Royal Icing Clock Cookies
These Pocket Watch Cookies are ideal for a birthday with an Alice in Wonderland or Mad Hatter's Tea Party theme. These clock cookies have a Roman numeral face and a gold border.
Servings 40 cookies (approx.)
Equipment
- disposable piping bags
- food dedicated paint palette
- food grade paintbrush
- disposable transfer pipette
Ingredients
- 1 batch shortbread or sugar cookie dough see note
- 1 batch Easy Royal Icing see note
- gold food coloring gel
- gold luster dust
- Everclear or vodka
- black food coloring pen or marker such as FooDoodlers
Instructions
Bake the Cookies
- Roll the dough to ¼-inch thickness and cut into cookies with a small round cookie cutter or biscuit cutter. For small cookies, the diameter should measure 1.75-inches.
- Bake the cookies according to your recipe's instructions and allow them to cool to room temperature before adding the royal icing.
Outline the Cookies
- Starting with the stock royal icing, add about ¼ cup to a bowl and add very small amounts of warm water to achieve outline consistency icing, carefully stirring with a small silicone spatula to avoid introducing bubbles into the icing.
- Add gold food coloring gel to achieve a goldenrod color.
- Transfer the icing to a disposable piping bag and cut off a very small piece of the tip to make a small round opening. Start by just snipping off a tiny amount; you can always cut more if the opening is too small.
- Outline the cookies with the gold icing.
- Allow the outline to dry at least 1 hour before proceeding to the flood step.
Flood the Cookies
- Prepare flood consistency untinted (white) royal icing by thinning stock royal icing with small amounts of water until desired consistency is achieved.
- Transfer the icing to a disposable piping tip and cut off a small amount of the tip. Fill the center of each cookie with the white icing. Use a toothpick or a scribe tool to swirl the icing on the cookie to pop any bubbles.
- Allow the cookies to dry overnight before proceeding to paint the border with gold luster dust.
Paint with Liquid Gold
- Add some gold luster dust to the well of a food dedicated paint palette. Add some Everclear or vodka to another well of the palette or to a small bowl.
- Use a plastic transfer pipette to add a few drops of alcohol to the gold dust. Mix the dust into the alcohol using a food grade paintbrush until the gold is completely suspended. You may need to add more dust or alcohol depending if the suspension is too thin or too thick, respectively.
- Using a thin food grade paintbrush, carefully paint the liquid gold on the goldenrod colored outline. The alcohol will evaporate quickly leaving behind a shiny gold frame for the clock.
- Make sure the gold has dried completely before proceeding with drawing the clock face.
Draw the Clock Face
- Make sure the flooded icing has had sufficient time to dry hard, about 24 hours depending on the temperature and humidity in your work space.
- Use a black food coloring pen or marker to draw the Roman numerals and hands of the clock. Start by placing a small circle in the very center of the cookie which will be the point where the two hands will meet. Then, draw the the 12 (XII) at the very top, followed by the 6 (VI) on the opposite side, then the 3 (III) halfway between the 12 and the 6 and the 9 (IX) halfway between the 6 and the 12. Fill in the other numbers. Add the hands of the clock.
Notes
Shortbread Cookies recipe HERE
Cut Out Sugar Cookies recipe HERE
Easy Royal Icing recipe HERE
Storage: The cookies should be stored in an airtight container at room temperature in a single layer until serving. I do not recommend stacking royal icing cookies. The grease from the top cookie can transfer onto the icing of the bottom cookie and distort the design. If you don't have enough space for a single layer, use aluminum foil to separate the layers to prevent grease transfer.
You're Gonna Bake It After All
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