Magic the Gathering Cookies

Remember how last week I said I failed miserably at all things baking? Well, this week, I made those vengeful Sugar Gods my bitches:

Behold! Magic the Gathering cookies! I made 25 cookies, 5 of each land. It took two days to complete them. Here’s a little tutorial:

First make sugar cookies. It doesn’t matter what recipe you use, just as long as it’s strong enough to be rolled out. Cut out circles using a biscuit cutter and bake and let cool completely.

For the icing, I used royal icing. Here’s the recipe:

1 lb (about 4 cups) confectioners sugar
3 tablespoons of Meringue Powder
6 tablespoons of warm water
Icing Colors, although I think you may be able to use regular food coloring

Mix Sugar and Meringue Powder well, and then add the water one tablespoon at a time. Beat with an electric mixer until when you raise the beaters, the ribbon that falls from the beater stays on the surface of the frosting for 5 seconds.

Separate the frosting into 5 different bowls and color them Red, Blue, Green, Beige, Gray, and Black. Although as you can see, my “beige” is just yellow. A little goes a long way with those icing color pastes. (A little hint, whatever icing you have left over from the main colors, you can move to the black bowl and just mix everything together. Black is neat like that.)

Use a piping bag (or ziploc bag) with a small round tip, and make circles around each cookie on black. This was step is more for function than form. Basically we are creating a dam for when we “flood” the cookies with the main color. Let the black rings dry on each cookie before adding the next color, so it will hold the icing and also not bleed into the primary color. That will take an hour or two.

(My apologies for not taking pictures of this step; I was a little wrapped up in the meticulousness of it all.)

Now pour about a tablespoon of the main color into your cookies, spreading it around with a spoon or small spatula. Add more if you need to. Remember, it’s easy to add more icing, not so easy to take excess icing out. Let these dry completely before going on to the hard part. At least a few hours.

Now for this step, you will need a small paintbrush, a little experience with the viscosity of royal icing, and A LOT of patience. I took pictures, albeit grainy, boring pictures.

Part of my problem last week was I decided to freehand each cookie. Every one looked different, and when you’re making something for some hardcore fans, it’s important for them to be accurate. So I decided to make stencils. You will need to find images of the lands online (I had to download the “How to Play Magic” game from the Wizards of the Coast website to get large enough images. Which was fun on it’s own because I haven’t played Magic in years.) Since my cookie cutter was 3 inches, I decided to go with that size when printing them out. Photoshop tutorials are outta my league, so you are on your own there.

When you have the size you like, place them above the cookies (I used the cooling rack) so you can use the shadow as an outline:

I positioned the cookies at an angle from the light so I didn’t have to try to paint directly under the stencil. I used a small paintbrush to paint with the black royal icing. Here is where the patience comes in. It took hours to hand paint all of them. Fair warning, while the volcano and skulls look like they would be the hardest, do not be fooled! It’s those plains that will get ya. Damn symmetry.

So all in all, I’m very happy with the results. The guys at the game completely freaked out. One of them even called me a “goddess.” I think I can live with that title.
Related Post: d20 Cookies

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