These are your basic sugar cookies, decorated with royal icing. I used edible glitter to make them sparkle and I added some pretty molded sugar or royal icing decorations to make them colorful. I also decorated some of the cookies with a big swirl of buttercream and with a variety of sprinkles! Those photos are near the bottom. Enjoy and Happy Valentines Day!
See the beautiful sun streaming through the window? That was the only 10 minutes of sunshine we received today. It's been raining and soggy ever since. I guess I timed my photos right.
This is the best recipe for sugar cookies if using a cutter and you don't want to lose the definition of your baked cookie.
No Fail Sugar Cookie
6 cups flour 3 tsp. baking powder 2 cups butter 2 cups sugar 2 eggs 2 tsp. vanilla extract or desired flavoring (I like almond myself) 1 tsp. salt
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Mix dry ingredients and add a little at a time to butter mixture. Mix until flour is completely incorporated and the dough comes together.
Roll to desired thickness and cut into desired shapes.Bake on ungreased baking sheet at 350 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes or until just beginning to turn brown around the edges.This recipe can make up to 5-dozen 3” cookies.
I just finished packaging all of my baby shower onesie cookies. Whew! Whenever I get to this step in the process, I'm so damn sick of the cookies, I just want them out of my house! I took time to package them all in cellophane bags, tied with a pretty ribbon with a tag attached. Then I place them in my pink bakery boxes with colorful tissue paper. It's such a time consuming process. I charge $4.00 a cookie (for this size - bigger cookies cost more) but sometimes I wonder if I'm getting enough. It's a lot of work!! I will deliver these tomorrow morning. I'll be glad to get them out of the house. I used to make decorated sugar cookies more often. I was taking orders left and right. I had a beautiful website dedicated to my decorated sugar cookies. It got to be just too much. I was getting calls from all over the country and I just couldn't do anymore. I took my website off line and pretty much stopped advertising. Plus, I was getting burnt out on it. So now I decorate cookies once in awhile for close friends or coworkers or occasionally a friend's friend.
You must get some of these pink bakery boxes. They make any treat look good and professional. I purchased 100 of the boxes online and purchased 100 cupcake inserts to go inside each box. The insert does not have to go into the box and so sometimes, I just use the box itself and fill it with treats.
These onesie cookies are for a baby shower that's taking place tomorrow. Onesie cookies are quite the popular design when it comes to babies. The cookie recipe is the "no fail sugar cookie". It is an excellent recipe to make when you want to use cookie cutters - especially intricate design cookie cutters. It's a good recipe for that sort of thing because the cookies do not expand a lot in the oven which sometimes can make them lose their shape and look more like a big blob than an actual shape. I use this recipe whenever I'm making sugar cookies to decorate. You can flavor the cookies with any extract you want - I simply used vanilla. The icing is a vanilla flavored royal icing. I will also include that recipe below. For as simple as royal icing is, there are sure a lot of different recipes. This recipe is easy to pipe and dries hard but not rock hard. Hard enough to bag and stack but not so hard that it shatters when you bite into the cookie. It's tasty and easy to make. Just make sure you keep the bowl of icing covered when it's not being used. Use gel or paste colors to color your icing. After I package these cookies, I will post those photos also. I made the cutest little tags for the baby shower that I will attach to each cellophane bag.
Ready to decorate!
First coating is the white background. I attached a little sugar animal to each. I let these dry overnight before piping the blue on, otherwise the blue color might bleed into the white.
Next day, I outlined in blue. Attached little sugar pearls for the snaps.
NO FAIL SUGAR COOKIES
This recipe is GREAT when using complex cookie cutters. The dough holds its' shape and won't spread during baking. Make sure you let your oven preheat for at least 1/2 hour before baking these or any other cookies.
6 cups flour 3 tsp. baking powder 2 cups butter 2 cups sugar 2 eggs 2 tsp. vanilla extract or desired flavoring (I like almond myself) 1 tsp. salt
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Mix dry ingredients and add a little at a time to butter mixture. Mix until flour is completely incorporated and the dough comes together.
Chill for 1 to 2 hours (or see Hint below)
Roll to desired thickness and cut into desired shapes.Bake on ungreased baking sheet at 350 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes or until just beginning to turn brown around the edges.This recipe can make up to 5-dozen 3” cookies.
HINT: Rolling Out Dough Without the Mess -- Rather than wait for your cookie dough to chill, take the freshly made dough and place a glob between two sheets of parchment paper. Roll it out to the desired thickness then place the dough and paper on a cookie sheet and pop it into the refrigerator. Continue rolling out your dough between sheets of paper until you have used it all. By the time you are finished, the first batch will be completely chilled and ready to cut. Reroll leftover dough and repeat the process! An added bonus is that you are not adding any additional flour to your cookies.
Antonia74 Royal Icing
Serves/Yields: about 6 cups of thick icing? Prep. Time: 12 minutes Cook Time: Category: Frostings, Cookies! Difficulty: Easy
Introduction
This icing is mixed to a stiff consistency for outlining cookies, then can be thinned with warm water to fill in the cookie shape. I like to dry my cookies for at least 24 hours...and up to 48 hours before packaging them. This icing can be kept at room temperature in an air-sealed container for literally weeks, with a good re-mixing before you use it again. I haven't had great results with keeping it in the fridge...but un-tinted icing (i.e. white) seems to be okay from the freezer.
Ingredients
6 oz (3/4 cup) of warm water 5 Tablespoons meringue powder 1 teaspoon cream of tartar 1 kilogram (2.25 lbs.) powdered icing sugar
Directions
In mixer bowl, pour in the warm water and the meringue powder. Mix it with a whisk by hand 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 and place the bowl on the mixer.
Using the paddle attachment on the LOWEST speed, mix slowly for a full 10 minutes. Icing will get thick and creamy.
Cover the bowl with a dampened tea-towel to prevent crusting and drying.
Tint with food colourings or thin the icing with small amounts of warm water to reach the desired consistency.
The dress cookies above were for a bridal shower. The dresses are covered with red, black or white fondant with royal icing detail. The bride loved these cookies!
These cookies were made for a 9 year old girl's birthday party. She loves frogs.
The dress & purse cookies above were made for a 12 year old girl's birthday party. She chose the exact shade of pink and green that she wanted for the details!
I want to show you some other sugar cookies that I decorated for a 12 year old girls birthday party. There is no fondant on these cookies. It's only royal icing and different kinds of sprinkles. I think they are so festive looking! She loved them. I had to make 3 dozen of them which was soooo time consuming! But they are fun to look at and I always get a bunch of compliments on them.
I also create little works of sugar cookie art! I previously had a website showing all of my decorated cookies and took orders often for showers, parties, holidays, birthdays, graduations - all kinds of special occasions. It got to be too time consuming. It's a lot of work to make these cookies and even though each cookie sold for approx. $4.00, it was not worth it. By the time I made the dough, rolled it out, cut the cookies, baked the cookies, let them cool, made the royal icing, colored the icing, applied the icing, let it dry, put the final decorations on, let them dry again, package them up, made the tags, tied the ribbons and then find some approriate coordinating packaging....whew!! I was so ready to get those cookies out of my kitchen!!! These were the last creations I made for a co-workers bridal shower. They were beautiful cookies and the bride to be was thrilled. I thought I would share these with you. If you would like to see some additional decorated cookies, let me know and I will email you some photos.
The "ccB" is a sort of monogram that the bride created. The bride and grooms first name each starts with "C". Each cookie was packaged in a cellophane bag, tied with a ribbon that had a tag attached.
I actually was short on time with these so I used a white fondant for the background. I purchased a big tub of white Satin Ice at my local kitchen store, rolled it out really thin, cut it with the cookie cutter and attached it to each cookie with a light coating of corn syrup. This saves so much time since you don't have to wait for the base coat of royal icing to dry - you can just start piping royal icing details right onto the fondant. Fondant is so flawless and beautiful but it just doesn't taste as good as royal icing. It taste kind of like a crusty marshmallow. But the brand, Satin Ice, is tasty as far as fondant goes. It's the best tasting one I've had.
Each monogram was done free hand and that's difficult for me to do. Some people's writing with icing is flawless and smooth. I've always struggled with it but have improved slightly with time. Many folks nowdays just use edible images where they can simply choose a font, choose the words they want and have them transfered onto the cookie.
My name is Heidi. I live in Seattle and I love to bake. Please take your time and browse my collection of baking recipes & experiments. Most of them good....some...well, not so good. I'm honest with my reviews so you know what to avoid! Please email me if you have questions or just want to chat! I'd love to hear from you. nillanamba@gmail.com
See the beautiful sun streaming through the window? That was the only 10 minutes of sunshine we received today. It's been raining and soggy ever since. I guess I timed my photos right.
