Under the Sea Cookie Favors

My church recently held a formal banquet for the senior high youth group and I was asked to make some cookies.  The banquet theme was "Under the Sea" and I finally got to use my seahorse and tropical fish cookie cutters.

I played a little with the colors.  The fish are a mix of blue and teal.  The seahorses are a mix of pink and yellow and orange.

I packaged two cookies into a bag and tied it with a ribbon so they could be used as party favors for the guests.

They put the rest of the cookies on a platter to serve at the banquet and they were eaten quickly!

I think the cookies looked great with the table settings designed and assembled by another church member.

People more talented than I designed and made the Under the Sea decorations - complete with a shipwreck that served as a photo backdrop, and lighted jellyfish that hung from the ceiling!

Cute Snowman Cookies

Although we have absolutely NO snow on the ground here this December (which is highly unusual!), I decided to make snowman cookies.

Here's a quick tutorial for icing the snowman cookies.  Start by outlining then filling the hat (I used black).  Then outline the snowman with white.  When you fill the snowman with white, use black icing to drop dots for the eyes and buttons (before the white icing dries).  Then you get nice, flat dots.  After that has all dried, add your embellishments.  I did a simple carrot nose on some, and a blue scarf on others.

Hope you enjoy these!  And may all your Christmases be white.

Cardinal Cookies

Normally this time of year, it's starting to look like spring.  But this year we still have several feet of snow on the ground!  In honor of the hearty cardinals that stick around up north all year adding color to the white landscape, I decided to make some cardinal cookies.

Usually, I use the outline-and-flood method for frosting my sugar cookies.  But I decided to try something new: 20-Second Icing.  Sweet Sugarbelle has a fantastic tutorial on achieving this consistency, somewhere between outlining and flooding consistencies. (click to see tutorial)  Using 20-second icing, I can eliminate decorating bags and just use squeeze bottles. It's a lot faster!  The frosting is runny enough to flow nicely and dry smoothly, but it's stiff enough to stay where you put it.

By the time I finished adding the wings, the beaks were dry enough to outline in black.  I waited about a half hour before frosting the rest of the bird to give everything else a chance to dry a bit.  It doesn't have to be completely dry, just dry enough to not flow together.

20-Second Icing wasn't the only new thing I tried for these cookies.  I tried making them gluten-free.  I've made a couple other attempts at gluten-free sugar cookies with disastrous results.  These are actually pretty good.  I'm going to tinker a bit more with the recipe to get the taste a little sweeter and less dry before I share the recipe.  Stay tuned!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been baking chocolate chip cookies since I was a kid.  I wrote all about it in this post.  Then my son was diagnosed with celiac disease last November and was prescribed a gluten-free diet.  At first, I was enthusiastic about trying new flours and I was sure that I'd come up with some fantastic baked goods that were gluten-free AND delicious.  Well, after a few failures with the packaged "all-purpose gluten-free flour" baking mixes, I decided it was time to start experimenting with creating my own flour mix.

I used my own blend for the first time in my banana bread recipe.  (I find that baked goods that already have a bit of a texture to them are easier to switch to gluten-free without anyone noticing.)  Then I tried it again in my chocolate chip cookie recipe. I am thrilled to say that these cookies are delicious.  They are a bit less chewy than the original recipe (but maybe that means I baked them a tad too long?).  I had a couple people try them and they said they wouldn't have been able to tell they were gluten-free unless I told them.

Can't wait to try them?  Here's the recipe!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Mix together with a whisk in a large bowl and set aside:
1/4 cup almond flour
1 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup sweet rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon baking soda

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the following and beat until smooth and creamy:
1 cup softened butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 package (4 serving size) Jello instant vanilla pudding mix

Beat in 2 eggs.

Gradually add the flour mixture.  Then stir in a 12-ounce package of chocolate chips.

Drop by rounded teaspoon onto ungreased baking sheets.  Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.

Makes about 4 dozen.

Red & White Valentine Lace Heart Cookies

Ever since I saw a tutorial on the Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle, I knew I wanted to try making lace cookies.

 

 

I can't believe how easy it is!  I did an image search for "lace cookies" and found plenty of inspiration.  So I tried a bunch of different patterns.

 

I tried to make each cookie a little bit different, but I repeated a couple of my favorite designs.  It was so much fun to doodle with frosting!  I will definitely use this technique again.

 

Decorating Red & Black Valentine Heart Cookies

Red and pink is too girly for my all-boy household.  Red and white is nice but a little too sweet sometimes.  But red + black = perfect!

 

These cookies look fancy, but are really quite easy to make.

 

Outline heart shapes with black royal icing. (It's sometimes difficult to achieve a truly black icing.   I use Americolor gel paste in Super Black for great color results without the funky taste.)

 

While the outline is drying a bit, prepare thinned red and black royal icing to flood the hearts.  You'll want to have both colors loaded in squeeze bottles before you start.  (Again, a true red is hard to achieve and I recommend Americolor gel paste in Super Red.) 

 

Working three or four cookies at a time, flood the hearts completely with the red icing.  While the red is still wet, place some black dots around the perimeter of the heart.

 

While the red and the black dots are still wet, gently drag a toothpick through the black dots around the edge of the cookie.  This dragging motion is what creates that pretty design.

 

Of course, these would look great with other color combinations, too.  I liked the red and black so much I did the whole Valentine's table to match.  With young boys in the house, I opted for the plastic table cloth and the paper plates.  That made the evening "special" without worrying about breaking anything - or having to do dishes!

 

 

You might also like my post about trying Martha Stewart's recipe for shortbread cookies with white chocolate icing.  Those cookies look like conversation hearts.  Sweet!

New Year's Eve Cookies

It's New Year's Eve! The last day of 2012.

 

How do you spend New Year's Eve?  I usually curl up on my couch and watch "When Harry Met Sally" and go to bed by 10.  But this year, I'm going to attempt to stay up ALL NIGHT with the teens from my church.  I made these cookies for their party.  Maybe the bright colors will keep me awake.  Or maybe the sugar will.

Skylanders Elements Cookies Plus a Birthday Banner

My ten-year-old requested a Skylanders-themed birthday this year.  I made him some sugar cookies to take to school for his class birthday treat.

 

The designs on the cookies show each of the 8 elements in the Skylanders universe: Life, Undead, Earth, Tech, Magic, Water, Fire, and Air. 

To make the cookies, I outlined each circle with black royal icing using a pastry bag with a #3 tip. Then I filled it in with a dark blue flood icing from a squeeze bottle.  (To make the dark blue, I mixed some black icing into my royal blue icing.)  I drew the designs using a light blue icing. (I only used a little bit of the royal blue food coloring to get that shade) using a pastry bag with a #3 tip.  The consistency of the light blue icing was somewhere in between outline and flood consistencies.  Some people call it "20 second icing".  It's thick enough that you don't need to outline first, but thin enough that it spreads a little.

 

I also made a birthday banner to match the Skylander's theme:

 

The ends of the banner are a cloud shape I cut on my Cricut (Artiste cartridge from Close To My Heart).  I modified the Skylander's logo to say "Aaron's Adventure" instead of Spyro's and glued that logo to the clouds.  The banner's circles and letters I also cut with my Cricut (Art Philosophy cartridge from Close To My Heart).  In between the words, I put a picture of Zap -- one of my son's favorite characters from the Skylander's game.

 

 

 

Since turning 10 is a big deal, I wanted to add some more 10's to the banner.  I cut out some more clouds, circles and numbers and hung them with baker's twine to make these little accents.  Then I hung a Skylanders character poster on the wall.  This poster comes with the game for Wii, or you can do like I did, and print it from Skylanders.com.

 

 

Our Elf On The Shelf wanted to get into the birthday action, too, so he decorated Aaron's door with a "10" made out of crepe paper and then draped some more crepe paper on the stairs!  You can see his little red hat sitting on the stairs in this photo.

 

 

I'm busy planning a Skylander's party for a few of Aaron's friends and I'll post more Skylander's fun soon!

 

 

 

Pink Ribbon Cookies

Since 2007, my mother-in-law has been fighting (and winning!) her battle vs. breast cancer.  I made these cookies for her.

 

The cookies, of course, feature the pink ribbon that has come to symbolize breast cancer research and awareness.  The heart is to let her know how much we love her.  And the wings symbolize the hope that there will one day be a cure for this disease.

 

 

I bought the heart-with-wings cookie cutter on clearance after Valentine's Day one year, and I thought it was perfect for this.  To decorate cookies like this, start by outlining the heart with white royal icing using a #3 tip.  Then outline the wings with pink icing and a #3 tip.  Flood the hearts with thinned white icing and flood the wings with thinned pink icing.  After the white dries (overnight), pipe on the pink ribbon using a #7 tip.

 

 

Just Ducky First Birthday

My sweet niece just turned one.  She doesn't say very many words yet, but she can say "duck!"  So I made her a rubber ducky birthday cake and cookies.

The cake was a 2-layer round cake that I covered in baby blue frosting.  I drew the ducky outline with a toothpick and then piped the yellow and orange frosting with a star tip.  The eye is an M&M.

 

She thought it was pretty interesting.

 And even checked it out with her toes!

 

I was in a big hurry, so this is the only picture I took of the cookies.  They are chocolate cookies with yellow royal icing.  Once the base layer was dry, I piped on the eye and wing detail with the same yellow icing.  I like the tone-on-tone look.

My boys made up a few games to play at the party.  Here is the birthday girl after she found all the duckies that were scattered around the living room.  So nice to see she has her ducks in a row.

Purple Owl Cookies

While in college, my roommate and I studied in Spain together.  We kept seeing little owls in many of the shops and someone told us that owls were used as good luck charms.  We couldn't resist buying a few because they were too darn cute.  Now owls are all the rage here!  Especially in the fall, I see them every where I go.  And I'm OK with that.

 

The roommate just had a birthday.  She likes owls.  She likes purple.  And she likes chocolate.  Put them all together and what do you get?  Chocolate owl cookies!

 

 

(The recipe for these cookies - and the decorating instructions - can be found in the book "Decorating Cookies" by Bridget Edwards.)

 

I packaged a few of these cookies into little bags.

And I put the bags in a giant owl mug!

These cookies are moister (is that a word?) than my usual sugar cookies, so they are harder to transport without breaking.  But they taste VERY chocolatey. Almost like a brownie.  I don't hear anyone complaining about having to eat broken pieces!

It's here!

I learned how to bake and decorate cookies by reading other peoples' blogs.  The blog that was the most instrumental in my education is called Bake At 350.  The author of that blog, Bridget Edwards, just wrote a book called (appropriately) Decorating Cookies, and my copy of that book just arrived in the mail!

 

I couldn't be more excited!  In the book, she shares all her decorating tips about icing and sprinkles and sanding sugar and everything.  And there are tons of step-by-step decorating tutorials with full-color gorgeous photos. 

 

She also includes her recipe for Vanilla-Almond Sugar Cookies and her recipe for Royal Icing.  Those are Bridget's go-to recipes and they've become mine as well.  She has published the cookie recipe on her blog here and the icing recipe here.

 

But there are several new recipes in the book including this one:

 

I just made a double batch because, hello, NUTELLA.

I'll let you know how they turn out, but the dough tastes like a winner!!

 

My First Paying Customer

Someone actually paid me to make cookies!  She was throwing a baseball-themed rehearsal dinner and requested some cookies to match the theme.

Circles. Only two colors of icing.  I can do that!  Nice and easy.

The process still takes several days because of cooling and drying times.  Day one was baking, day two was outlining and flooding with white icing and day three was adding the red stitching detail.

I'm not very good at consistently drawing curves with icing, so I used the round cookie cutter as a template.  I traced a curve on to the dried white icing with a toothpick and then drew with the red icing on top of the toothpick mark.

 

It worked better if I let the red curved lines dry a little bit before adding the red stitches. Otherwise, the stitches kept sticking to (and moving) the red lines.

Cookies for Church Picnic

Our church's annual Labor Day picnic is this weekend and I signed up to bring some dessert. (Of course.)  I was thinking of various cookie designs - sunshine? picnic basket? - but I decided to try something I've never tried before.  I made the church logo with frosting!

These layered design cookies take several days to make due to drying time.  I baked the cookies one day, did the white frosting base another day, and finished up the logo part today.  I did the logo in three steps.  First I piped the "SBC" with a #7 tip in the blue frosting.  Then I piped the brown part of the compass with a #3 tip.  Finally, I added the blue compass points with a #3 tip.



 

It was fun to try something new.  And I think my church family will get a kick out of seeing them.

Patriotic Star Cookies

I had (got) to bring a treat to my Bible study this week so I made star-shaped cookies and frosted them in red, white, and blue.  I did the outlining, but let my kids do most of the flooding.  The ladies at church were so impressed when I told them that my boys had frosted the cookies.  It's all about the squeeze bottles.

I made the boys stick to solid colors for the cookies that I was bringing to church, but then I let them loose on another batch of cookies.  Armed with outline and flood icing plus sprinkles, they had a lot of fun.  I love watching them be creative!

Have you ever seen such a festive collection of cookies?