The Optical Illusion of Cookie Decorating, Easter Edition

I have pinned over 400 cookie designs to my Cookie Decorating Board on Pinterest.  Each one is a photo of a seemingly perfect cookie, dressed in straight lines and perfect curves, and not a swirl of icing out of place.  I wish that my hands were that steady, but they are not and never have been.

I have managed to perfect, what I refer to as, the Optical Illusion Decorating Technique.  

Before we get into the details of this decorating trickery, I have one additional tidbit of decorating advice to share.  I prefer to decorate my cookies in layers.

I base coat all of the cookies at once.  I come back and add the decorative elements (by color) to all of the cookies, and then the next color, and so on.  This will make more sense as you read below, but do trust that it will save time.  You quickly gain muscle memory and find that transitioning from cookie to cookie will move along more quickly.

You will also notice that I am decorating on the tray, and have the cookie rows upside down to one another.  I prefer to create an assembly line of trays, and decorate one row at a time.  Once the row is done, I flip the tray 180-degrees and repeat the decorating process.  As a tray is complete, I move it out of the way and repeat the process with the next tray.


The Optical Illusion

The tray, in the above photo, is full of white frosted bunnies.  The imperfections are glaringly obvious - the lines are not completely straight, the corners are a bit rough, and I did not flatten the edges where I lifted my decorating tip.  No worries, I promise to distract your eyes from this in the subsequent steps.

Starting with pink icing; the nose, tail, and inner ears are piped on.  I like to work my details from the inside of the cookie, coming out.  This way I will not have to worry about accidentally dragging my icing tip through any outer details.

Blue icing, only a small dot for each eye.  You are already becoming distracted by the bunny taking form, and less conscious of the imperfections.

The most impactful portion of the illusion is the outline.  The outline is the opportunity to further define the shape.  Neither the base coat nor the outline are perfect in form, but together they almost cancel one another out.  You are not drawn to the imperfect base layer, or caught by the imperfect outline.

As an additional measure of illusion, I like to add a focal point that will draw the eyes away from the areas most likely to be "rough."
 

In this case, the sugar pearl necklace pulls the eye into the center of the cookie and away from the outer edges.

My cookie plaques were the best example of my optical illusion technique at work, as my writing skills are inconsistent at best.  My writing was added to the cookies as the first step, this allowed me to adjust where the outline would fall so that my writing would appear centered.  Prior to adding the outline, I added the floral accent to the left and right sides.  This provided a break in the outline and further illusion that my plaque was centered - when it absolutely is not.

Outline and edible glitter are easy ways to add depth and dimension to your finished cookies.  I apply my base coats and let them set to a hard state.  Once hard, I dry brush edible glitter on the base as I did not want it on my outline.  Applying the outline and adding some leaf detail were the final steps that created a polished-looking carrot cookie.


The Icing

A key to mastering the Optical Illusion Decorating Technique is having a good royal icing recipe. When decorating cookies you will need two consistencies: Stiff Peak & Flow.

Stiff Peak is the stage where the icing will leave stiff peaks when the spatula is lifted from the icing.
Flow is a state where the icing is more fluid and will flow slowly, like lava, when applied.

You will use the stiff peak icing to create the outline of your base-coat, and then fill it in with flow icing.  You will add all of the decorative elements in the stiff peak consistency.