The Elephants In The Room

When my auntie Deb requested cookies for my cousin's baby shower, I surprised myself when I suggested elephants. I adore elephants, so the thought of eating cookies in their likeness was a little unsettling. But I do love a good cookie, it's my nickname after all.

But let's face it, I am not overly skilled in the art that is Royal Icing. My earlier attempts at cookie decorating using the stuff - Sweet Swimmers and Baby Bump - have yielded mediocre results. It's not rocket science, yet achieving the right icing consistency has been somewhat of a challenge. But hey, I am always up to challenging myself, even in the smallest of ways. Plus, it gave me a chance to use the elephant cutter from the Zoo Animal set I purchased while at the first annual Canada Baking & Sweets Show back in 2011. Long overdue.

There is an abundance of baby shower-related elephant cookies and cakes on the web, so this isn't exactly a new idea, needless, I like the idea of elephants for a baby shower. They are such a beautiful, gentle, intelligent animal, symbolic of strength, honour, stability and patience. In Hinduism, the elephant is represented in the form of Ganesha, who symbolizes luck, fortune, protection, and blessings. All the things one would want for a little one on the way.

I set about creating these beautiful creatures in sugar form using a generous mixture of butter, sugar, flour, eggs, crushed Tahitian vanilla beans and rose water. Once mixed, I chilled the dough then rolled it out using spacers to help keep them even. I then used the cutter to cut out the shapes and chilled them before baking. Soon after, I had my lifelong wish, a room filled with elephants!! 

I let them cool completely, while I whipped up a batch of royal icing using the recipe from Sweetopia. Actually, I was inspired by Marian's elephant cookies post.

I took about three table spoons of icing, added to a small bowl and coloured it with a couple drops of Americolor Brown gel paste. I used just a touch of Americolor Avocado gel paste to color the rest of the icing a very light green for outlining the elephants and separated out about a cup. I then darkened the bulk of the icing by adding additional gel paste in the same colour - about three drops.

I thought I had the right consistency, but the texture of my test cookie looked and felt like that of a real elephant - not exactly what I was aiming for. I added a little more water, mixed, did the 10-second test and we were good to go. I used a PME 1.5" tip, which resulted in a much more subtle border than intended. In the end I preferred it. I was feeling pretty confident and thought I'd try the wet-on-wet technique for the ears and eyes. 

All flooded and laid out to dry, they looked like little ceramic elephants while the icing was still wet and shiny. K stuffed the plastic bags in preparation for the labels, which I made using free clip art and then printed on Avery labels.

    

I was quite pleased with the way they turned out, so I snapped a few shots and was on my way to celebrate with family, my cousin's little bun in the oven. I say it's a girl and predict she will arrive on February 28, but I have never been correct about this sort of stuff.

In parting, here is a little elephant joke I found and just had to share:

An elephant was walking in a park. With each step he took, he squished many little ants. Upset, the ants began to crawl up on the elephant -- first his legs and then up all over his body. When the elephant started feeling all the little ants on him, he shook hard, making all the little ants, except for one, fall to the ground. As the only ant on the elephant hung on close to the elephants neck, the ones on the ground began to yell, "Strangle him!!! Strangle him!!!" Source






Vanilla Rose Sugar Cookies w / Royal Icing
(Yield: approx. 4 dozen 4” x ¼” cookies)

Ingredients:

452g salted butter, cool (normally I use unsalted, but did not have any on hand)
690g all purpose flour
270g granulated sugar
2 large eggs, cool
1 tbsp crushed Tahitian vanilla beans
1 teaspoon rose water

Icing - I used this recipe and added 1 tsp of Rose Water


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Place oven rack in the center of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silpat.

In the bowl of your electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  

Beat in the egg, crushed vanilla beans and rose water.

In a separate bowl, sift the flour.

Gradually add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture and beat just until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a flattened circle. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator until firm (at least two hours or overnight).

Remove from fridge and use a rolling pin to roll dough out to about 1/4 inch thick - I use dough spacers shown in the photo above to get even cookies.

Cut into desired shapes and place on the baking sheet, spacing about 2 inches apart. Place in freezer for about 3-5 minutes.

Remove from freezer, let rest 1 minute and then bake the cookies for about 10 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies are a very light brown.

Let cool completely before decorating with icing.