Surprise Inside Sprinkle LEGO Cookies!

This week we're making actual exploding hearts and stars from Lego Movie 2. Hello! I'm gonna eat you! No please don't! My name is Lori and you're watching The Icing Artist. Sugar cookies are actually super simple. They just use sugar, butter, egg, vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, baking powder, and flour. I'm gonna go ahead and combine my softened butter, my sugar, and my vanilla extract and then just beat that up until it's very light and fluffy. The longer you beat, the lighter and fluffier it'll be. Once that's done, I'm just gonna toss my egg right in there and whip it up again. Once it is well combined, we are just going to set that aside and move on to our dry ingredients, which of course is our flour, baking powder, and salt. And I'm just gonna use a whisk to kind of mix that all together. I love using whisks when it comes to dry ingredients. I feel like it incorporates it really nicely. And then add my dry ingredients to my wet ingredients and just mix that up until it's all combined. Now, I thought it'd be a fantastic idea to actually dye the cookie dough itself so when you see the size of the cookies, it's going to reflect the same color that you're going to see on top. So I dyed half of the batter yellow and the other half of the batter pink. Don't know why I just called it batter. Can you tell I'm a cake artist? My dough is definitely not cookie batter. And just wrap those up with some saran wrap, pop them in the fridge for a couple hours to chill. This is so our cookies, when we cut them out, they will keep their shape. Once they're nice and cool, I'm just going to roll out that cookie dough onto my surface using some flour. I want to roll them at least less than a quarter inch because these cookies are going to be thick. We're going to layer them up to make a awesome surprise right inside each one of them. And then I'm just going to cut out all of my star shapes. I noticed that if I use my offset spatula to pull the cookie dough away from the shapes, that helped a lot. And again, chilling the dough is going to help that star now keep its star shape. I tried to do it earlier without chilling the dough and they completely bent out of shape. Once you have your first batch cut out, of course, just like scramble up all of those offcuts into a new batch of dough. Now, like I said before, these cookies are going to have an awesome surprise right inside because they're exploding cookies. So for each cookie sandwich, I'm going to cut out the center of one of those cookies. To that, I'm just going to use a smaller star and that seemed to work out really nicely. And bonus, it looks cute. Then for the rest of them, I just use a toothpick and I poke these little holes because before when I made cookies, the cookies puffed up in the middle. So this is going to help them bake really nice and level. And basically you're doing the exact same thing except the pink dough in your hearts. Guys, I have some crazy exciting news. We just got nominated for a Shorty Award in the food category. And it is all thanks to you guys and all of your love and support. So thank you. And if you guys want to help me win, you can click the link down below and vote. You guys can vote every day until February 21st. And of course, I so appreciate every one of you guys who has already voted. You guys are incredible. And everyone who is sharing it across social media, I am blown away. Thank you. Now that my cookies are completely cut out, I'm ready to pop them in the oven to 10 to 15 minutes at 350. And while those are baking and cooling, it is time to make my royal icing. The nice thing about these characters is you don't actually need a ton of royal icing colors, but it has been a hot minute since I've made royal icing. But you guys have been calling me the icing queen. I figure I cannot live up to that title unless I'm actually tackling the different kinds of icing. So I thought we'd change that this week. Finally, decorating time. So I just took my royal icing and I piped a border going all the way around the outside of my cookie. And then I'm just flooding it going all the way in the center. Now, like old school way of doing this was using a thicker consistency icing to pipe the outside border and then using a really thin consisting icing to flood it. I love this like thin medium consistency. They can do it both with exact same one. Then I just use my toothpick to kind of even out the icing. Make sure it's all met together. Give the cookie a little tap and a little shake and you're good to go. Now, while it's still wet, I'm going to pipe on its entire face so it kind of sits into the cookie like one flat surface. Now, these characters are two-sided, so we're going to be making two different faces for each shape. Starting with our happy star, I'm going to give it a ginormous smile. And then I noticed that like I made it a little bit wonky and I just added a little bit of icing onto the sides and onto like the little bottom area and I was able to kind of readjust the shape that way. I gave it a little light pink tongue. I then made these huge eyes and I don't know why making circles is so hard, but it's kind of a weird shape. It's like a circle with a flat bottom, but I kind of just messed around until I had a shape that I was happy with. Added on these really big happy eyebrows, some little pink cheeks which kind of make it look like a kawaii character. I've done a lot of kawaii characters and they all have these little pink cheeks. If you guys want to see that full playlist, I'll leave a link right here. Just click the eye. And as always, those little white dots right on the eye which brings the whole character together. For the other side of our star, it is going to be very sad but still really cute. So this one I'm going to start off with those humongous big puppy eyes and then added a very, very sad frown. And I even extended the frown down even more to make it look even sadder using a toothpick. I feel like my energy level just went like, because we're talking about a sad star. I then did it's like downward cupped eyebrows. It's so sad. And of course it's little cheeks and then those little white dots. We're gonna add some more lines on later using an edible pen, but for now I'm gonna let that dry. Moving on to the hearts. Now these ones almost have like little lego tile blocks in them, so I'm actually going to be piping them in different sections. To mark it out, I just use a square cutter and a black edible marker. This is edible by the way, don't use a sharpie on your cookies. I then just follow that line using my royal icing and just pipe that one square. We're gonna fill the rest of it in later, but for now we need to get that face right on that little square before it dries. I'm going to give it a really big happy smile and again just use my toothpick to extend those two lines so that way it's even happier. It's two giant eyes, it's little tongue and little cheeks again, and those big raised eyebrows. By the time I was done the face, I was ready to fill in the next section of my heart, so I just outline that and pipe that in and you're kind of letting each section dry for about 30 minutes until it's lightly crusted and then it has this like little impression lines on it. And lastly we have the sad heart, which kind of happens the exact same way as our sad star. While I was making these, I noticed that the faster you work, the more all those levels are going to kind of sink in to be one layer, but the longer you take, some of them are going to stand up and I actually prefer those little white dots standing up kind of on top of the eyes. I just let those completely dry overnight so they're nice and solid and now it is time to add on those extra sad details to my sad star, which if he didn't look sad enough, now he looks extra sad. Now it is time to assemble these cookies and kick them up a notch to make them exploding cookies. So I have one sad face, one happy face, and then one with the whole cut out of the middle. I'm just gonna pipe a bead of royal icing around that center part and then glue one half on, flip it over, fill it with its coordinating sprinkles, so in this case stars, add another little line of royal icing and glue the other half on. And of course with the hearts, we're gonna do the exact same thing except filling it with those heart sprinkles. The thing I love about these is one half the cookie is gonna be sad, you flip it over, the other half is happy. But I am loving the two sides of these and the sprinkles inside. They are really cool. I hope you guys really love this video. I have not done sugar cookies in a long time, so if you guys want me to do more treats, make sure to give this video a thumbs up. Thank you guys so much for watching, I really appreciate it. And of course, as always, don't forget to come back here again next week so we can make something else into cake or cookies. Uh-oh.