Wilton-Style Roses for Cookies {WFMW}

June 7, 2011 | 36 Comments »
This is the second part in my three part series about putting roses on cookies. 
I have mentioned before that I am a Wilton dropout.  It’s TRUE.  I took the first class and then never made it back.  It had nothing to do with the class, but more with the fact that it required a sixty-mile drive and cake baking.  And y’all know how I feel about cake baking!
However, I learned one of my favorite tricks from this class, the Wilton rose {in my own sloppy way}.
They are so pretty and very relaxing to make.  I’m kind of obsessed with it.
I had to adapt this to cookies, mainly so they’d be smaller.
To make Wilton-style royal icing roses for cookies, you need:
  • two bags of stiff royal icing in the color of your choice {by stiff I mean it completely holds it’s shape like the fourth photo down in THIS POST}
  • a #3 and #101 Wilton tip
  • a #9 flower nail
  • 1×1 squares of wax paper
  • clean cookie sheet
You can actually buy pre-cut squares of waxed paper, but my Nanny’s angry ghost comes to visit me anytime I consider it, so I make my own.  It’s much more economical.
 

 

This is how I do it.  KEEP IN MIND, Wilton has a nice, pretty, perfect way to do it that you can see HERE, but as always, I did it my way…
To begin, I put a tiny dot of icing onto the flower nail, with the #3 tip,
which I used to secure a wax paper square to the nail.
Once it’s secure, you are ready to begin piping a rose.
Use the bag with the #3 tip to make a little cone-shaped mountain in the center.  You need to make it about 1/2 an inch tall so all of the petals will fit around the base. To get the thin tip, release pressure on the bag as you pull up and you should end up with a nice perfect point.
When you have done that, use the bag fitted with a #101 tip to make the center.  I included tons of photos, because this is where it get a little tough to explain, and absorb. 
The wide side of the tip will be down, and the thin part on top.  Angle the wide end close enough to the rose to touch, and simultaneously spin the nail while piping.  Make sure to only cover the tip, not the whole base.
Keep going until you have made a complete rotation, and touch the tip to the base to close the center.
Next, add  petals.  This is where I get a little sloppy.  Wilton has a method.  I call it the 3/5/7 method, three petals on the first row, five on the next, and seven on the outside.  It works well and the roses are perfect.
I, on the other hand, DON’T do that.  I start out with good intentions, but depending how it goes, I just keep on piping until the thing looks okay.
It worked okay at first.  I managed to get three on the first row.
To do this, you put the tip, wide part down, into the same angled position as you did to make the centers, and then squeeze an “arch” onto a section of the base {ideally a third of it}.  Make sure to tilt the thin area slightly away from the base so you get that thin petal edge.
So far so good.
This is the point at which I get off course.  It’s kind of a tiny space I am working with, and a VERY tight squeeze, so from here on out, I do the same thing as above but I keep going…
And going…
and going, until they look pretty to me.
As I finish each one, I line them up on a cookie sheet to dry.  As you can see, I like doing this.
I make tons and tons of them when I have leftover icing.  It really is relaxing.
If you missed my how-to on simple roses, check it out HERE.
Using the “almost” Wilton-method for making icing roses works for me, and I hope it works for you too.  For all of you beginners, I would highly recommend signing up for the 3-4 part class at your local Hobby Lobby or Michaels.  Even if you aren’t into cakes, it’s a valuable resource for learning the basics of decorating.  Many a fine decorators got their roots in a Wilton class.
If I left anyting out, or you’re still feeling a little bit nervous, you can view Wilton’s how-to HERE.  Just use the tips I suggested so that they will be smaller.
Good luck and happy decorating! Stay tuned next week for part three!
Tutorials
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