Cardiovascular "Heart" Cookies



the heart cookie I created looked kind of like this

Finally!  Today I finished the cookies for the CVICU 1 year anniversary project.  This was my biggest project ever... and my time management of the project was completely thrown off because Brian didn't tell me at first how many cookies I was making.   Half way through decorating he told me I would need more, apparently he told his manager I was making cookies so I guess these cookies were going to be the main dessert?  So hours of decorating were lost when I made 2 more batches of cookies.... that's about 3-4 dozen more cookies. I had a ton of ideas of how to decorate them and blah blah but oh well!  I made heart cookies of course - just with plain pink or red frosting.  But I also made a heart cookie - a real human heart shaped cookie.  Due to time constraints and a failed attempt at the anterior view of the heart (an inside view to show the different chambers of the heart) I only made about 6 of the human heart cookies.  They came out pretty cool!  I only had enough time to put the frosting detailing of the arteries on one of them unfortunately because they were a huge hit!  Everyone in the unit thought it was sooo cool!  Brian called me from work and was joking around saying "I don't even know if they will let someone eat it!"  Of course they did, and they had them all eaten within hours of delivery.  I know this because I forgot to take pictures of them so I called Brian to take a pic with his phone.... but ALL of them were already gone!  OH well!  Sorry I don't have a pic to show.  But they were way cool and I'll recreate it as soon as I get up enough courage to make my kitchen look like a flour bomb went off in it again.

There are 3 new things that I tried with this project (I learn new stuff EVERY time I do cookies):

1. Adding luster dust to the icing to add "sparkle".  This did not turn out as I hoped.  You can see the sparkle when the icing is wet and it looks cool but once the icing sets on the cookie.... the effect is totally lost.  This also slightly changes the original color of your icing and taste.  I actually liked the colors after adding it so I didn't mind that.... and the taste wasn't a noticeable enough change to care.
   
   There is another cool way to use luster dust - I tried this out on a different project a week ago.  You can add water or clear vanilla to luster dust to create an edible paint and paint it onto your dry icing.  The down fall to this is you can see paint strokes if you are painting large areas or if you make the mixture too concentrated in luster dust. 
2. Outlining the cookie with the same colored icing to emphasize the cookie shape and to add detail works but only if you put the outline on TOP of the flooded icing.  (I'll try to explain this more the next time I decorate cookies and I have pictures to show you).
3. I tied a new cookie recipe and IT HELD IT'S SHAPE BEAUTIFULLY!! It's Peggy Porschen's recipe from her book Simply Spectacular Cakes. I still like the taste of 2 other recipes a little more.... so I'm still on the hunt for the absolute PERFECT cookie.  Still I highly recommend Peggy Porschen's recipe.