This Week's Cookie Is Brought To You By...

Sesame Street used to have the number and the letter of the day, do you remember that? Well, in that spirit, today's post is brought to you by the number 5. Our favorite red-headed grandson's birthday was yesterday, his 5th! Gregory requested cookies for his class party from Nana; "anything you want to do" my daughter-in-law told me, "you decide". I thought for a while and consulted some cookie blogs before settling on a Number 5 theme.  These cookies allowed me the opportunity to try something new: royal icing transfers. I baked 3.5" plain, round, cookies and prepared waxed paper on the countertop with sheets of paper printed with a series of #5s underneath to receive the transfers-to-be. I piped the colored icing directly onto the waxed paper and let the numbers dry for twenty-four hours. You'd better believe that I prayed for a smooth release of those numbers!
Learning my lesson from the week before, I  s-l-o-w-l-y paddled the color into the icing and let it sit for a few hours before piping the shapes to eliminate any surface bubbles. It worked! Progress!! The prayers worked too, I was able to lift the 5's off of the paper smoothly and cleanly with just one break... I had made plenty of them to allow for breakage.

I flooded the cookies with white icing and dropped a #5 onto the surface of each iced cookie while they were still wet, one at a time, and gently pushed the number down for this dimensional effect. these cookies sat, untouched, for another twenty-four hours before being wrapped and stacked for the birthday boy and his class. I believe they were a big hit. They were grandson approved, and that's all that mattered to me. His smile is all the affirmation I need.

Life is Good!