, one heart and one cross, and get our hands busy!

We started with fondant decorations for the boy and girl. First we decided how we wanted to dress them, and as expected for lil atheist me, I went on a different route, and decided to decorate a princess and a San Fermin bull runner! We started learning what to use to get the fondant or sugarpaste to stick to the cookie, and then we made the faces for our cookies. We also made the dress for the girl with textures and used some edible paint to get the texture to stand out more.

Then we continued to work on their faces, with modelling tools and also adding some blush to their faces with dust colours. My lil runner seems to a) have been running a lot or b) overdid it with the booze to fortify himself for the running with the bulls! I coloured fondant red for the sash and the hankie round his neck, to look like a proper "San Ferminero"! After adding the white shoes, he just lacked hair!

For the lil princess, I managed to get the blush right so she didn't look like she was tipsy and worked on her arms and added matching shoes and a garland of flowers to her neck, which were a lil difficult to get in place. So now my lil girl was only missing her royal icing hair.

But before working on that, I had to get the hang of using royal icing for doing the borders on the cookies, and then use the less thick royal icing to fill in the cookie and do some inlaid decorations. It took me a while to get the hang of the pressure to do a decent line and of course, it needs more practice, but I finally managed to do something decent. This heart got some fondant doves added to it and I'll give it to one of my besties that will be getting married this year (I think!).

Once I was feeling more confident with the royal icing lines I worked on my two lil ones, giving the runner straight hair and the princess curly hair. I really liked doing the curly hair, so I think I'll give curly hair to all my upcoming cookies! Just added a lil matching flower to top her hair right!

And here are all my finished cookies! I used marbling technique with the royal icing to give a lil nice something to the cup and cross. And you can also see the doves I added to the heart cookie, made with a silicon mold.

And finally, we managed to take a pic of Gloria and me together that we totally missed on the cupcakes workshop! (I stole this one from Gloria's blog, but I think she won't mind!) 

Now, I'm gonna leave you cause I need to finish unpacking my suitcase (I know, it's already been a week...) and to start planning the cupcakes for St Patrick's Day! I know, I know, I'm way too enthusiastic about St Patrick's day for a Spaniard, but I can't help it, I love anything Irish and it's a great excuse to try new cupcake recipes!