Simple Chinese Lantern Cookies
One of the drawbacks of living in a tiny west Texas town is that my exposure to other cultures is sometimes limited to what I read on the Internet. I’ve always wanted to experience a traditional Chinese New Year celebration, but until that becomes a possibility I have to settle for cookies. With a little help from my amazing friend Ken, author of Hungry Rabbit, I came up with a pretty good assortment. My favorite are these simple Chinese lantern cookies.
There are many cutters that would work well for this project, but I decided on a couple of Christmas ornaments and a snowman. If you don’t own fancy ornament cutters, I really like this four-ornament set from Fancy Flours or this six-ornament set available via Amazon.com
To make these cookies you will need:
- Red piping and 20-second icing
- Gold piping and 20-second icing
- Jade piping icing {optional}
To reduce mixing, you could always cut out the red and jade piping icing and use yellow for all of the detail work.
Begin by using red 20-second icing to create a large circle/oval on the largest portion of the cookie. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect…I read somewhere that Chinese lanterns are traditionally oval shaped. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true but since it cut a little stress on my end I stuck with that.
Let the base dry, pipe on lantern details, and fill in the gold areas with 20-second icing.
Finish up by using piping icing to add the final details. I used a #1.5 tip.
These cookies look perfect mixed with other fun designs. I used Montreal Confection’s wet-on-wet design for the fan cookie. You can view her how-to video here.
If you like this set, be sure to check out these links:
- Cookievonster’s Chinese New Year collection.
- Also, if you find red icing to be bitter, try using tulip red, Americolor’s version of no-taste red icing color.
- For instructions on how to make simple China doll cookies, click here.
Have you ever celebrated Chinese New Year? Tell me about it.
