It is no surprise that after dotter took her strawberry cookies to work that she got a cookie order for a little girl’s birthday party. I may or may not have helped her fill her order.
First we had to go through all our cookie cutters to make sure we had everything we needed. This might surprise you, but we did. When you buy cookie cutters out-of-season for enough years, you’re left lacking little in the way of your collection.
Dotter made the dough, went to work and somehow I ended up rolling them out, cutting them into shapes and baking them all.
We outlined each cookie in royal icing, then filled them in.
We weren’t sure how the bees were going to come together since we were using a petal cutter and a number eight cutter, but we cut some of the petals in half and brought it all together to form a special 3D bee. They ended up being our very favorites.
I finished much of the decorating while dotter went out with her BFF. Funny how things work out.
Such a happy, bumbly bunch of sugar, don’t you think?
Dotter and I hope you are having a very happy and sugary Fourth of July – only, you know, she’s out at the moment so I’m speaking for the both of us.
Every once and awhile dotter gets the itch to make decorated sugar cookies. This always fills my heart with warm fuzzies and my tummy with sweet treats. For a moment I lost her so I called out her name and she popped up from behind the counter.
“What doin?”
“Oh, lookin’ for the strawberry cookie cutter.”
You see, the strawberry cookie cutter is one of the smaller cookie cutters in our collection, so it sinks way down to the bottom of the cookie cutter drawer.
She worked all night long on this batch of cookies. Her red frosting turned out a gloriously bright color.
And her cookies? Well, simply perfection. Happy June. Happy strawberry season. Happy cookie cutter hunting.
Add & beat together well:
2 eggs
4 tsp. almond extract
3 tsp. milk
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
Refrigerate dough for about 1 hour. Preheat oven at 350 degrees. Roll out and use cookie cutters. Create your favorite shapes. Bake 6-8 minutes. Allow cookies to cool completely on a rack.
Outline cookies with green leaves and red berries using Wilton’s royal icing recipe.
Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with a heavy-duty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high speed with a hand-held mixer).
Step 2
NOTE: Keep all utensils completely grease-free for proper icing consistency. * For stiffer icing, use 1 tablespoon less water. **When using large countertop mixer or for stiffer icing, use 1 tablespoon less water.
Using a decorating bag, fill in the cookies with powdered sugar frosting. Allow red and green to dry at least over night and then add 5 white dots to the top of each berry using royal icing (set aside a little bit of white royal icing for this by covering with a damp towel until ready to use).
Powdered Sugar Frosting
Mix together about 5 cups of powdered sugar with a few teaspoons of water at a time until it becomes a smooth, easy to spread (but not too runny) consistency.
Add your favorite colors and designs. There is something lovely about light pink frosting that I cannot live without. Make a few days in advance to allow frosting to dry properly if you will be packaging your hearts.
Give away as soon a possible to those you love, lest you eat your hearts out.
Allow cookies to cool completely on a rack. After cookies cool, frost using the Wilton royal icing recipe and instructions. Cookies are uber cute when you outline them first with royal icing and then use the thinning method mentioned below to color inside.
Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low-speed with a heavy-duty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high-speed with a hand-held mixer).
NOTE: Keep all utensils completely grease-free for proper icing consistency.
* For stiffer icing, use 1 tablespoon less water.
**When using large countertop mixer or for stiffer icing, use 1 tablespoon less water.
Thinned Royal Icing: To thin for pouring, add 1 teaspoon water per cup of royal icing. Use grease-free spoon or spatula to stir slowly. Add 1/2 teaspoon water at a time until you reach proper consistency.
You won’t find my cookies there this time since I was already was booked this weekend. I’ll be selling mine to my Snoqualmie Valley neighbors to help support the cause. But if you do find yourself in Seattle, be sure to stop by & say hello and maybe pick up a treat or two from all of the other amazing Seattle area foodie bloggers.
I decided that since I would like June to hurry-up and get here already that I would encourage Mother Nature by making my strawberry cookie baskets. First, I made the cutie cookies by using my favorite sugar cookie cut-out recipe.
After they were baked & cooled, I used Wilton’s royal icing recipe at the end of this blog post. I thinned some down using the additional instructions below and for the first time used the royal icing flooding method to ice them. I’ve been meaning to try this for years and so glad I finally did. I highly recommend it!
My cookies are far from perfect but now that I have tried it, I know what mistakes to watch for next time so I can prevent them. I just used the regular icing recipe for an outline and then filled in the rest with the thinned icing. I waited a couple of hours for it to dry enough for me to complete the cookies.
After allowing the cookies to dry overnight, I was then able to place them into strawberry baskets. I have been saving these baskets through the years because I make these cookies annually. I’ve noticed that recently you can’t often get strawberries in these cute containers though so I looked up some places to buy them online. Good news! You can still get them for projects like these!
Wilton Royal Icing
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons Wilton Meringue Powder
4 cups (about 1 lb.) confectioners’ sugar
6 tablespoons warm water
Makes:
About 3 cups of icing.
Instructions:
Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with a heavy-duty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high speed with a hand-held mixer).
NOTE: Keep all utensils completely grease-free for proper icing consistency.
* For stiffer icing, use 1 tablespoon less water.
**When using large countertop mixer or for stiffer icing, use 1 tablespoon less water.
Thinned Royal Icing: To thin for pouring, add 1 teaspoon water per cup of royal icing. Use grease-free spoon or spatula to stir slowly. Add 1/2 teaspoon water at a time until you reach proper consistency.
Would you like to create some extra special cookies this year? Something that will be pretty enough for a centerpiece or a gift? You’ve stopped by the right blog! These cookie ideas are full of sugary sparkle and easy peezy to make!
That moment.
First, “that moment.” The moment that an idea hits you and you have to make sure no one else caught you while you did your dorky “what an awesome idea I just had” dance! Mine was in Target the other day in the Christmas decorations section. I came across this beauty. I still have a candy cane version of this ornament that I got when I was little so the sparkly coating brings back fun, sugar plumlike memories.
Let’s get started!
Just roll out your favorite sugar cookie dough recipe (or there is a recipe at the end of this post) to about 1/4 inch thick & cut 2 1/2-3 inch circles out.
Place cookies on cookie sheet - I added a light coat of baking spray because we’re going to add sticks to these & I wanted to be sure they came off easily.
Bake as long as your recipe calls for. Smells great!
Pour some sugar onto a plate. Make sure you have plenty! We’re doing this now since we’re working with royal icing which dries very quickly.
Make up a batch of royal icing. You can find mixes that make it easy for you or you can find recipes online too. Divide icing in half and color
one half red. You can keep a damp towel over the royal icing to help keep it from hardening.
Using the white, make a swirl on each cookie like this.
Do the same in between the white swirls with the red. You can fill in a little but they don’t have to be perfect since lollipops are not perfect.
“Oh no, Mr Bill!” Gently press cookies into the sugar to coat with sugar and to press frosting flatter so that there’s no more gaps between the red and white frosting.
Out of control!
Once I got started with the sugar, I couldn’t stop so before I give you the big reveal, how about I show you a few of my other creations?
Candy cane
Wrapped peppermint candy
A little mitten with fluffy white sugary trim
Where did I get the energy for all of this?
I do believe this is the smallest amount I have ever dropped in a trip to Target!
And now for what happens when you stock up on Diet Coke and inspiration at Target!
Wait… maybe I didn’t even need to go in the store for inspiration. Oh well, I needed the Diet Coke energy anyhow.
Sugar Cookies
Using an electric mixer, beat until very fluffy and well blended:
1 cup (8 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup (4.75 ounces) sugar
Add and beat in until evenly incorporated:
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
(Make sure you scrape down the sides of the bowl during this step to get a totally homogenized mixture before going on to the next step)
Stir in until well blended and smooth:
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
Roll out & cut into desired shapes, bake and decorate!
Our community center had a Haunted House and dotter and I provided a bake sale for the event. Culinary geeks that we are, we overworked ourselves and could hardly keep our eyes open while selling them.
Adorable, creative, tired witch.
A cookie tombstone cemetery on crushed Oreo dirt. Want to make your own? Here is a list of some of those we laid to rest:
Bitby A Snake
C. U. Later
I. Slipt
I. Will Return
B. R. B.
K. A. Put
Ima Goner
Red E. Ornot
I. M. Dead
Ghoulia Child
Berry M. Deep
Izzy Gone
U. R. Next
Barry A. Live
I. B. Gone
Miss Fortune
Silly monsters for the kids. Okay, every baker has their regrets; hindsight tells me that his hair looks like a unibrow – Now that’s scary!
Jack Skellington was the hit of the night! Dotter made these. She gets really crazy about Jack!
Little carrot raisin muffins feel prettier with a ribbon.
Adorable, creative, tired witches feel prettier with black lipstick.
Speaking of witches, how about witch finger cookies, complete with wart! How? We used icing to stick a green M&M on them and then covered them in a simple powdered sugar icing which was a creepy green. The fingernail is a sliced almond.
And finally… six feet under bars. We used jewelry boxes lined with cardstock. We then placed 7 layers bars inside each box and laid the toy skeleton to rest on top of the bars and wrapped them. We covered the top with theme fitting scrapbook paper and added a little RIP label and of course a ribbon makes everything better.
I hope you have a wonderfully spooky Halloween and use this weekend to connect with people in your community. What a fun time to meet the families in your neighborhood!
Now for our little Halloween contest! We’re sorry, this contest has ended but…
CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR THREE WINNERS! Just for fun, be sure to check out the fun that our winners are having with their toy skeletons we affectionately have named Dead Stanley! You can follow their travels from Texas, New York and Washington here.
PLEASE NOTE: This item does contain nuts.
I’m giving away three sets of “Six Feet Under Bars”! Here’s the spooky scoop:
If you win, I will be sending you two Six Feet Under Bars!
Leave your comment with a way for me to contact you if you win (either a blog link or email)
Deadline to enter is October 27, 2009 at noon (recorded by the time stamp of your comment).
The winners will be announced & bars will be mailed out tomorrow afternoon so you can receive them quickly. Be sure to check your email or back here to see if you won so that you can email me your mailing address on time.
* One winner will be chosen using the Random.org integer generator.
About one year ago, I attended a baby shower for my friend who I have known for over 30 years…
Me, Linda (Madison’s mommy) and our friend Lori in back
I know, right? You’re thinking that we look 30 but we met when we were like 10!
Anyhow, I thought you might enjoy checking out the cookies I made for her baby shower. The colors for the shower were chocolate brown and pink, so I came up with these sweet little numbers.
I used a basic sugar cookie recipe, fondant, chocolate fondant, ribbons, circle & flower cookie cutters of various sizes, Wilton sticks, clear bags & some icing.
A helpful trick is to create about 5 or six styles and then repeat the patterns again & again to make a beautiful, matching bouquet.
Pretty enough to eat!
…and just for fun, here is the package for baby Madison’s gift. I’m sure that my fellow scrapbookers will understand my excitement. I used about 4×4 size boxes to make baby blocks and filled each with gifts and had a fluffy bunny popping out of the top. It was a lot of fun. If you enjoy going over the top like I do, I’m sure you’ll take this on for the next baby shower you attend. Although everyone there might think you are crazy, I will understand your need to go over the top with your creativity. You have a friend here, indeed!
This week is Madison’s first birthday. Happy birthday, sweetheart!
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The Old Hen
Deanna’s love for baking and cooking began as she sat upon a baker’s stool as a little girl. Her love for people grew in the midst of church potlucks. She expresses her loves today creatively through speaking, writing for her foodie blog as well as hosting guests, including celebrities, at her award-winning B&B in Snoqualmie Valley, Washington.
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into the cookie.
that make it easy for you or you can find recipes online too. Divide icing in half and 
