I recently shipped a set of cookies to a friend back home, Katie, that I grew up with. Her daughter, Izzy, just turned 10-years-old, and Katie wanted two dozen cookies for Izzy to share with her friends at her bunking party (or slumber party for those of you who didn’t grow up in Arkansas!). There wasn’t a particular theme for the party, but Katie told me that she loves playing softball and the color turquoise. Oh, and she’s not a fan of pink! Me neither, Izzy. Me neither.
To design this set, I started with the color palette. I knew I wanted to do two shades of turquoise, a light and a dark, and I needed to incorporate yellow for the softballs. I often will use Adobe Color CC for finding nice complementary colors, but in this case, I quite simply googled “turquoise and yellow color palette.” One of the first images returned struck my eye — it matched the two colors with a pretty apricot shade. The seams of a softball are typically red, but I could easily substitute that apricot color since it’s still such a good contrast.
My decision was made!
Next I needed to determine how many designs to include and of what. I typically create six different designs for each set, and this one was no different. Softballs were an easy choice, and it just made sense to include a bat. I knew I wanted to create a cookie with her age on them as well, and to tie in the sporty theme, I chose a varsity style font similar to what you might see on a jersey. I rounded out the set with her first initial, her name and “Happy Birthday” on a plaque shaped cookie.
The colors in this set are so vibrant, and I absolutely love how they turned out! This may be one of my new favorite color palettes.
The recipes I used, both for the cookies and the icing, were from some fantastic other cookiers that I’ve learned so much from. I’ve had a ton of success with all of the recipes below, so if you are new to sugar cookie baking and decorating, I highly recommend you try them. Also, just check out their blogs in their entirety. They will get you off to a great start!
Recipes:
- Sweet Sugarbelle’s Royal Icing Recipe
- Bearfoot Baker’s Sugar Cookie Recipe (I modify this to have an almond rather than vanilla flavor)
- LilaLoa’s Chocolate Rollout Cookie Recipe
As always, if you have questions about something that I didn’t cover in the video above, please leave a comment below. Happy baking!
