cookies – Page 2

Embossed Fondant Cookies for Easter

March 21, 2018

I can’t tell you how much I love these cookies! Don’t they look so pretty and perfect, almost like they were stamped?

Oh yeah, it’s because they were!

These embossed fondant cookies are actually just cookies covered in a layer of fondant that has been stamped or rolled with an embossed/engraved rolling pin. Embossing fondant is just about as easy as rolling out cookie dough. Anyone can do it!

The gold bows on the other hand, well those were a bit trickier…I’ll get to that later.

How to Make Them

Start by coloring your fondant whatever color you would like. Just add a dot of food coloring and need the fondant until it’s evenly colored.

Roll the fondant out into a flat sheet that’s about 1/8th of an inch thick. Then roll over it with either an embossed or engraved rolling pin,

Then cut out the fondant using the same cookie cutter that you used to cut out your cookie and affix it to the cookie by brushing some water onto the back of the fondant.

You can also use a regular old stamp! However, I recommend only using stamps that have never been inked and have been thoroughly cleaned.

And that’s all it takes to make these really cute embossed fondant cookies!

Now if you want to add a little extra flair to your fondant covered cookies you can add these adorable little fondant bows that, while not as easy as tying a regular bow, are actually pretty simple to make!

I think they add a nice little touch to the embossed fondant and makes these cookies stand out even more!

What do you think? Ready to wow your family and friends with these adorable Easter cookies?

Products and Recipes

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Of course, I always recommend my favorite Sugar Cookie Recipe, but I would say this time it is especially important to use a cookie dough that doesn’t lose it’s shape when baked. When you cut out your fondant you want it to pretty much cover the cookie completely, and the easiest way to do that is to have a cookie that is pretty much the same size and shape as the cookie cutter.

Watercolor Spring Garden Cookies

March 20, 2018

Spring is in the air! Do you feel it?!

Today it is officially Spring.

Since it’s my favorite of all the seasons (I mean the flowers, the sunshine, the trees, the baby animals, what’s not to love?) I wanted the beginning of Spring with some of my favorite cookies to make – floral letters!

These are inspired by a Spring garden and I absolutely love them! Painting on cookies is one of my favorite techniques and it’s actually really therapeutic to just sit and paint. It’s also therapeutic to eat them when they are done.

How to Make Them

Painting on top of royal icing is not too dissimilar from painting on paper. The main difference is that the icing doesn’t absorb the watercolor. So to layer the colors, you have to let one layer dry before adding the other.

I start by painting very light shades of color where I want flowers, grass, stems, etc. Then I add a darker shade of paint on top, layering different colors and shades until I am happy with the finished product.

One thing I didn’t show in the video is the blue splatter I added at the end. I just wanted to work in some blue without painting sky, so I just sprayed some blue paint over top.

The perfect Spring cookies!

Products and Recipes Used

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Sugar Cookie Recipe

Royal Icing Recipe

Matcha White Chocolate Chip Cookies

March 14, 2018

I have to admit, I saw a photo of some matcha white chocolate chip cookies on Instagram this week and knew I had to immediately try to recreate them! Not only are they perfect for St. Patty’s Day (being green, and all), but they sounded like a fun take on my favorite cookie – the chocolate chip.

How to Make Them

This recipe starts off just like your typical chocolate chip recipe, with just a few tweaks.

Start by creaming together butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar.

Then mix in the egg and vanilla. If you want to live life on the edge a little bit (and you have it in your pantry), also add a touch of lemon extract! Matcha and lemon are a match(a) made in heaven!

Once all the wet ingredients are well combined, mix in the flour, baking powder, salt and matcha powder.

I used the same matcha powder that I stir into hot water to make tea. Definitely use a tea that you would like to drink because the flavor will carry throughout the cookie. I personally like the Trader Joe’s matcha tea packets and The Republic of Tea’s green tea powder.

Finally, stir in some white chocolate chips!

I recommend chilling the dough for at least 30 minutes before baking. Not only will the flavors meld together a bit, but chilling the dough before baking ensures that the cookies don’t completely flatten out in the oven.

Once it’s chilled, spoon or scoop out some balls of dough and place them on a baking sheet at least 2 inches apart. These cookies do spread, so give them plenty of space.

Then bake for about 12-15 minutes, or until they just start to brown around the edges. You don’t want to leave them in the oven too long because they will turn brown and you will no longer be able to tell they are green!

If you are curious what a matcha white chocolate chip cookie tastes like, well, it tastes like a white chocolate chip cookie with a very subtle matcha flavor. The green tea lovers out there may want to increase the amount of matcha in these cookies for even more flavor!

But the subtle green tea flavor is surprisingly delicious when paired with the white chocolate chips. It really makes the white chocolate stand out! So this cookie may really be for white chocolate fans.

Or just for anyone looking for a green treat for St. Patrick’s Day! 😉

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Super Soft Sugar Cookies (Lofthouse Style)

March 9, 2018

Over the years I have had friends tell me that my sugar cookies remind them of the Lofthouse cookies that we all know and love. The main difference is that the cookies that I make when I decorate cookies are not quite as soft and pillowy (otherwise, they wouldn’t be good for decorating).

Since I hear that so often, I have long thought that I need to try my hand at making my own super soft sugar cookies, just like Lofthouse. There are lots of copycat recipes online, but none of them felt quite right.

First of all, a lot of them contain sour cream, heavy cream, shortening, etc. All things I do not normally associate with sugar cookies.

Second, the ingredients are right on the package! So we know exactly what goes into making those super soft sugar cookies!

Let’s take a look, shall we?

(I feel a little bit like Alton Brown, right now, so forgive me a while I nerd out…or just skip ahead.)

Ingredients

A quick Google search of “Lofthouse Cookie Ingredients” will direct you to Walmart’s website where they list the very ingredients for the cookies we are trying to mimic.

Ingredients: Sugar, Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Margarine (Palm Oil, Water, Soybean Oil, Salt, Mono- & Diglycerides, Annatto Extract Color, Calcium Disodium Edta [Preservative], Artificial Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate), Eggs, Corn Starch, Contains 2% Or Less of: Water, Vegetable Oil (Palm Kernel Oil And/Or Palm Oil And/Or Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil [Cottonseed And/Or Soybean Oil]), Dextrin, Soy Lecithin (Emulsifier), Natural & Artificial Flavors, Skim Milk, Confectioner’s Glaze (Lac Resin), Leavening (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Sulfate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Colors (Carmine (Color), Red 3, Red 40, Blue 1, Blue 1 Lake, Blue 2, Blue2 Lake, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 5, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 6, Yellow 6 Lake), Carnauba Wax, Food Starch-Modified, Polysorbate 60, Sodium Propionate (Preservative). Contains Egg, Milk, Soy, Wheat. Manufactured In A Facility That Processes: Peanuts, Tree Nuts.

Ok, some of the ingredients look like things you would find in your high school chemistry textbook, but actually most of it is stuff you would probably already have at home.

Sugar – well, that’s an easy one. Sort of….is it granulated sugar, caster sugar, or confectioners sugar? I am going to guess since it’s listed first (and ingredients are always listed in descending order by weight) that it is both granulated (for the cookie) and confectioners sugar (for the icing).
Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid) – This is actually cake flour. The cake flour helps make these cookies extra soft and light!
Margarine (Palm Oil, Water, Soybean Oil, Salt, Mono- & Diglycerides, Annatto Extract Color, Calcium Disodium Edta [Preser vative], Artificial Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate) – Another easy one. I bet margarine is both used in the cookie and the frosting. However, I also bet that it is used instead of butter because it’s cheaper and more shelf stable. Butter will actually yield a more tender cookie, which is exactly what we are trying to achieve.
Eggs – Totally self-explanatory
Corn Starch – Another deceiving ingredient. Is it for the cookie or the icing? Since confectioners sugar is a mix of very fine sugar mixed with cornstarch, I am going to guess this is part of the confectioner’s sugar that goes in the frosting.
Water – This one is tricky. I know I add a bit of water to buttercream to help loosen it a bit, so maybe that’s what it’s for.
Vegetable Oil (Palm Kernel Oil And/Or Palm Oil And/Or Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil [Cottonseed And/Or Soybean Oil]) – This is another tricky one. Oil is sometimes added to cookies to make them a bit more tender. And since these cookies are definitely tender, I’ll bet it’s added to the cookie dough for that very reason.
Dextrin – This is a thickening agent that is probably used for the icing so that it stays on the cookie and doesn’t melt or slide off.
Soy Lecithin (Emulsifier) – If you read your labels carefully, you will realize that this ish is in everything! As you can tell by the parenthetical it is used as an emulsifier so that the water and fats stay together and don’t separate. Probably for the icing.
Natural & Artificial Flavors – While they don’t explicitly say what flavors (gotta keep some secrets), it’s almost certainly vanilla and maybe almond extract.
Skim Milk – The use of skim milk surprises me since I find that whole milk is certainly better for baking. But I am not exactly sure where it fits in. I’ll bet that it’s in the dough as another way to keep the cookies moist. If it were added to the frosting, it wouldn’t be shelf stable.
Confectioner’s Glaze (Lac Resin) – This is a baking wax that helps certain ingredients set, like butter, margarine, or chocolate. I’ll bet this is used to help keep the frosting shelf stable.
Leavening (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Sulfate, Monocalcium Phosphate) – We all know what baking soda is, but what about those other two items? Guess what, that’s baking powder! Sodium Aluminum Sulfate and Monocalcium Phosphate are the compounds that make baking powder. And we know, specifically, a baking powder that contains aluminum.

And that’s about where I am going to stop because the rest of the ingredients are just the colors to help the cookies look a certain way.

But holy cow, that is a lot of ingredients for a simple cookie, right?

And you know what I didn’t see on that list? Sour cream, heavy cream, or shortening. Actually, most of the ingredients look like the very same ingredients in my favorite sugar cookie recipe. Shocking!

(Note the sarcasm).

How to Make Them

Okay, now that we know what ingredients go into the cookies we can figure out how to actually make them!

Lucky for you, I’ve already done that part.

You’re welcome.

First, cream together the butter (or margarine) and sugar making sure to get the butter super light and fluffy because the air bubbles will help to keep the cookies pillowy soft.

Next add in the oil, milk, and egg. The oil and milk add a bit more fat and moisture to the cookies so they don’t dry out as much.

Then add in the vanilla and almond extracts for flavor.

The last step is to mix in the flour. I strongly encourage you to use cake flour instead of all-purpose flour because it does make a huge difference.

Regular all-purpose flour has a higher protein content than cake flour which means that it can become a bit tougher and crunchy. That’s perfectly fine for any other cookie, but not these. You want them to be super soft! So go with the cake flour!

(If you don’t want to go out and buy cake flour, here is how you can make your own substitute)

For even more airiness, sift the flour, baking soda, and baking powder into the bowl then mix everything together until just incorporated.

The best part about these cookies is that they require no rolling out or cutting. Just scoop out balls of dough, roll them between the palms of your hands, then press them down to flatten ever so slightly.

Bake the cookies at 325 for about 12 minutes, until they are just barely starting to brown around the edges.

Now, resist the urge to scarf down a cookie immediately out of the oven. Actually, while they are warm, you may think they are TOO soft! They will just fall right apart. But once they cool, they will be perfectly soft and pillowy in the center, with a slight crunch around the outside.

While you wait for them to cool, you can make your frosting.

How to Make the Frosting

The Lofthouse cookie frosting is obviously made with lots of stabilizers and preservatives, as we can see in the list above. That is needed for those cookies since they sit on the shelf for God knows how long before we actually buy them and eat them.

Since I certainly don’t bake with dextrin and soy lecithin, and I assume you don’t either, we are just going to make a classic American buttercream to add to the top of our cookies.

To make the frosting, beat together soft butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and a bit of water until super creamy and fluffy.

If it’s too dry or crumbly, add a bit more water.

If you want to add some color to your frosting, add a couple drops and mix in.

Then spread the frosting over top of the cooled cookies and decorate however you like!

I like to top off my frosted sugar cookies with some sprinkles because that’s how you would find them in the store.

Now they are especially fun and festive.

But more importantly, they are super soft, sweet, and delicious! Just like the Lofthouse cookies, I would find at the store.

Somehow, these taste even better because of that one secret ingredient…

…love.

Too cheesy?

I know, I rolled my eyes at myself.

The real secret ingredient, in my opinion, is the lack of additives and preservatives. There is just something about a cookie you know isn’t going to last for weeks that just tastes so wonderful!
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How to Pipe Perfect Icing

February 26, 2018

I have taught dozens of cookie decorating classes. Even before teaching strangers, I was teaching my friends how to decorate cookies. And from all of those experiences, there is one thing I see people struggle with most. And, not to mention, something that I struggled with for a long time.

How to pipe perfect icing.

What do I mean by that?

A perfectly iced cookie is one with a flat, even layer of icing that perfectly covers every single inch of the surface of the cookie. If you go to a bakery where they sell decorated cookies, follow cookie decorators on Instagram, or pin decorated cookies on Pinterest, then you are probably familiar with what I am talking about.

Actually, in order to describe what I mean, maybe it’s best to show you what a perfectly iced cookie IS NOT.

The three images above all demonstrate that lumpy, bumpy, uneven icing that I am referring to. The bumps are pretty obvious in the pumpkin cookies, but I promise they are there in the star cookie, also!

And these three cookies demonstrate that flat, even, and thick layer of icing that now comes naturally thanks to my four tips below.

How to Pipe Perfect Icing

Tip No. One:

Outline your entire cookie with either piping consistency icing or flood consistency icing.

THEN WAIT!

Yes, waiting is trick numero uno. You want your outline to harden slightly before filling it with the cookie (you only need to wait about 1 minute for piping consistency icing and 2-3 minutes for flood consistency icing). This creates a barrier for your fill icing so that you don’t have to worry as much about over filling and icing dripping down the sides. Also, by filling with more icing, you are ensuring that you have a perfectly flat surface.

Tip No. Two:

Fill the outline you have just created with flood consistency icing so that almost no cookie is showing underneath.

As you will know from my Royal Icing post, flood consistency icing is icing that flows back into itself in about 10 to 15 seconds after running a knife over the surface. To achieve a perfectly flat surface, I tend towards 10 seconds.

10-second icing will be so fluid that the icing will just start to run together and fill the entire surface area you created with your outline without you even having to touch it.

Which leads me to tip number three…

Tip No. Three:

Touch the icing sparingly.

When you watch my videos, you will see me use a scribe tool (that yellow thing in the top right corner) to move the icing around to help fill the outline. I try to do this as little and as quickly as possible.

If you have done trick number two correctly, you will need to do very little work at this point. The icing should be almost completely covering the cookie with little help from you.

You may wonder why this is such a problem. Well, let me tell you!

The icing starts to dry immediately when it’s exposed to the air. After about a minute, the icing will start to develop a skin. If you continue to move the icing around after this point, it will no longer flow back into an even surface. You will start to get drag marks and bumps. Definitely not the look you are going for.

Tip No. Four:

Pop the bubbles.

Inevitably, the icing will have a few air bubbles in it. Tapping or shaking the cookie will expose the bubbles on the surface. Use a sharp object to pop them, otherwise, they will look like blemishes on the top of your cookie once the icing has dried.

Not cute.

What Not to Do

Most of the tricks are pretty easy to understand. But it’s trick number two that holds people up. No matter how many times I tell people, “fill the cookie so that no cookie is showing underneath”, they tend to under-fill the cookie which results in a lumpy bumpy mess.

What happened in the cookie above is that 1) I didn’t add enough icing. Because of that, 2) I spent too much time messing with the icing to fill in the outline.

In the last picture, you can see the drag marks that I made in the cookie just trying to move the icing towards the edge.

Okay, I also have one other “what not to do” and that is to not use a knife or spatula to fill the cookie. This is not a technique that I use and I don’t want to use someone else’s picture and call them out, so you will just have to picture it yourself.

What I have seen some cookie decorators do is outline their entire cookie like in trick number one, above. Then they pour/spread the flood icing with an offset spatula. Sure, it’s fast and easy. And it may even work if you just have one large area like a circle, square, etc. But once you start adding in other smaller areas (the pumpkins are a good example), you are asking for trouble. The spatula spreads the icing too thin that you will see every single imperfection in the cookie as well as any others created by the icing.

Pros and Cons

There are some pros and cons to this technique.

I think the pros are pretty obvious:

A flat, even surface
No lumps, bumps, or bubbles
It is faster because you can employ the assembly line method (outline all cookies, then fill all cookies)
A thicker layer of icing

However, the cons may not be quite so obvious:

It’s not the best for beginners. This is because you can’t adjust the outline after you fill cookie. This is one of the main reasons I didn’t use this technique earlier, and why I don’t teach it to new students. If you are not used to piping royal icing, it may be very hard to pipe right on the edge of the cookie. By outlining and then filling right away, you can make corrections and adjustments to your outline if you don’t like it.
You can see the outline. If you look at the second set of photos, you can actually see the outline of the cookie. Because the outline is either a different consistency or already dried icing, the fill icing won’t totally blend in. If this is something that bothers you, then this technique may not be for you.

Summary

Well, that was lots of information for a fairly simple subject. I tend to do that sometimes. So in case you glossed over most of the content and just want the summary version, here are the highlights:

Outline the cookie and let it dry for 1-2 minutes.
Fill the cookie so that you can see almost no cookie underneath. Don’t underfill!
Spend less than 30 seconds spread the icing around.
Pop any bubbles on the surface.
Don’t use a spatula to spread icing onto the cookie.

I can almost guarantee that these tips and tricks will help you pipe perfect icing. I have seen such an improvement in my own cookies because of them. Since I was pretty much self-taught, they took me a couple years to master, but now I am sharing them with you so you don’t have to waste your time!

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Love Letter Cookies

February 7, 2018

What is better than a love letter? An edible love letter!! Who wouldn’t want to get a sweet little love note that it completely made of sugar?

I absolutely adore these cookies even though they are less than perfect. It’s those little imperfections that make them even cuter. I mean, if you look at a lined piece of paper, not all the lines are sharp or even. And neither is our handwriting (unless you are one of those amazing calligraphers, which I am most certainly not).

Another thing to love about these cookies is that they are one of the easier cookies I have made in a while. It doesn’t really require a whole lot of technique to make the lined paper look. Then once they are dry, you can just write right on top. No fancy piping skills required!

Supplies Needed:

You will need some sugar cookies in any shape you would like, but I think a square or rectangle looks best for these little love note cookies.

Don’t forget the royal icing, which you will need in three colors: white, red, and blue (I used Sky Blue by Americolor). For both the outlining and filling I used flood consistency.

Since these cookies don’t require a lot of precision, I just used standard zip-top sandwich bags for the icing. While I love using these bags because they are cheap, easy, and the icing doesn’t flow out of the top, they do have their faults (watch all the way to the end of the video to see what I am talking about).

You will also probably want to use either the rubber stamps, which I picked up at my local craft store or an edible food marker (also found at the craft store). I wanted to try out both the “typed” look and the handwritten look. I actually love both of them, so you may want to mix it up as well.

How to Make Them:

There is nothing better than a good old video to show you how I made them, right?

What do you think? Do you think you could make these for Valentine’s Day? I am positive you can! Remember, the beauty is in the imperfections!

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Almond Butter Blossoms

January 29, 2018

Ever since I was a kid, I have been a whole-hearted peanut butter fan. I love the stuff and will eat it on just about anything. But as I have gotten older, I have grown very fond of almond butter. It is now my nut butter of choice.

Don’t tell the peanuts.

And I am certainly not the only one. For so many reasons, people are eschewing the pb for the ab. Especially those who have peanut allergies. Which is exactly who I made these cookies for.

So many of my friends kids have peanut allergies now, I feel horrible that that can’t enjoy one of my favorite childhood cookies: the peanut butter blossom. Instead I made almond butter blossoms.

And guess what. They are amazing! I haven’t done much baking with almond butter, but it works perfectly as a substitute for peanut butter and adds it’s own amazing yet subtle flavor.

HOW TO MAKE THEM

Get out your flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and all those basic cookie ingredients. You will also need almond butter and honey. Yes, honey! I subtituted some of the sugar for honey which added an extra flavor that perfectly compliments the almond butter.

If you don’t have any honey, just use plain old granulated sugar.

First, cream together the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and honey.

Then mix in the almond butter. Make sure it is good and mixed in before adding in the egg.

Now it’s time to add the egg and vanilla. If you really want to ramp up the almond flavor, add 1/4 tsp almond extract. A little goes a long way, friends.

Once the egg is mixed in, but not overly mixed, add in the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. If you are using unsalted almond butter, add a pinch of salt.

Mix until it forms a stick but firm dough.

Use a spoon or a small cookie scoop to form the dough into small 1 – 1 1/2 inch sized balls. Roll the balls in between the palms of your hands to form a smooth ball.

Roll the ball in some sugar. I like to use turbinado sugar because it’s nice and coarse. But if you don’t happen to have that on hand (I wouldn’t expect you to), just roll it around in some granulated sugar.

Place the balls about 2 inches apart on a baking sheet and then pop in the oven to bake for 10 minutes, or so, until they are just barely golden brown on the bottom.

While the cookies are in the oven start unwrapping whatever chocolate you plan to use for you cookies. Since Valentine’s Day is right around the coner, I use these Dove Chocolate Hearts. But you could, of course, use Hersey Kisses or any of your other favorite chocolates.

As soon as the cookies come out of the oven they will be nice and puffy and a little cracked on top. Immediately press your unwrapped chocolate into the center of the cookie so that the cookie puffs up around the chocolate.

While there is nothing better than a cookie straight out of the oven, I would encourage you to wait to dig in, or serve, these cookies until they have cooled. The chocolate will start to melt from the hot cookie, so once the cookie cools the chocolate will start to come back to it’s original state.

Then it’s ready to eat!

Even after they have cooled, the cookies are super soft but have a little crunch on the outside thanks to that sugar.

The almond butter and honey flavors are subtle but wonderful!

These cookies are perfect for just about anyone, regardless of their love for almond butter. Even those who are loyal to peanut butter will love these cookies!

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Classic Danish Butter Cookies with a Modern Twist

December 21, 2017

Danish butter cookies are one of my favorites! I don’t know about you, but around the holidays one of those blue tins always popped up around my house. Whether we got it as a gift or bought it to give as a gift, which I would proceed to eat anyways (sorry, Mom).

This year I decided to try my hand at making my own Danish butter cookies, which turned out to be so much easier than I anticipated. The dough is just like sugar cookie dough, but not quite as dry. You want to be able to pipe it through a piping tip after all.

I also wanted to mix things up a bit and color my dough for the various shapes of the cookies. I kept it plain for the classic pretzel shape, green for the wreath, and red for the rose.

Since Thanksgiving I have been trying to think of ways I could make flower shaped cookies, using my piping tips. Little did I know the answer was right under my nose!

For the roses I used a 2D tip,the wreath a #32 tip (although you could go a tad bigger), and for the pretzel I used a #10 tip.

Now, the hardest part about these cookies is piping them. Recruit someone with strong forearms, like a baseball player, bowler, tug-of-war champion to do this part for you.

If you don’t have access to anyone like that, just use two hands to pipe out the dough.

Once they are piped, they can get sprinkled with some sugar or go straight into the oven.

While they do puff up and spread out in the oven, they still maintain their cute shapes! I mean, those roses….I love them!

I think these butter cookies will be one of my go-to Christmas cookies from here on out. Not only are they a classic, but you can give them a but of a modern touch with some food coloring and different piping tips.

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Holiday Wreath Cookies using Piping Tips

December 12, 2017

It may not surprise you to find you that I have been doing lots of holiday baking since Black Friday. Honestly, I wish I could be doing more. I had so many fun decorated cookies in mind for the holidays, but I don’t have time to do them all.

Despite that, I did find time to make some holiday wreath cookies using my favorite piped flower techniques. Really, they are no different than these floral letters I made for Fall or for Mother’s Day. I love making cookies like this using piping tips because they look very elegant and detailed, but you and I know that they are actually pretty easy!

I used the same techniques to add a flower garland to a Christmas tree and to add flowers around a royal icing banner. Piping tips are so versatile and make the cookies look professional.

The piping tips I used for these cookies were:

#14 and #24 to make roses,
#74 to make the large leaves,
#379 to make the small leaves, and
#16 to make the green star-shaped filler

For some of the cookies, I added some dots just for a bit more color and texture, but I didn’t even bother with a piping tip for those, as a zip-top bag or piping bag does the job.

There are so many fun things to do with piping tips and they are one of my favorite tools to use to decorate cookies. As you can see, they are actually pretty easy to use if you use the right consistency of icing.

Anytime I use piping tips, I use a stiff consistency icing. That means the icing is very thick. When I mix up my icing, typically I add some water to thin it down. For stiff consistency icing, I barely add water because I want the icing to form a stiff peak when I lift the spoon up from the surface.

That ensures that all those little details from the piping tip stay put and don’t settle into a blob of icing.

And if you are wondering why my cookies are green, it’s because I made my pistachio sugar cookie recipe from my Ultimate Christmas Cookie guide. But really, you could tint any cookie dough green or leave them plain.

Tools used:
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The Best Gingerbread Cookies

December 5, 2017

What is your favorite holiday cookie? Mine is gingerbread! To me, gingerbread cookies signal the Christmas season. I rarely have a gingerbread cookie between January and November, so their deliciousness reserved for that very specific time of year when my stepmom makes loads of her famous gingerbread cookies.

This year I made it my mission to perfect my gingerbread cookie recipe. I made cookies last year that were good, but not good enough in my opinion. So I took a couple lessons from my stepmom’s recipe and completely reformulated the recipe. And by that, I mean that I just changed the measurements of a couple ingredients. But it sounds pretty impressive when I say “reformulated”, doesn’t it?

Oh yeah…and I made a video!

What is a bit different in these cookies is that I used both baking soda and baking powder. I didn’t want the cookies to be so hard you would break your teeth, but I also didn’t want them puffing up and spreading out so that when I baked a gingerbread man he would end up looking like the State Puft Marshmallow Man. The combination of the two makes these cookies rise just enough that they are super soft right out of the oven. Even after a few days, they are still nice and airy and not as hard as a rock.

The other trick to getting soft, not super crunchy cookies is to roll them out rather thick. Of course, I use my favorite rolling pin bands to ensure that my cookies are all about 1/4″ thick.

After all is said and done, these cookies turn out to be perfect (in my opinion). Super flavorful without being spicy. Slightly soft without losing their shape. They are perfect for decorating, but also don’t need a lot of decoration if that’s not your jam. You can just dust them with powdered sugar or sprinkles and call it a day.

What I am saying here guys is that YOU NEED TO MAKE THESE COOKIES!

Sorry for yelling, but it’s that important to me. If you like gingerbread or know someone who does, this recipe is for you! Consider it my early Christmas gift to you. 🙂

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Panettone Slice-and-Bake Cookies

November 30, 2017

Raise your hand if you have ever had Panettone before? You know, it’s that fruit-speckled bread that they sell in the grocery store around this time of the year. You have probably confused it with fruitcake.

If I were Panettone, I would be insulted, because Panettone is actually good (seriously, someone tell me where to find a good fruitcake, because I surely haven’t found one).

It’s a delicious sweet bread that is flavored with orange zest and filled with raisins and other dried fruit. Guess what else would be delicious if it were flavored with orange zest and filled with dried fruit.

You guessed it! Cookies!

(I can turn just about anything into a cookie. If I were a superhero, that would be my superpower.)

And even better, they make excellent slice-and-bake which are great for the holidays. Just whip up a batch of dough, roll it into a log, then slice it up whenever you need cookies. But I am getting ahead of myself.

These Panettone slice-and-bake cookies get most of their flavor from a generous helping of orange zest. Like all of the orange zest. Just zest that puppy until there is no rind left. Don’t worry about measuring….it’ll be fine.

The orange zest is mixed with the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Then the flour goes in next.

Once the dough is pretty well mixed, throw in the dried fruit. I used diced up apricots and a dried berry mix that included raisins, craisins, and dried cherries. The apricots are a little stick when they are cut up, so toss them in a little bit of powdered sugar before adding them to the dough.

Mix all the fruit into the dough until they are evenly dispersed throughout. Then transfer the dough to a sheet of plastic wrap and roll into a nice log and find a nice place for it in your freezer.

If you want to bake these cookies immediately, well you can skip the slicing step and just spoon them onto a baking sheet. Or you can wait 30 minutes and slice them into 1/2 inch discs and pop them in the oven. You just want to wait long enough for the dough to be pretty firm so that it slices cleanly and easily.

Or you can leave the dough in there until you need it. I wouldn’t wait any longer than 2 weeks (make sure to wrap it up really well if you plan on keeping it in the freezer longer than a few hours) because then you risk the dough picking up any of that freezer stank or general freezer burn. But mostly the former.

Once these cookies come out of the oven, they will be nice and golden brown around the edges, but still nice and soft in the middle.

These cookies were very different than most cookies I make which are either just plain sugar cookies, loaded with chocolate, filled with caramel, etc. This is certainly the first cookie I have made that had dried apricots!

Which, by my estimation makes these cookies healthy! I’m sure you can get a full serving of fruit in if you eat enough of them (*Clearly I am not a nutritionist, so please don’t actually try to eat these cookies for their nutritional value).

Either way, make these cookies for the holidays in place of that dreaded fruitcake, or even in place of the much more appetizing Panettone. It’s like you made your very own Panettone loaf without all the hard work!

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Caramel Apple Oatmeal Cookies

November 14, 2017

A couple weekends ago I put out an Instagram poll asking folks what I should bake over the weekend. Most people voted between pumpkin pie, apple pie, cookies, and Rice Krispie treats (so, just about everything I posted last week). One follower had a very specific request: Caramel Apple Walnut Oatmeal Cookies.

I mean, those just sounded too good NOT to make so I added it to my list of baking experiments.

Fortunately for all of us, they turned out amazing! Imagine a soft oatmeal cookie wrapped around a hunk of gooey caramel. Oh baby! Fresh from the oven, there is nothing better!

I started off by making a basic oatmeal cookie dough. But I replaced 1/2 cup of butter with shredded apple. To shred the apple, I took the apple straight to a box grater and grated it until I hit the core. The shredded apple adds lots of flavor, some moisture, and cuts out some of the fat from the butter! You could almost call these cookies somewhat healthy.

Except for that huge chuck of caramel right in the middle. That really negates any of the health-factor from the apples.

I scooped out balls of the cookie dough and stuck a caramel square right in the middle. Then I covered up the caramel with a bit more dough and rolled it into a ball.

After a quick stop in the oven these cookies are ready for the taking! I highly recommend only letting these puppies cool for a few minutes so that you can enjoy them while the caramel is still ooey gooey.

However, they are still perfectly yummy at room temperature, but the caramel will just be chewy instead of gooey.

If you don’t want one chunk of caramel in the middle of the cookie, you could instead add caramel chips. That was actually the original recommendation by the follower who posted this recipe idea. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any caramel chips and was too lazy to go to the store, so caramel squares it was!

It basically comes down to whether you want caramel disbursed throughout your cookie or one caramel center surprise.

There are no wrong answers. It’s caramel. And apples! And cookies! Those will always be the right answer in my book!

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10 Treats to Make with Leftover Halloween Candy

November 2, 2017

Halloween may be over, but I would guess you still have lots of candy left over at your house. The problem becomes, what do you do with all that leftover candy?! Except eat it, of course!

When I was a kid, my parents would ration my candy and let me have a few pieces here or there. Funny thing, though, somehow the candy stash didn’t last as long as I thought it would. I wonder where all that candy ended up, mom?

Now as an adult, I try to find ways to get rid of the candy as fast as possible because I know if it’s left around long enough, I will just eat it. For the past couple Halloweens I have tried to find ways to make other treats using the leftover Halloween candy. One year I made a Halloween candy bark, which was as easy as melting chocolate and tossing chopped up candy on top. Another year I mixed them into some cookie dough.

Surprisingly, there are lots of things you can do with leftover Halloween candy other than eating it. I found 10 that look really delicious and quite easy in case you are like me and trying to get rid of all your candy.

1. Loaded Brownies (above) by yours truly.

2. Loaded Peanut Butter Cookie Bars by Pass the Cookies

3. Candy Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars by Joy, Food, Sunshine

4. Candy Bar Trifle by Lil Luna

5. Candy Corn Soft Batch Cookies by Averie Cooks

6. No Churn Snickers Cheesecake Ice Cream by Cook with Manali

7. Halloween Candy Cookie Cake by Baker by Nature

8. Butterfinger Pie by Life in the Lofthouse

9. Reece’s Marshmallow Peanut Butter Chip Cookies by Oh Sweet Basil

10. Trick or Treat Pretzels by 30 Handmade Days And if you still have leftover candy, just send a little bit my way! Please and thank you.

Brown Butter Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

October 27, 2017

I look for any excuse to bake. I’ll sign up for any bake sale or office party potluck if it means I can bake something. I often use my Small Group and Book Club as unsuspecting guinea pigs for my new recipes. For instance, my Book Club was the taste testers for these brown butter chocolate chunk cookies. I knew they were a hit when i walked in with 18 cookies and left with none. There were only 6 of us. We each had 3 cookies.

Yes, they were that good! I couldn’t wait to share the recipe on the blog.

Brown butter is a beautiful thing! It’s just melted butter that has slightly….well….browned, which creates this amazingly rich flavor. The butter no longer tastes like butter. It takes on a nutty, toffee-like flavor that perfectly compliments…well…everything.

Brown butter can be used in place of normal butter in lots of different recipes. For these cookies, I mixed in the liquefied butter just like I would a stick of softened butter. My only tip is to wait until it cools just a bit. You don’t want to mix the eggs into hot butter.

Once the eggs vanilla, flour, and other dry ingredients are mixed in, it’s just like your average cookie dough.

95% of the time I would use chocolate chips in my cookies. 5% of the time I don’t have chocolate chips on hand. But it reminds me how great chocolate chunks are in cookies! There are small pieces that just mix right into the dough and the larger pieces that create melted pockets of chocolate all through the cookie.

There are two tips I have learned over the years to make excellent chocolate chip (or chocolate chunk) cookies. The first is to freeze the balls of dough before baking.

To accomplish this, I scoop out my dough on to a small baking sheet and then pop it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.

Once they are frozen, I move them to a bigger sheet and give them a bit more space. Then pop them in the oven.

The second tip is to sprinkle the unbaked cookie dough balls with flakey sea salt. Seriously, if there is one thing you take away from this post its this! Sea salt and any chocolate chip cookie takes it to the next level.

Out of the oven they look fairly unassuming, like ordinary CCCs. But these brown butter chocolate chunk cookies are not ordinary. They are extraordinary! Rhe best part is, people won’t really know why they are different, but they will definitely taste the difference.

The brown butter clearly sets these cookies apart, adding a subtle nutty flavor. Then the large chunks melted chocolate lightly dusted with sea salt just push these cookies over the edge.

Promise me, just make them, give them to your friends, and then sit back and bask in the glory that will inevitably be rained down upon you.

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Sugar-Free Sugar Cookies

October 24, 2017

If there is one thing you can find in abundance on this blog, it’s sweets. And I don’t discriminate, I like sweets of all kinds – cookies, cupcakes, cakes, brownies, ice cream. But I do like balancing my sweet tooth with a healthy diet (most of the time). Sometimes I can have the best of both worlds and have my sweets but also be healthy.

Case in point: sugar-free sugar cookies.

Now, I know what you are thinking. How can you make a sugar cookie without sugar? While there may not be any refined sugar in these cookies, there are some all natural sweeteners (agave syrup and Stevia) in these cookies that give them their classic sweetness without the sugar rush.

In addition, the cookies are made with some whole wheat pastry flour which really amps up the healthy factor. Almost making these cookies guilt free. Almost.

These sugar-free sugar cookies already have the sugar-free thing and whole wheat flour going for them, but, in addition, they also use half as much butter as my classic sugar cookie. Thanks to the moisture provided by the agave syrup, you only need a half a cup of butter to make a full batch of cookies.

To make the cookies, I start by mixing together the butter, agave, and stevia. Then I add the egg and vanilla. After that, I mix in the whole wheat pastry flour.

You could also use plain all-purpose flour or normal whole wheat flour. Just be warned that by using 100% normal whole wheat flour you will end up with a distinct whole wheat taste. If that doesn’t bother you then go for it! If it does, I recommend finding some whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat flour or mix in half all-purpose and half whole wheat to still get the whole wheat benefit.

One great thing about this dough is that it can be rolled out immediately if you are short on time. But I prefer to wrap my dough in plastic wrap and to let it chill for about an hour before rolling it out. This not only helps the flour soak up some of the moisture, but it makes it a lot easier to roll and cut out.

Normally when I roll out my dough, I just roll it out right on my pastry board with a little bit of flour. But because this dough is a little on the dry side (whole wheat flour tends to do that) I want to use as little flour as possible. To roll out my dough without it sticking to anything, I roll it between two sheets of parchment paper and a tiny sprinkling of flour. Of course, I could do this with my normal sugar cookies, but I am just too lazy.

Then I cut out my cookies as normal and pop them in the oven to bake.

These cookies are perfect for decorating because they keep their shape really well, but are also really light and fluffy thanks to the agave syrup. For decorating these cookies, in keeping with the sugar-free theme, I made a batch of this sugar-free buttercream frosting. I did attempt to make sugar-free royal icing…but I am pretty sure that is impossible. You just need some sugar to make the icing work.

Full disclosure, though, the sprinkles are 100% sugar. I struggled to find any sugar-free sprinkles and decided in the end that cookies with 99% less sugar than a normal frosted sugar cookie is pretty dang good. Of course, if you are looking to eliminate all the refined sugar, you can just skip the sprinkles. Or make your own.

These cookies will be perfect for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, you name it. You can frost them with sugar-free frosting, or use my favorite royal icing (which is basically pure sugar) if you are just looking to cut out a little bit of sugar.

I am so happy to have this recipe in my back pocket now. Next time I make cookies for my friends’ kids (or myself) I will certainly use this recipe to cut out some sugar and make my cookies a bit more healthy!
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