Sugar Cookie Solar System: A Guest Post
One of our favorite things about using The Kind Kingdom in our homeschool this year has been the weekly hands-on baking and cooking projects. We never miss a chance to be together in the kitchen!
This week one of our projects combined two of our favorite things: cookies and space. Using a simple sugar cookie recipe and some colorful frosting, we made our own model of the solar system. For a fun twist, we decorated them with marbled frosting to represent the atmospheres of the planets!
You will need:
A cut-out sugar cookie recipe
4-5 different sizes of round cookie cutters (or other round items to use to stamp out cookies)
Ingredients for royal icing (listed below)
1. First, you’ll need your favorite sugar cookie recipe. (All project recipes for The Kind Kingdom are included with the curriculum!)
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2. Next, have your kids help roll the dough out. We have found that the easiest (and neatest) way to roll out sugar cookie dough is to sandwich it between two pieces of wax paper.
For cutting out our solar system, we used about four different sized round cookie cutters. If you don’t happen to have these laying around, raid your kitchen and refrigerator for round lids. Wide-mouth Mason jar lids, condiments lids, and the milk jug cap could all be borrowed for this project!
Deciding on the scale for our solar system was a wonderful learning time. To get a truly accurate look at the scale of our solar system, check out this short National Geographic video in which a group of friends build a to-scale solar system in the desert. We watched it while our cookies were baking. It is mind-boggling!
3. Since frosting the cookies was the biggest part of the project, we did this the day after our cookies were cut out and baked. To get marbling on your cookie, you will need to dip it face down into the icing, which means it needs to be just the right consistency to cover the cookie without dripping! In the baking world, this is called “five-second icing” or “loose flooding consistency.” If this sounds intimidating, don’t worry! I’ll walk you through it!
First, you will need to mix up a batch of royal icing.
Royal Icing
Ingredients
1 lb powdered sugar
2.5 oz pasteurized egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
Combine egg whites, powdered sugar, and cream of tartar in the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment
Mix on low to get the ingredients combined then bump up to high for 1-2 minutes.
Add in vanilla extract and whip until it's white. It should be fully mixed in about five minutes.
You now have a thick royal icing that is ready to be thinned down to the right consistency for marbling!
Add water 1 tsp at a time. (You could also use a spray bottle to mist the water on. That’s what the pro bakers use!) After each addition of water, make a line by running a toothpick through the icing. Count the seconds until the line disappears. Do this until the line closes in about five seconds! You’ll probably end up using around 2-3 teaspoons of water.
Now for the fun part: adding colors! We spent quite a while deciding what colors to make our planets. We learned a lot as we discussed what makes each planet look different (storms on the surface and rocks and gases in the atmosphere). We tried to be as accurate as possible, so we made many individual bowls. Some planets were plain colored frosting, while others were marbled.
To marble the frosting, simply add a few drops of food coloring to the bowl. Swirl it around by dragging a toothpick through the icing until you get a marble effect. We used gel food coloring for this, which worked great!
Once frosting bowls are ready, it’s time to dip! Carefully grab a cookie between your thumb and forefinger. Dip it face-down into the frosting and pull up. When you flip it over, the icing will flatten itself out onto the cookie. You can leave the cookie as-is or swirl it a little bit more with a toothpick. In about thirty minutes the frosting will get a thin crust. (We didn’t wait that long to eat ours!)
4. To finish this project right, add cold milk and a picture book or documentary! Enjoy using extra cookie dough and frosting to add stars, moons, and comets to your solar system!
Some Peaceful Press favorite books about the solar system:
Rachael Alsbury blogs at www.fromfaye.com
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