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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Stencil Technique - by Lisa

The holiday weekend completely threw me off, and I'm also in the final week of rehearsals for my play. Sorry for the late post!

My brother passed away this summer, and at his memorial service we had a sweets table in the reception room. My sisters and I all got together and baked up a storm. I decided to make frosted sugar cookies with his monogram on them.

I made a simple sugar cookie with white royal icing. Originally I was going to pipe on his initials, but then I realized there was no way I could do it neatly and consistently for all the cookies. So I started looking for new ideas and came up with the plan to make a stencil.

I also recently became the owner of a Silhouette Cameo. It is a machine that cuts out any shape you want on a variety of materials. I had some issues with finding the right material to cut (yeah, stencil paper is way to thick for this machine), and finally figured out a suitable solution. The next hurdle was figuring out what medium to use. Royal icing? Spray icing? Gel food writer from a tube? Finally after some trial and error, I settled on food coloring pens which worked out beautifully!


Summer came out for the service, and she was a huge help in stenciling in the cookies. We were both quite pleased with the final result!


In the future, I will try and find some more lightweight material for the stencil. I've heard the dividers in notebooks work really well. It needs to be a firm material, and something that can be periodically wiped clean without falling apart. (My temporary solution was heavy card stock with freezer paper adhered to it.)

I look forward to trying this technique again (and under cheerier circumstances) with other cookies that would require a precise design such as a logo or something similar!

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