There's almost nothing sweeter than little girls in white dresses and veils and boys in little suits and ties celebrating first Communion. Our nephew Tony made his First Communion over the weekend and, of course, cookies were in order.
I've made First Communion cookies before...here and here. I love them still but decided to make these a little differently AND make a set of cookies, rather than all one design.
That host and chalice cookie cutter is one of my very favorites. It's so special. You can find it here. The design is supposed to be wheat. Does it look a little like wheat? Also, I couldn't help but add a heart in the center. Aaaaaand, there's a heart on the rosary and a heart on one of the cross designs. (I like ♥s.)
As usual, I used my tried-and-true recipes for perfect cut-out cookies and royal icing.
For the crosses (can you believe that I don't have a cross cookie cutter?!?), I use a plastic template. Since the lines are straight, it's pretty easy to cut with a bench scraper.
Now for the rosary cookies...oh my goodness. I love these so. I've never made rosary cookies, so I looked at A LOT of examples online and sketched out quite a few. For me, they worked best looking like they beads were going off of the cookie. I was almost impossible to get all of the beads on one cookie. I also love any excuse to break out the scalloped oval cookie cutter.
On all of the gold bits, I first used icing tinted with Americolor Gold. Once dry, I mixed a little gold luster dust with Everclear. (You can use vodka if you don't want to relive your college days.) Just paint it right on top of the dry icing. It will dry quickly and you can brush off any excess powder.
If you don't want to use gold, no worries. The cookies look super cute without, too. The fun thing about using gold for cookies is that your dirty dishes look super fancy.
For a step-by-step tutorial of the chalices, check out this post from 2011. (Also, please see one of my most favorite pictures of Jack ever. Rocking it with Mary, first Communion style.)
