Follow the Ruels

Preppy Onesie Baby Shower Cookies

This past weekend I was back in my hometown of San Diego for not one but two baby showers! One was for my oldest friend and the other was for ME! 

For my first baby shower, I couldn’t help but make cookies to take with me all the way to California. It definitely helped that the baby shower invitations were just so dang cute, it gave me lots of inspiration.

Recipes and Supplies

To make these cookies yourself, you will need:

Both will be enough to make about 18 cookies (depending on size). If you plan on making any more, I would multiply the recipe accordingly. 

You will also need:

For the icing, I recommend splitting the blue and the white icings into piping consistency and flood consistency. To ensure they are the same color, tint a large bowl of icing before thinning it down. Then thin it down to your desired piping consistency (it should fall off a spoon, but still hold a little bit of a peak) and portion part of the icing into a piping bag. Then thin the rest of the icing down to flood consistency (it falls off the spoon and settles back into the icing within 10-15 seconds) and spoon into a separate bag. 

I use the piping consistency to outline all the cookies and to add details. The flood consistency is used to fill the entire cookie.

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How to Make Them

I just thought they were so adorable! Perfect for a little baby boy, don’t you think!?

Watercolor Ice Cream Cookies

Even though it seems like Summer is winding down, it is certainly heating up around these parts (literally). We are pushing triple digits here in Georgia, which I know most of the rest of the country is all too familiar with. 

I’m looking at you, Texas. 

While actual ice cream would be just as good (if not better for these scorching Summer temps), I thought it would be fun to make some ice cream inspired cookies to get us through these dog-days of Summer. 

Recipes and Supplies

Of course, you will need some sugar cookies cut out into your favorite ice cream shapes. You could use my basic sugar cookie recipe, but I think one of my Summer sugar cookie recipes would be even better (shameless plug). 

You will also want to make a batch of royal icing thinned down to flood consistency icing. 

Since these are painted cookies, you will also need some gel food coloring in your favorite ice cream colors, paint brushes, and a little clear alcohol.

To make the edible watercolors, add one or two drops of food coloring to a plate or paint pallet, then add in a couple drops of alcohol. Stir the two together with your paintbrush until you have a nice watercolor paint. 

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How to Make Them

Start by outlining and filling each cookie with white icing, letting the icing dry completely before painting. 

Then start painting!

These turned out so much cuter than I could have hoped! I think I found a new favorite cookie to paint!

What do you think?

World Cup Sugar Cookies

By the time this is posted, one team has already been eliminated from the tournament. 

I blame my poor time management on my husband (of course) who told me that the first game of the semifinals was on Wednesday, not Tuesday. 

(Let’s not focus on the fact that there are plenty of other, more credible, sources of World Cup scheduling information that are easy to come by.)

Regardless, I have been excited to make these cookies since the World Cup started. We are avid soccer football fans in this household, so we have watched just about every weekend game, and some of the weekday games. 

While our team (zie Germans) didn’t get very far this year, we have enjoyed watching some old and new favorites duke it out on the pitch. It’s also been fun for me to sit back and relentlessly mock the players who seem to get hurt so easily (<cough>Neymar). 

But I better not waste any more time or else another team will have been eliminated by the time I get around to showing you how I made these fun World Cup sugar cookies. 

Supplies and Recipes

For these cookies, you will need:

  • Cookies cut into circles, jerseys/shirts, and a speech bubble.
  • Royal icing in black (both piping and flood), white, red, blue (light and dark), and yellow
  • A print out image of a soccer ball approximately the same size as your cookie
  • Plain white tissue paper
  • Food marker
  • Piping bags or zip-top bags
  • Toothpick or scribe tool

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How to Make Them

Oddly enough, the soccer balls were the hardest of the cookies to make. Something about the combination of pentagons and hexagons makes it really hard to draw freehand. 

Fortunately, I have a trick to getting the perfectly patterned soccer ball: tracing!

You can see in the video that I use a piece of tissue paper to trace over the image with a food marker. Then I trace the tracing (follow me?) onto the cookie through the tissue. 

I have better pictures to demonstrate the technique here. 

Other than the soccer balls, the rest of the cookies were pretty straightforward. The jerseys can be as simple or as detailed as you’d like. You can see I added some additional details to the emblems, but that certainly isn’t necessary. 

So, who do you think is going to win the whole thing? I don’t really want to jinx anything, but I think it will be one of these four teams.

 

Fondant Flower Sugar Cookies

Disclaimer: Wilton provided me with their new decorating kits and other supplies in exchange for a blog post about their new products. However, all thoughts and opinions in this post are my own.

Fondant isn’t just for wedding cakes anymore!

Well, you guys know that already. I have been using fondant on cookies for a while now (exhibit 1, 2, 3). But these cookies take fondant to a whole new level, IMO, thanks to the Wilton Fondant Shapes and Cutout Kit. 

I was so inspired by the photo on the front of the box that I was dying to make a similar cake. But, sometimes I need to know my strengths (and weaknesses), and I knew I could execute a similar look on a cookie. 

The cookies were a lot of fun to create, and actually kind of therapeutic. Working with fondant is a lot like working with modeling clay. It can be very forgiving and if you mess up, you can just roll it up and try again. These cookies are definitely something that just about anyone can recreate with the right tools!

How to Make Them

Start by dying fondant in the desired shades of colors. A little fondant goes a long way, so you may only need a gumball (or smaller) -sized ball of fondant per color. 

To dye the fondant, dab a tiny amount of gel food coloring onto the fondant. Then using your hands, stretch and knead the fondant until the color is evenly incorporated. If the color is too light, add additional food coloring.

Tip: Use food-safe gloves to prevent getting food coloring all over your skin. 

Roll out the fondant with the fondant roller and the thinnest of the roller bands. Punch out various sized flowers and leaves. 

Place the cut-out flowers onto the foam and press down using the ball tool to create a more dimensional flower. 

To add some more dimension and color, brush some pink luster dust in the center of the flower. Add a little ball of the same or different color fondant to the center of the flower. Attach with a dab of water. 

To add a little more detail to the leaves, use the smaller end of the ball tool to roll around the edges. Use a toothpick to add a little line down the center. 

Allow to dry and harden while you work on the next step.

To create the striped fondant, dye a small ball of fondant a light blue (or your color of choice). Roll out the blue fondant using the fondant roller, then cut into equal sized strips. 

Roll out the plain white fondant and attach the strips of colored fondant with a little bit of water. 

Place a piece of parchment on top of the fondant and roll out the fondant with the fondant roller and widest fondant roller guide. 

Cut out the fondant using the same sized cookie cutter as the cookies the fondant will be placed on. 

Tip: Work in small batches because once your roll out the striped fondant, you will not be able to re-roll it and maintain the stripes. 

Attach the fondant to the cookie by brushing a little bit of water onto the back of the fondant then sticking it to the cookie. Use your finger to smooth out the top and edges of the fondant. 

There is not a lot of rhyme or reason for placing the flowers on the cookie. I like to start by adding the biggest flowers first, then adding smaller flowers around it. 

I also like to make sure that the arrangement is asymmetrical. So if there is one large center flower with two small flowers on one side, I won’t add two flowers to the other. I will make sure the two sides are not balanced which will make it look a bit more natural. 

“Glue” the flowers onto the cookies with a bit of stiff consistency royal icing. 

Layer the flowers and leaves until you are happy with the arrangement. Allow the royal icing to dry for about 15-20 minutes before stacking or packaging. 

Tools and Recipes

As I mentioned above, almost all of the tools I used came from the How to Decorate with Fondant Shapes and Cut-Outs including the fondant cutters, the fondant roller, the ball tool, and the foam.

I also used Wilton fondant in white and their gel food coloring, both of which I already had on hand but they had provided me with extras. 

For the exact colors of the flowers and leaves, I used very small amounts of the following colors:

  • Pink + Red
  • Pink + Brown
  • Pink + Orange + Brown
  • Orange + Pink
  • Leaf Green + Blue
  • Leaf Green + Brown

Then, of course, I left one ball of fondant just plain white. In all of the cases, the first color listed was the main color, then I added a tiny amount of the second color just to add a different tint. It’s a little bit of trial and error. 

The cookies themselves were made with a version of my favorite sugar cookie recipe. I am still working on perfecting the flavor, but my basic cookie is always a winner. Or you could try the lavender-vanilla recipe (scroll to the bottom of the post for the recipe) for a nice floral twist. 

 

 

 

Surprise Announcement Cookies

EEEEEEKKKKK!!

I have been eagerly awaiting this post for months! It has been so hard to keep this secret, but I think it’s finally time…

And in true form, I figured the best way to do it would be in cookie form. 

So….

…there you have it!

We are pregnant! 

Was that the surprise you were expecting? Maybe not. But for those of you who were wondering why I have been a little absent from the blog and Instagram over the past couple months, or why I stopped posting about my half marathon training…you have your answer.

Okay, so where should I begin?

How about with the pregnancy test? We found out we were pregnant on Master’s Sunday, which is perfect for my golfer husband. He will never forget the day he found out he would become a dad. 

He knew I was going to take a pregnancy test, so when I returned with a blank stare on my face he asked “are you pregnant” and I responded with “maybe?”. 

Even though I was the one that thought I was mentally prepared to become pregnant, he was the one that seemed the most excited. He thought it was great news, whereas I was treating it like a nasty rumor I was trying not to believe. In fact, I didn’t really believe it until it was confirmed by the doctor.

The first couple of weeks went by with no issues and I thought I was going to have a super easy pregnancy. By week 6 or 7, I started feeling horrible. Just so tired and nauseated almost all the time. 

Billy knew I wasn’t feeling well when I would just stay in bed until after he left for work. Normally, I am up out of bed before him to get my day started. Some days I would just sit in bed and eat crackers until 9 am. 

Also, sweet foods sounded disgusting to me! (Hense why I barely posted anything between the end of April and mid-May.) 

Actually, anything that wasn’t super bland and beige sounded pretty horrible to me. 

By week 10 I started feeling a bit better. Still a bit low energy but the nausea had mostly dissipated. Week 10 also happened to coincide with Mother’s Day, which was perfect because I finally started to feel confident that we could tell people. So for Mother’s Day we told my mom, who was so excited. She has been bugging me for grandchildren since we got married, so “Happy Mother’s Day, mom!” You got your wish. 

Our trip to California was soon after, which is when we told my dad and stepmom. 

By the time we left for Italy, I was feeling pretty much back to normal. Thank you second trimester!

I felt really good during most of our trip and only had a couple bouts where I clearly overdid it the day before. I mean, we were averaging 20k steps a day. This coming off of 3 weeks where I barely got 5k a day!

But Italy isn’t a bad place to be for a pregnant lady who craves carbs! I ate all of the pasta and pizza I could get my hands on. I only had to be a little careful around certain cheeses and meats. And wine…dang baby!

Now I am about 16 weeks along. The baby is the size of an avocado if you are curious. 

That means that the baby is due in early December. Or whenever it decides to make its debut. If it’s anything like its parents, then it will be stubborn and come whenever the heck it wants. 

So that’s it! Were you surprised?

Be prepared for some more baby related baking posts in the near future. Like a gender reveal of some kind or another. What would you like to see, a cake, cookies, cupcakes? Something completely different? 

In the meantime, feel free to send me any of your favorite baby products. I am in the middle of setting up a registry and it’s a bit overwhelming. So any advice is welcome!

 

 

Donut Cookies

Who doesn’t like donuts? 

Who doesn’t like cookies?

Then I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t like these adorable donut cookies, which are perfect for National Donut day! They are just so cute and were so easy to make!

Supplies and Recipes

For these cookies, you will need:

  • Cookies shaped like donuts, which I cut out using a large circle cutter and a small circle cutter.
  • Royal icing thinned to flood consistency in light brown, dark brown, pink, and white
  • Piping bags or zip-top bags
  • Sprinkles or jimmies
  • Toothpick or scribe tool

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How to Make Them

Outline the cookie with light brown flood consistency icing. Let the outline dry for about 1 minute. 

Fill in the entire outline with flood consistency icing. Use a scribe tool or toothpick to pop any bubbles. Then let crust over for at least 10 minutes, if not longer.

Outline the frosting in pink, dark brown, or white (or any other color) flood consistency royal icing. Let the outline dry for about a minute. 

Fill the outline with flood consistency icing.

Immediately sprinkle on sprinkles.

Now if you can’t decide between a donut and a cookie, you don’t have have to choose!

They are perfect with a cup of coffee!

Embossed Marbled Sugar Cookies

There comes a time when even I get a little tired of decorating cookies. And that time comes after decorating (1,2,3,4,5,6) six different sets of Easter-ish cookies. I just needed a little break from all that icing. 

Thankfully, you don’t need icing to make a pretty cookie. In the case of the embossed marbled sugar cookies you just need an engraved rolling pin and some food coloring!

How to Make Them

These are so easy, guys, and a great baking project for the kiddos! 

Start by separating your dough out into thirds. Dye one of the thirds a dark shade of your favorite color, dye one a light shade, and leave one totally plain. 

In my case, I added about 2 drops of gel food coloring to my darker ball, and a tiny drop to the light ball. I worked the dough between my fingers until the food coloring was completely mixed in.

Roll the balls into strips and lay all the strips next to each other. Then fold the strips in to form one big cookie dough sausage. I am pretty sure that’s a technical term. Don’t look it up.

Give the cookie dough a twist and a turn to marble all the colors together. 

Then roll the dough out with a normal rolling pin before rolling over it with the engraved rolling pin.

Now, I have come up with a super awesome trick that will ensure that you get a good roll every time!

Add rolling pin bands (if you have them) to both your normal rolling pin and your engraved rolling pin. Add the thickest band you have to the normal pin, and the next thickest to the engraved pin.

This will ensure that you put just the right amount of pressure on the cookie dough to get a perfectly embossed cookie.

Before I figured out this trick my cookies were coming out very unevenly and I wasn’t putting enough pressure on the cookie dough with the engraved rolling pin so the pattern wasn’t coming out well.

You definitely want to be able to see all the details of the rolling pin because the cookie will flatten a bit in the oven.

But if you roll it well, you will have beautiful embossed marbled sugar cookies that are perfect for Easter or any time of year. Just change the shape of your cookie cutter and you have yourself a pretty birthday cookie, 4th of July cookie, Christmas cookie….the possibilities are endless.

I just really like these for Easter. The marbled effect of the dough makes them sort of look like eggs that have been dyed the old-fashioned way. And the embossing makes them look very elegant and refined. 

Recommended Tools

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Recipe

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Floral and Moss Easter Bunny Cookies

If you know anything about me, you probably know that I love a good floral cookie. It’s kind of my go-to (because it’s actually easier than it looks). Whichever way I can put a flower on a cookie, I have tried. Well, I thought I tried, until now. 

Meet the new floral decorating technique….

Actually, I have no idea what to call it, any ideas? 

Some people will call this technique brush embroidery. And I suppose that’s probably how I should classify it. But I think of this technique more as painting with icing (as opposed to my usual watercolor mix). Whatever we call it, I certainly think they are pretty, don’t you?

Oh, and you can’t forget about the little moss covered bunnies. Now those are easy! And just as cute, don’t you think?

How to Make Them

What I love about these floral Easter bunny cookies is that they have dimension. That is something that you just can’t get with painting! 

My husband’s favorite is the moss Easter bunny cookie. Even though it’s simple, it still is adorable, and I think it goes perfectly with the floral design as sort of a little garden Easter bunny cookie set.

Why I love the moss Easter bunny so much is because it’s easy! While I love making the floral pattern, it is time-consuming, so it’s nice to have some simple cookies to balance them out. 

But this little guy still has my heart!

Recipes and Products Used

As usual, these sugar cookies are my favorite sugar cookies which means they are just flavored with vanilla and almond extract. But I think Easter is the perfect time to break out some other cookie flavors! Even just adding some different extracts like lemon, lavender, pistachio, or coconut. Or, you can flavor them with some of your favorite berries, like strawberry or raspberry. Just check out my Summer cookie collection. 

For the royal icing, I added a touch of almond extract, which is something I rarely do. But I really liked it. Another go-to in the Spring and Summer is adding some lemon juice or lemon extract. It really makes the flavors pop!

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Super Soft Sugar Cookies (Lofthouse Style)

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 Make Marbled Cookies

Okay, guys, this has been a much requested and long awaited tutorial! I promised to show you how to make marbled cookies back when I made one of my first videos ever, the Laduree Macarons. But today is the day. Consider it my Valentine’s Day gift to you!

Marbling cookies is one of my absolute favorite decorating techniques because it’s just so gosh darn easy. Literally, anyone can do it. I know I say that a lot (because I believe anyone can really do anything) but I really mean it this time. 

There is absolutely no method, no skill, no nothing involved. If you can squeeze, stir, and dip you can make these marbled cookies

How to Make Them

You heard me. Squeeze, stir, and dip? Got it? 

Lesson over. 

Just kidding!! I figured a video of me making marbled cookies would probably help!

One thing I will mention because I didn’t make it clear in the video is that the white, grey, and black icings are all flood consistency icing. You want the icing to be very fluid so that it settles into a flat surface on top of the cookie. 

Tools Needed:

Another reason to love these cookies is that you don’t really need anything special to make them, as you can see in the video. Everything you will need I bet you already have at home.

If you did want to get all fancy and paint some gold on top, this is my favorite gold paint. 

Alright, raise your hand if you think you can make these cookies. Everyone’s hand should be up!

But I highly encourage you to have fun with this technique and play with the colors and the amount of color. As I mentioned in the video, you can do lots of different things with this and just make it your own!

As usual, I made my favorite sugar cookie recipe and royal icing recipe. 

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The Ultimate Christmas Cookie Guide

Thanksgiving was only a few days ago. Heck, it’s not even December!!  But I have wasted no time getting into the holiday spirit. My Christmas tree is up! I have already checked a couple people off of my Christmas list, and I have done lots and lots of holiday baking (already!).

Actually, the holiday baking I have been doing has been recipe testing for my brand new Christmas Cookie Guide. Last year, I put together a very intensive post on how to decorate the perfect Christmas cookie. This year I wanted to create all-new recipes that will make your Christmas cookies stand out from the crowd!

For this guide, I created 12 brand new sugar cookie recipes (in addition to 3 of my classics). It includes recipes like golden chai-spiced, pistachio, Christmas spice, peppermint mocha, and Mexican chocolate.

Oh yeah…they are good.

In addition to that, I have added some flavor alternatives to the basic vanilla royal icing. These flavors will pair perfectly with all of the cookie recipes included in the guide. In fact, I tell you exactly how I would pair each flavor and cookie!

So really, you are getting over 50 Christmas cookie combinations for the low low price of $1.99. Okay, that may be stretching it a bit. But I still think 15 cookies recipes for less than $2 is a steal!

Now you will have everything you need to make amazing Christmas cookies that will blow your friends and family away. 

Stay tuned throughout December to see all the various ways I decorate these cookies!

 

 

Halloween Silhouette Cookies

Happy Halloween everyone! As an adult, I don’t get to really enjoy Halloween as much. There is really no dressing up (for me anyway). Eating lots of Halloween candy also comes with lots of Halloween guilt. And for us, we live in an area that doesn’t get any trick-or-treaters, so I can’t even live vicariously through the kids. 

But that doesn’t stop me from making lots of Halloween treats! In the past, I have made these Halloween macarons. This year I made these Halloween skulls and now these Halloween Silhouette cookies which were actually inspired by painted rocks. 

I really loved making these cookies because they were surprisingly easy! It also helped that I was already making red, orange, and yellow icing for my Houston Astros cookies. But if you have kids, these would be a great baking project to do with them. Once the icing is dry, you can give them a black edible food marker and let them draw whatever they want on top. 

Here’s what I did:

First I piped three sections of red, orange, and yellow icing from top to bottom. Then I used my scribe tool (or toothpick) to just fill in some of the empty space. After that, I took a pallet knife (a butter knife will also work) so spread the layers of icing together. This will form a semi ombre effect and also look like a bright sky at sunset. 

For some of the other cookies, I added a little dark blue at the top to really make it look like a night sky.

After the cookies dry for a couple hours, you can draw and paint right on top.

I took my inspiration from a quick Pinterest search of Halloween silhouettes to find this spooky house and the rest of the images that I used. 

For the larger images, like this house, I used black gel food coloring, slightly diluted with almond extract, to paint the house. For smaller images, like the spider web, I just used my marker.

I absolutely love these and will be making them again next Halloween for sure! There are so many fun images that you can draw on top, the options are endless. I found myself thinking of more ideas after I had run out of cookies. 

As usual, I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe and royal icing recipe. You could also make chocolate cookies, which would really amp up the colors of the sky. Or you could do pumpkin spice! 

Below are the tools that I used for these cookies.

 
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Sugar-Free Sugar Cookies

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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Baylor Homecoming Cookies

This weekend, Billy and I are off to Waco for Baylor University’s Homecoming, where Billy and I both went to school. While I have been back to Waco quite a bit over the years, even since moving to Charlotte, this is the first Homecoming we have been back to in years. So it will be a lot of fun to see old friends and sorority sisters who I may not have seen in the last 10 years. 

But it wouldn’t be an event if there I didn’t make cookies, right? Billy jokes that it didn’t happen if I didn’t put it on Instagram. Well, I think it doesn’t happen if I don’t make cookies!

The cookies were inspired by this print that I found on Etsy. I loved it so much I wanted to make it into a cookie! Since I am not artistic enough to hand draw it onto the cookie, I used the tracing method that I demonstrated here. 

I used the same method to make the Sailor Bear cookies to keep with the watercolor theme. But I do think I like these royal icing Sailor Bears I made for the Cotton Bowl better. I made those using the royal icing transfer method, where I just trace over the image with royal icing. 

To see how I made the Sailor Bear cookies, skip to minute 4:00 in the video. To see how I made the skyline cookies, skip to minute 5:27.

I’m giving away all my tricks, here. Now you know that I am actually not all that talented, I am just really good at tracing things with royal icing or a paint brush. 

My favorite cookies of the entire collection are the B-A-Y-L-O-R letter cookies. Of course, I didn’t film these cookies because they were the last ones I made. After spending a few hours making the other cookies I was at a loss of what to do for the letter cookies. Should I just ice them in green and gold icing? Should I paint them? Should I try some fun new design? No, I decided to rely on an old favorite and paint a floral pattern very similar to what I did with these Pineapple cookies. Instead of using several various colors, I just used a couple shades of green and gold. 

Now I just have to pray that they make it to Texas in one piece! 

Recipes used:

Cookie cutters used:

Supplies used:

 
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Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies

You just can’t escape it. Everywhere you look, something is flavored pumpkin spice. Coffee, candles, even peanut butter. 

Well, friends, if you are looking for some respite from the pumpkin spice overload, this is not the place. Today I am sharing my pumpkin spice sugar cookie recipe that is every bit as good as it sounds! (So good, my mother and law has already requested that her Christmas cookies are pumpkin spice flavored.) It’s my same favorite sugar cookie recipe spiced up with just the right amount of pumpkin spice. 

If you have made my sugar cookie recipe (or any cookie recipe for that matter), you know that it starts with butter and sugar. 

I like to cream the butter and sugar until it’s light and fluffy. Then I mix in the eggs and vanilla until the eggs are completely incorporated (and emulsified) into the butter.

To the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla I add in the flour and spices. Of course, most recipes will tell you to mix the flour and other dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. But I like to live life on the edge and just add them straight into the bowl with the other wet ingredients. 

For the spices, I used a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and a bit of allspice. Then I mix everything together until it’s just combined! Once the dough is ready, I form it into a disc then wrap it in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge until I am ready to roll out the dough.

I find that rolling out the dough is so much easier when the dough is a bit stiff. The cookies hold their shape much better and are less likely to stick to counter. 

To make sure all my cookies are exactly the same thickness, I use these rolling pin bands. I also love this rolling pin! 

While the cookies bake, they will fill your kitchen with the most wonderful smell. Think about how great your kitchen smells with you make normal sugar cookies. Then add pumpkin spice!

You don’t even have to decorate them, and I guarantee they will be a hit! But if you would like to decorate them, I will show you how I did it later this week! You can make them simple pumpkins or add some more fun details like burlap, flowers, and leaves. They are the perfect cookies for Fall!

 
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Water Color Fruit Cookies (+ NEW Sugar Cookie Recipes!)

I am really excited about this post for a couple of reasons. First of all, I love these cookies. They are some of my favorites to date! I have been loving this painting on cookies technique that I picked up over the past couple of months. It’s actually somewhat therapeutic to sit and paint. Plus, with watercolor, you don’t have to be so precise and exact, which I certainly appreciate! 

The second reason I love this post is that each one of the watercolor fruit cookies represents the flavor of the cookie! I have been playing around with different flavors for a couple months and settled on four that will be my (actually, you have already seen them in the rotation) my go-to cookie flavors for Summer (and probably beyond). 

But I will get to the flavors in a second. First let me show you how I painted the cookies! (P.S. It’s super easy!)

So the trick is to “water down” your food coloring with a bit of a clear alcohol or extract, like almond extract. You don’t want the color to be TOO pigmented, or else it won’t look like water color. Then I just mixed my colors until I found a shade I liked and painted directly on the dried icing. There is no science to it at all! I did have pictures of water color fruit up in front of me while I did this so I had something to work off of. But after a while, I just did what I thought looked good. 

Now back to these cookie flavors. 

I know I share a lot of sugar cookie recipes. So instead of posting all the recipes here, or sharing them one by one over the course of the Summer, I decided to put together a little mini recipe e-book with all four recipes which you can get here. Each recipe is not only delicious, but I spent a lot of time in Photoshop making them pretty, too! That way you can print them out and save them for the next time you want to make some wonderful cookies. 

The lemon cookie is lemon-mint flavored and is absolutely refreshing and delicious! The raspberry cookie is a raspberry lemonade flavor, which reminds me of my all time favorite summer drink. The strawberry is strawberry and honey flavor which is subtle and sweet. And finally the lime cookie is lime and sea salt flavored which almost tastes like a margarita! (As I was decorating, I couldn’t help but think of the Willy Wonka line “the snozeberries tastes like snozeberries!”)

Also, I should mention that these recipes are not my normal sugar cookie recipe with a couple extracts thrown in. I re-developed my sugar cookie recipe just for Summer! It’s lighter and softer than normal. Plus the flavors are all natural! They are not engineered for a flavor extract, which makes the cookies that much more wonderful and delicious! 

If you do end up downloading the e-book and trying out the recipes, I would love to know what you think. Also, if you like this idea, I already have some thoughts on another e-book for the Holidays!

 
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