This is the third and final installment to a three part series. To read the first post, click here.
The last cookie of the assortment was, of course, a mustache cookie lollipop. I totally get why people love the mustache as a wedding photog accessory. Whether it's an homage to the über manly and retro hot Magnum P.I. or avant-garde artiste, Salvador Dali, it's just silly fun...
I used the same sugar cookie recipe as I did for the October TED cookie drop but substituted lemon zest for the orange zest instead, since that's what I had on hand.
Decorate the fronts (pipe an edge, flood, and sprinkle with decorations), then air-dry overnight. I used a variety of sprinkles and sugars as well as coconut. (For best results, you will have to change the icing color per sprinkle color. You can see in the second from bottom row on the left, there are a couple pale but not white mustaches. Those are white iced cookies with pale yellow sugar crystals.) For my own amusement, I made a couple salt & pepper 'staches as well as some with cappuccino or beer "foam" in the 'staches.
You'll need two rimmed cookie sheets; flip them over so the rim is underneath. I laid a tea towel and then a piece of waxed paper on each cookie sheet (just in case the icing wasn't quite set enough as well as not wanting any cotton fibers stuck to the decorations). Lay your cookies in three columns face down, leaving enough room for putting one extra cookie at the top of each column later.
Starting with the cookie furthest from you, pipe a decent blob of icing in a diagonal line, press a lollipop stick into it and then spin it in place. The cookie directly below will help keep the stick level. Continue piping and pressing sticks until you get to the second to last cookie of each row. Since there's no cookie to support the final cookie's stick, stop there. Just leave that last row stick-less for now. After ten minutes, transfer that last stick-less cookie to the top of your two columns and now you can add the icing and sticks. To be safe, let the icing harden overnight.
For the bake sale table, I put the cookies in tall pint size glasses, letting the cookies spin around the edge. I thought the brown and black ones would be the most popular (I made more of those) but from the photos people sent me, the lighter colored ones went first. Thanks to Thu, Susan, Sam, Logan, Anna, Cloe, Cloe's boyfriend, Morton, Ella, Emilie, and Corey for sending me your super cute pics! You're ROCKIN' the 'stache!