February Cookie Countess Cutter Club

Welcome to the February Cutter Club subscription box! If it is your first month - welcome! If it's your second or third or fourth - welcome back!! 

Without a holiday driving this month’s theme, I thought it was the perfect chance for a movie night! I mean, who doesn’t love a movie night, right? With the Oscars coming up, and 6 weeks of winter ahead (according to Punxsutawney Phil), these cookies will be the perfect addition to a cozy night in, watching something new or an old favorite. 

I also liked the cookie cutters for the set, for their flexibility. Sure they may look simple - but that’s what will make them useful for other themes. Here are some ideas… the marquee can be a useful plaque with the opportunity to add an embellishment on the top. The ticket can also be a very flexible alternative to a rectangle. The fountain soda can turn into an iced latte, or glass of lemonade. The popcorn bucket could be potted flowers for spring, or a sand bucket for summer. And the 3D glasses can easily be sunglasses. 

This theme would also be great for a child’s birthday party, or birthday gift for a movie loving adult. You could write the person’s name on the marquee and their age on the popcorn bucket or ticket. Or write happy birthday on the marquee - lots of options! 

Be sure to check out the downloads available below for the cookie cutters graphics. You can use these for your projector if you have one, or as transfers or to trace. 

I hope you have fun creating this set of cookies! I would love to see pics of what make! You can add a pic and a review on the cutter club product page. 

And thanks for being a part of the Cutter Club! 

I made a piping consistency and flood consistency for the red, whiite, and blue. For the gray, black and yellow I did a single 15 second consistency. If you are comfortable cutting and piping/flooding with tipless bags, go for it! If you prefer tips I would recommend a #1 or #1.5 tip for details and outlines, and a #2 or 2.5 for flooding.

Below you will find step by step instructions for our first 4 cookies. Followed by a videos for the 5th.  This is of course only if you want to replicate these cookies exactly. Feel free to have fun! Use different colors, or different techniques. Let your creativity shine if you want! 

* I used our Star sprinkle stencil to make these stars ahead of time. I then painted them gold once I added them to the cookie. Alternatively you can paint them gold before you scrape them off the parchment, or whatever surface you use to make the stars. See our full sprinkle stencil tutorial here. I used the water activated edible paint from Sweet Sticks, and have linked that in the products below. You can of course, also pipe the stars directly to the cookie. 

For this month’s tutorial I am doing the popcorn bucket. A trip to the movies just isn’t complete without popcorn - right? This is a fun and relatively simple design. The “popcorn” part on the bucket can be made ahead via a royal icing transfer, or you can pipe it directly to the cookie. The popcorn itself is easy to do, it just takes a little patience in that you will need to 3-4 rounds of piping the dots. 

This set has bold colors next to white - which some people would avoid for fear of color bleeding. But there are ways to avoid this. Mind you - nothing is foolproof. But I followed these tips on my cookies, and did not experience any bleeding. 

1) Allow your highly pigmented colors to time develop, instead of using too much gel color. For example, when making red icing - add enough gel color to get you about 80% to where you want to be, and then let your icing sit for a few hours. It may be good to go at that point, or it may need a little more gel. You will have to the best judge of this. But the less gel color you have to use, the better. 

2) Your white icing should have white gel color in it. It should not be just “white” the way it comes out of the mixer. Adding the white gel will make it a more equivalent icing consistency to any colored icing it sits next to. 

3) And this is the most important in my opinion… When putting highly pigmented and contrasting icing colors next to each other, don’t allow those colors to fully dry. For example on the popcorn cookie, don’t do the white stripes one day and the red stripes the next day. The dry white icing would pull moisture from the red, causing some color bleed. You’ll want to let the white icing just crust a bit, and then add the red. Same goes for the 3D glasses and the fountain soda. Different icing recipes or humidity conditions, etc can always come into play. But following these tips will reduce the risk of any color bleed.

Once again, thank you so much for being part of our Cutter Club! I hope you have as much fun making these Movie Night cookies as I did! I will link all the products I used in this set below, in case you find you need to do some shopping.  

This month's coupon is 20% off stencils! 

 If you have any questions or comments you can feel free to leave them below. I would love to hear what you think of this month's box! 

xo Hillary