Baby Shower Sugar Cookies

So, here are the cookies I made for yesterday's baby shower. I think I bit off a bigger bite than I was prepared to chew with these cookies. They were as much work (or more!) than a cake! Each one was like a mini cake!

These were probably the easiest, since they were only two colours, so it just required outlining, flooding, waiting for that to dry (I waited overnight) and then piping the pink decorations.

These were the next easiest, since they are only three colours and only 2 layers, meaning that I didn't have to wait for the second layer to dry before piping the third colour.

And these were the most complicated, since there is actually only 3 colours, but also three layers in some places. I wasn't very impressed with how these ones turned out.

Something funky was going on with the icing as it dried. It kind of...crystallized? I don't know: it turned sort of white in spots. It's probably most obvious on the pictures of the onesie cookies. And I couldn't get the icing to stay shiny when it dried. I used honey and not light corn syrup since I didn't have any. I wonder if light corn syrup would make them stay shiny looking. They looked ok, but not shiny like I wanted. Matted. And the white spots... ugh. Happily most people are not as fussy as I am and everyone ate them with no problems.

Rolled Sugar Cookies

Remember last Halloween when I made these cookies? It was mostly about trying out this recipe for icing, which was nice, smooth, shiny and professional-looking. I'm a big fan. I made it again this morning, substituting honey for corn syrup. I hope that doesn't turn out to be a mistake. I worried the honey wouldn't allow the icing to set properly. I did drop a bit on the counter and a couple minutes later it was starting to crust up, so that's a good thing.

In the Halloween cookies post, I mentioned I was going to try this cookie recipe since I found my dough a little difficult to work with. I did try it out and it is a pretty lovely recipe. The flavour could stand some enhancing, as many of the commenters noted, but I'm sure once the icing is on, it won't matter much.

I'm planning to decorate the cookies up all fancy-like for a baby shower I'm headed to on Sunday. I bought this set of cookie cutters by Wilton and I plan to decorate the cookies similarly. We'll see how it goes. I'll keep you posted.

How to freeze cookie dough

I'm sure many of you domestic divas already know this fabulous trick of the trade, but I promise no one told me about it and I just figured it all out myself. So let me tell you about my Low Mess Cookies...

First of all, I love cookies. Oatmeal Chocolate Chip are my favorite, but I'm not that picky (just omit the raisins, please). I have a serious problem with cookies. Like, if they're in my house, then it's not long before they're in my belly and then once in my belly, my thighs beg for them, and the belly always gives in. Cookie cravings usually come to me on cold-ish to cold days (many days in Edmonton) in the evening. And I have always thought that it is somewhat pointless to haul out the flour and sugar and all the other ingredients to make just a dozen or so cookies. But it is a bad idea to give my thighs that many cookies at once. And even if I manage to forget about them for a couple of days, the rate of flavour-deterioration in homemade cookies is incredibly fast, that the few-day-old cookies are something of a calorie-full disappointment.

So to solve these problems (ever the problem-solver, I am), I thought I would freeze the cookie dough, just like Pilsbury does, you know, in a roll that I could cut nice little round cookies and bake them at a later date. This was quite disappointing. Although I have never purchased Pilsbury cookie dough, I would hope that they cut up better and don't flatten at the bottom end. And I still had the work of cutting them up, which I didn't like so much.

So, I tried again. This time, I prepared the cookie dough, baked a dozen cookies and then (using my Pampered Chef small scoop), I scooped the cookie dough onto the pan just like I was going to bake more, except for I placed them right beside each other, instead of giving them the usual 1-2 inches of baking room. I got the rest of the dough on one pan and, instead of the oven, I popped them in the freezer. I let them freeze (an hour or so) and then popped them into a resealable freezer bag.

Now, whenever I want cookies, I preheat the oven, put a dozen frozen cookie balls on a baking tray and by the time the oven is hot enough, the dough has thawed a little.

I pop 'em in the oven for 10 minutes and eat warm, melty-chocolate, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Mmmmm....

Although they do retain their frozen cookie scoop shape, they're just as yummy as if they were flat. If you have a toaster oven, you can easily just make 2 or 6, just what you need for the evening and always serve delicious, fresh baked cookies to unexpected guests or the kids as an after school snack.

Halloween Cookies

Last week, Z and I bought some Halloween cookie cutters. A bat, a pumpkin and a ghost. Today we made sugar cookies and icing and decorated some cookies. I was really happy with this recipe that I found on All Recipes. I once read a critique of All Recipes, which stated that the recipes used a lot of processed foods. Perhaps it is also full of casseroles with mushroom soup in them, but I find a lot of great recipes there, and this one is no exception. As the reviews all state, it makes an icing that will dry nice and shiny like a bakery cookie. That's totally what I was looking for: a nice smooth icing. My bats up there don't look all that smooth, but they would have looked a lot different with a buttercream icing. I didn't fuss a lot with the icing. I put some of the black icing in a ziploc bag and cut a tiny hole in the corner for the details, but that is it. Nothing fancy.

I managed to be fairly relaxed while making these with Z. I let her make a lot of her "moons" (circles) and so she and S decorated those with their icing. S (he's 2) got the white icing to prevent him from colouring our carpet orange or black. Basically, Z slathered 2.5 cookies with pink icing (she insisted I make pink) and ate the rest of her icing right out of the container. S iced and ate all at once.

If you're looking for a good sugar cookie dough recipe, I think the next time I make sugar cookies, I'm going to give this recipe a try. The recipe I have is good, but today I used non-hydrogenated margarine in place of the butter (I was out of butter) and I don't know, maybe I measured wrong or something, but the dough was WAY too soft and I ended up adding probably another 1/2 cup or more flour to make it manageable.

Happy Halloween!