Golf and Birthday Cookies

About a week after I first tried to make these cookies, it was Jeff's 28th Birthday and then just a few days later he was leaving for a Bachelor weekend for one of the weddings this summer that he is in.  So... of course I thought I had to make cookies for both events.

Jeff LOVES golf!  He would golf a few times a week if he could.  The bachelor weekend also happened to be a golf weekend.  So I did some research online for golf cookie ideas and this is what I came up with.  

They are not perfect.  I am still learning, but for my first attempt at anything besides flowers and butterflies, I think I did an ok job.  I did have a couple of issues that I wanted to talk about.

1. Black food color is so tricky!  

• At this time, I was using the Wilton food coloring (I will tell you about the new coloring I use soon).  I wanted to get the gray color to use on the golf clubs.  I started off with the white icing and added just a touch of the black.  As I was mixing it, it looked more like grayish purple than gray.  I didn't have any other black or gray coloring, so this would have to do.  I piped the golf clubs anyways.  After it dried, I have to say that it looked a lot better.  Not so purple.  
• Now I had to make the black color for the handle and the outline.  I added A LOT of black, and still... it looked purple!  So I just added a lot more and let it sit in the fridge for awhile, hoping that it would look more like black.  It did!  

2. The first golf club I made looked more like a hockey stick than a golf club!  I made the "shaft" of the club a little too thick.  By the last one, I think I got it right.  

I then thought about how I would make a golf ball look like an actual golf ball and not just a white circle.  I have white edible "pearls" that I had used for my sister's bridal shower, and they were perfect!  While the icing was still wet, I took clean tweezers and carefully placed each pearl to give the crater like effect that a golf ball has.  

Now, on to Jeff's birthday.  Since I already was making golf cookies for the bachelor weekend, I used some of those for his birthday too.  Then I just added some birthday cookies.  

Here is the end result!  Jeff must have liked them because he was trying to eat them before his party and I had to stop him.

Happy Birthday Jeff!