Every once in a while, inspiration strikes! I recently had the idea to gift sugar cookies to my sister’s coworkers in Washington DC- but made the offer before I had any idea what I could make. Cue a day or two of frantic contemplation, and then I realized that since almost all of the staff is from our home state of Maine, there was only one theme that made sense- a whole set based on the lovely jewel of New England! This tutorial will be the first in a quartet, so keep your eyes peeled for more in this Maine series soon.
Unless you’re from Maine yourself, you’re probably not familiar with the angst that so many of us felt when the state decided to change the standard license plate design many years ago. For many years, the plate featured a red lobster background, centered on the plate with with blue numbers. It was distinctive and unfussy, just like Maine. Then it changed to a chickadee- which, hey, I love small birds too, but there’s nothing uniquely Maine about it. And while you can get a new lobster vanity plate now, it’s much more decorative and doesn’t resemble the old one at all. And so, many of us feel a lingering affection for the instantly recognizable vintage plate and it seemed a great place to start my Maine set.
Materials You’ll Need:
My favorite sugar cookie recipe, baked and cooled (found here, or scroll to the bottom of this page).
A 3.5″ rectangular cookie cutter (this set available on Amazon is my favorite because it contains so many).
Royal icing in white, red, and blue (my tutorial is here, and the recipe is also at the bottom of this page).
A fine tipped red food grade marker (available here on Amazon).
A decorating tools kit (optional but very helpful, available here on Amazon).
A counter top fan (optional but helps with drying time and preventing color bleed).
Maine License Plate Steps:
You should begin by baking your 3.5″ rectangle cookies and allowing them to cool fully on a rack. Once you’re ready to decorate, mix a batch of white royal icing and then flood and fill your cookies. If you’re a novice decorator, follow the tutorial linked above in “Materials You’ll Need” to flood your cookies. If you’ve decorated before, you can save some time by mixing your icing to somewhere between a piping and flooding consistency and using it for both steps. (I find that consistency sweet spot by dripping some icing back into the bowl after mixing and looking for it to almost completely disappear after about 5 seconds.) Whichever method you use, allow your cookies to harden at least 4 hours under a tabletop fan (or overnight without). You will want the icing to be completely solid before proceeding, as you’ll be drawing on them in the next step and you don’t want to punch through the icing with your marker tip.
When you’re ready to proceed, grab your red food marker. Draw your lobsters centered on the rectangle but at an angle, with the claws pointing to the upper left and the tail pointing down towards the lower right. My steps were to draw the claws and make four connected ‘dots’ from each claw to the body. Next, draw the body itself- make the head a sharp point and the rest of the main body thin and rectangular. Now make three small ovals for the segmented bottom half of the body, and add a small fan shape for the tail. Finally, draw four small legs on each side of the body. I would suggest practicing this step on a small piece of paper several times until you feel confident. Don’t worry if you make a few small mistakes here and there, because you’ll be piping the plate numbers over the top and can hide all manner of small sins during that step. Allow about half an hour for the ink to fully dry.
While you wait, mix up another batch of royal icing at piping consistency. Split it in half and make one half dark blue and the other half bright red. (Remember that icing colors ‘cure’ and darken over several hours after mixing, so don’t agonize over creating that perfect ‘navy’ color during mixing- just make it a little darker than classic crayon blue and it will be fine.) Scoop the icing into decorating bags and attach #1 tips to each.
Start with the red icing. Pipe the word “MAINE” onto to the top of each cookie, centered. You want it in all capital letters, but not so large that it overwhelms the cookie. You also want to save a little space at the very top of the cookie to make a license plate border line later. On the bottom of the cookie, write “Vacationland”, but only capitalize the “V”. Similar to the top, save a little space under the word to make another license plate line later. I find a helpful trick to keep this big word centered is to pipe it out once on a post-it note and line that paper up under the cookie for a reference point until I’ve gotten used to what I’m doing. Allow about an hour under the fan to harden.
Now pick up your blue icing. You’ll need to decide what you want your license plates to read. I chose to make these cookies with the tag “207HOME” because Maine’s area code is 207 and I was making them for people from the state, but you can of course use whatever is meaningful to you. Six to seven characters is ideal to make your license plate look more authentic. Center your text across the lobster and go for it!
For your final step, pipe two straight lines across the cookie, once across the very top and one across the very bottom. If you have trouble making straight lines, my best advice is to pipe icing from about half an inch above your cookie and allow it to ‘fall’ onto the cookie instead of getting the tip super close to the cookie surface, where every little hand shake or squiggle has no chance to straighten out before it’s too late. Again, there’s nothing wrong with practicing on a sheet of paper before moving on to the real deal. Make the license plate ‘bolts’ by piping four dots into the corners under the blue lines. Now put your cookies back under the fan until fully solid, about 2 hours. If you are bagging these for a gift, wait at least 4 hours.
And that is all there is to it! This design is one of my new favorites, because it’s just a few colors and a few steps long. If you have any thoughts or questions, make sure to leave them in the comments section below and I’ll do my best to help in any way I can. Keep an eye out in the coming days for the next step in the “Maine” series, the lobster cookie! You can also search the “Maine’ tag at the top of the page for everything Maine! Happy baking!
Foolproof Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 1 egg
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350.
- In bowl, mix together 3 cups of the flour and baking power. Set aside.
- In separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the extracts and the egg and beat until combined.
- Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Dough will be crumbly.
- Press dough together with hands, and roll out on a well-floured surface. Cut shapes and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper.
- Refrigerate baking sheet for at least 10 minutes.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes, remove when cookie edges are just barely golden. Allow several minutes to cool on sheet before moving cookies to a rack.
Royal Icing
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup water
- 3 Tbsp meringue powder
- 4 cups confectioner's (powdered) sugar sifted
- 1/2 tsp Karo syrup (optional)
- 1/8 tsp clear flavored extract (optional)
Instructions
- Combine water and meringue powder in a bowl and beat with mixer until frothy.
- Sift powdered sugar into the same bowl and mix to combine
- Add syrup and extract if desired
- Beat the icing for 4-5 minutes until it is glossy and holds a peak if the beater is turned upside down
Medium Consistency
- Continue to add water ½ Tbsp at a time until at desired consistency (icing should disappear into itself in about 5 seconds after being dripped back into the mixing bowl).
Flooding Consistency
- Continue to add water ½ Tbsp at a time until at desired consistency (icing should disappear into itself in about 3 seconds after being dripped back into the mixing bowl).
