Hey Besties! If you’ve been here before, you know that I periodically confess to things I’m obsessed with or LOVE! Well today, I’m confessing my love for gnomes! I’ve been loving these cute little buggers for several years now and finally had the chance to make some into cookies! When I tell you I’m in LOVE with these sweet, adorable Valentine’s gnome cookies, I’m not trying to be dramatic. But how stinking cute are they?! In little Valentine’s footie jammies?! Come on. You may or may not start seeing gnome cookies for every holiday moving forward. Which is yet another reason they are great – they work for every holiday and season! Let’s jump into the details!
Recipe
First things first, I used our cinnamon sugar cookie recipe for a sweet and fun flavor. You can find the recipe HERE, which of course, is no-chill and no-spread! And for our royal icing, I used our go-to vanilla recipe, you can find HERE. I commonly stick with vanilla for my royal icing so that it lets the cookie flavor shine. The cinnamon spice and vanilla complement each other perfectly – YUM!
CUTTER & Design
For these adorable little Valentine’s gnome cookies, I used THIS cutter. There are a million gnome cutters out there, but many don’t have bodies and I knew I wanted to put these guys in jam-jams. I found this cutter to be the perfect size and shape for what I had in mind. And like I said, I plan to use this for many holiday designs moving forward.
When it comes to the design and techniques used here, they are very simple. But if you are a beginner, I also can appreciate that it takes some practice to perfect working in different sections and the wet-on-wet technique. This type of design is actually a great one to get practice at outlining, flooding and wet-on-wet! Practice truly is the best way to improve, and you will learn with every set of cookies. But you’ll see, it really is as simple as outlining and flooding by section.
Before starting to ice though, I commonly sketch out a design plan on my cookies to serve as a guide. Even when I have a cookie designed in my head, it’s common to sit down with a blank cookie and think “huh, what is this blob again?” So, make it easier on yourself and use edible markers when you can! I use THESE daily for this kind of sketching. Here is my sketched cookie!
Decorating
I use the same consistency for outlining and flooding for a seamless look. I prefer about a 12-15 second consistency for outlining and flooding sections. If you’re still new to decorating, THIS post, all about learning consistencies, is super helpful. The only time I used a thicker consistency was for the detail on the jammies, which was about a 25 second flood.
I started with the jammie section, simply outlining and flooding. For some, I left it solid color and for others, I opted to do some wet-on-wet. By adding polka dots or running your scribe through polka dots, you can add a lot of character. Just remember, that if you do want to add wet-on-wet details, you need to do so right away, otherwise your flood will start to set up.
Since the jammie section is not touching the hat, I also outlined and flooded the rim of the hat. Then into the dehydrator they went for the icing to crust over! About 15 minutes later, it was time to flood more sections. You essentially repeat this process until all your sections are flooded. Lastly, I flooded the tip of the hat and add sprinkles.
It’s really that simple…just flooding each section, waiting for them to crust and moving on to the next. Remember that your scribe is your best friend to perfect outlines or pull flood exactly where you want it. A dehydrator is VERY helpful when it comes to designs like this to really speed up the process. It also REALLY helps to avoid any royal icing craters. Small sections, such as their noses or hands, are more prone to cratering, so I rely on my dehydrator to avoid that. Check out these cute Valentine’s gnome cookies!
I hope this post all about Valentine’s Day gnome cookies was helpful for you and served as some inspiration to create your own gnomes! Feel free to reach out with any questions, I’m always happy to help!
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