Frosting your cookies

I use a #2 tip for the outline and a #3 tip to flood in the icing.

When icing the cookies you want to do one color at a time, one section at a time. Let each section dry for 30 minutes or so before moving on.

Pipe an outline of each section and quickly fill that section in with frosting. You can jiggle the cookie softly to get the icing to settle into the outline smoothly without running over. You can do sections that are not going to flow into the first section you've decorated (For the Mario cookies I did all of the white dots first and then filled in the red or green sections once those had dried for 30 minutes).

Cookies need to sit for 24 hours before they can be stacked without disturbing the icing.

Royal Icing Recipe

Ingredients:

6 tbs warm water

3 tbs meringue powder (you can buy this at Michaels or Hobby Lobby. Walmart has it in the decorating section near the crafts)

1 tsp cream of tartar

4 cups (1 lbs) powdered sugar (confectioners' sugar)

1 tsp clear vanilla extract (regular will tint your frosting off white)

1 tsp almond extract

Directions:

in mixer bowl, pour in the warm water and the meringue powder. Using the paddle attachment, mix on low until it is frothy and thickened...about 30 seconds.

Add the cream of tartar and mix for 30 seconds more.

Pour in all the icing sugar at once. (if you're not careful the powdered sugar will go EVERYWHERE when you turn on the mixer. I hold a damp towel around the mixer while doing this step)

Mix on low for a full 10 minutes. The icing will get thick and creamy.

Cover the bowl with a dampened tea-towel to prevent crusting and drying out while storing.

Separate and tint with coloring as desired.

Once colored, thin with small amounts of warm water (I use a spray bottle to ensure that I'm only adding a little water at a time) until you reach the desired consistency.

For flooding work on a cookie you want to be able to use a knife to slice a line through your frosting and have it close in 15 seconds. I find that somewhere between 15 and 20 seconds is ideal to insure that you can smoothly flood your cookie.

Decorator Sugar Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter softened

1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

1 egg

2-3 tsp flavoring (pick what you like, I prefer almond)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour (add 1/4 cup more if your dough is too sticky)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

Directions:

Cream together softened butter and confectioner's sugar.

Crack the egg into a separate bowl and add the flavouring.

Add egg and flavouring mixture to the butter and sugar mixture and mix until the egg is thoroughly incorporated.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add little by little to the wet mixture.

I can tell the dough is ready when most of it sticks to the paddle. When I touch it, it has a little give, but does not stick to my fingers.

Allow to rest for 5 minutes.

Roll out on parchment to about 1/4 an inch thick, use flour for dusting as necessary and cut cookies as desired.

Bake at 400 degrees for 7-8 minutes.

makes 2 - 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

Notes about her recipe:

• The dough does not need to be refrigerated.
• The recipe doubles well
• Baking times are approximate. You must know your oven. Watch them the first few times you bake them. If the cookies are browning you've gone too far.
• This dough can be flavored any way you'd like.
• The cookies freeze well.
• There is a lot of leavener in these cookies. This is not a typo. The general rule is less leavener so they don't spread.
• This recipe does spread a little. If you don't like that add a little flour.
• If you don't like salt, leave it out altogether.
• If you only have salted butter, use that and don't add salt.
• I prefer decorating day-old cookies. They are less likely to leach oil back into your icing if they have had a day or two to "dry out". They are still soft however.

I got this recipe here and she has a nice photo tutorial to go along with the recipe. This is nearly her exact posting with a little variance based upon my own preferences.

Candy Corn Cookies

Tis the season and I hate candy corn so I thought I'd make some that I would enjoy.

I used a heart cookie cutter and bent it into the desired shape. There was still a bit of a scalloped edge on the top so I used a pastry cutter to trim that edge. It's buttercream frosting so it's meant to look a little more messy.

Soft Sugar Cookie Recipe

I found this same recipe over and over again so I don't know who to attribute it to. I'll just point out that it's not my own creation...

Ingredients:

1 cup shortening

2 cups sugar

1 cup sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp almond extract

2 eggs

5 cups all purpose flour

pinch of salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

Directions:

Mix shortening, sugar, sour cream, vanilla, almond extract and eggs together.

Stir flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder together in a separate bowl.

Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients mixing until incorporated.

Cover and refrigerate dough for 1 hour.

Cover flat surface with confectioners sugar.

Roll dough into a ball and pat with confectioners sugar to ensure it won't stick to your rolling pin. Roll out cookies and cut as desired.

Bake for 5-6 minutes at 400 degrees. (Remove from the oven before the cookies begin to brown. You will notice the surface of the cookie will just begin to take on a cracked texture.) Cool for 2 minutes before removing to cooling rack.

Cool fully before frosting.

Soft sugar cookies with buttercream frosting...

I had a dream about making soft sugar cookies last weekend, but was too sick to do so. I've really wanted to try this for a while...

I chose shades of the season and decided to stick with simple frosted cookies. I'll post the recipe I used tomorrow and I used my buttercream recipe for the frosting.

They're delicious, but I'm limiting myself to eating only one item from anything I bake at this point as it's starting to get out of hand.

Baking for the weekend...

I'm planning to work on at least two different baking projects this weekend. Due to stress, illness, and lack of time I just haven't been able to make anything for a couple weeks.

Here's to hoping nothing unexpected occurs.

Dot Cookies

The dot cookies are some of my favorites!

I mentioned that my friend wanted to learn to make cookies. She made me promise that none of the ugly cookies would be seen by anyone so I picked out the prettier ones to photograph.

It was a lot of fun and she did great for her first time!

My baking closet

This is a glimpse inside my baking closet.

I've been gathering items for the past year or so and am getting pretty comfortable with the items I enjoy using and the things that don't work as well as I'd hoped. From time to time I'll try to showcase some of my favorite things.

As you can see, as far as the cookies go, this is a hobby that I'm starting to take very seriously.

Cupcake cookies

While I was making the flower cookies I made these mini cupcake cookies.

I know I've seen other people make cupcake cookies on their blogs and likely took the design from someone, but can't remember which one. If you find something that looks like this somewhere else let me know.

Sorry for the crummy photo quality, they were taken with my phone and it doesn't evaluate lighting very well.