Pac-Man Cookies!!!

I finally sold out.

I caved in, and I'm not proud.

I bought a $5 piping bag from Coles.

DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!

It's just that I've been itching to try out some cookie ideas, and I needed a piping bag. And ok, I promised myself I wouldn't try anything until I could afford a proper piping bag that wouldn't give me homicidal tendencies the way the cheap ones do, but I might not be able to get a good piping bag in a really long time, and I want to try out cookie ideas now, dammit!

So last night I made these:

PAC-MAN COOKIES!

I wanted to start off with a simple design in case my newly acquired piping bag couldn't handle the basics (which was a very real possibility), but it handled the challenge just fine... After I started misusing it.

Trying to clean that thing for each colour change and getting the thicker icing piped through was disheartening enough for me to start making whimpering wailing noises that made my husband come over and cuddle me and ask what's wrong. To which I replied: 'Hmmserwerer Ehh Rrrr Grrargh!!!'

And then I had one of those headaches with pictures - you know, an idea.

Instead of using the piping bag in the normal, boring way, I stuffed a dollop-full of thick icing into the plastic tube, folded the plastic bag into a square, and then used my thumb to pipe out the icing. Like this:

And oh my God, it was so much easier and less time consuming than trying to use that horrible thing properly.

Anyway, to make your very own Pac-Man cookies (waka waka), simply 'follow' this cookie recipe found here from allrecipes.com.au. I say 'follow' in quotation marks because you can afford to be quite liberal in your interpretation of the recipe (hence why it's so perfect as a recipe base). Personally, I found I didn't need to add any milk and actually added more flour to make it nice and kneadable. I'll be using this recipe (or my own interpretation of it) for all my future iced cookie creations, of which there will be many. 

So, how to you make your Pac-Man cookies look like they have anything to do with Pac-Man?

Once you've rolled your dough out, cut a large circle with a sharp knife or scalpel.
I opted for scalpel and ended up using my jar of cocoa to cut around. 

Then simply make a few incisions - like cutting a slice of pie - to make your Pac-Man. 

For your ghosts - Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde - Use your circular cutter again, but only cut a half-circle. Remove the cutter, and slice directly down from your incisions. (I love how this sounds so deliciously medical-horror movie). 

Follow the marks or indents left from your cutter to know the size of your ghost. Work your way in at both sides... 

...And then do the middle to form a complete W. 

Now bake your Pac-Man cookies! Bake like you've never baked before! Bwahahaha!!!

I'm really getting into my evil doctor/maniacal baker role, here.

Once cooked, leave to cool completely, and then prepare yourself for getting everything you know and love covered in food colouring and icing sugar.

Side note: I made these cookies while watching Cliffhanger. And by watching I mean standing in the kitchen asking my husband 'what just happened?' every time I heard gunfire, a scuffle, or Stallone mutter something incoherent.

Anyway, to create 'flooding' - the technique used to make iced cookies look awesome (I seriously suggest you check out Sugary Flower's photostream on Flickr to see what I mean, that lady is amazing) - you're meant to use royal icing. Which I don't have, nor can I really budget for. Instead, I used good old fashioned icing sugar (powdered sugar to my American friends) and water. And it worked surprisingly well.

Just add a bit of food colouring to icing sugar and add water very slowly until it forms a thick paste.

Stuff into your piping bag and pipe around the edges of your cookie.

Let it harden a little, because that bad boy is going to act as your fence, through which no icing should pass and seep onto your work top. In theory. I may have been slightly too impatient and a little over-zealous with my flooding in my first attempt. You have been warned. 

Then simply add more water to the remaining coloured icing to make it runny, then use a teaspoon to dollop onto your cookie. Try and get as close to the edges as you can and work your way in. Use a toothpick (or knife, like I did, cos I don't have any toothpicks but wow would they have come in handy) to coax your icing to 'flood' and fill in the cookie. Leave to set and you're done! 

Now, for the Pac-Man ghosts, I actually had a bit of a method:

I coloured Pac-Man first, so I already had remnants of yellow in my icing bowl, so I added a bit of red food colouring and tackled Clyde, the orange ghost first.

Since Clyde left the bowl a little orange, I added red food colouring and tackled Blinky, the red ghost next.

Blinky left the bowl red, so I just added more icing to make Pinky.

...Then I had to get myself a new bowl to make Inky. But still, working this way = less cleaning and fuss. Which is always a good thing.

I made the Pac-Man ghosts like this:

Thick icing around the edges and eyes...

Flood...

Then I used some of the thick icing from Inky to make eyes on all of them...

Then added some plain white icing to fill in the eyes.

And that's Jenga. 

Or more accurately, Pac-Man cookies :)