Tag Archives: sugar cookies

June 7, 2011 · 10:08 pm

Sunshine Cookies!

Here in Sacramento it has been yucky weather for the last couple weeks… lots of clouds, lots of rain, and wind mixed in there too. It’s JUNE! Sacramento isn’t supposed to be like this! I had some leftover dough after doing the graduation cookies last week so I decided to make some sunshine cookies to try to make the clouds disappear and bring on our usual sunny springtime!

I used my spiderweb cookie cutter from my halloween set. And I didn’t feel like making buttercream for just 19 cookies, so I did the outlining in a thicker version of my regular icing (similar to the way the pros do it with royal icing). I used golden yellow and some orange to make them bright and cheery, then ran a toothpick through them for the “firework” look. I did each one different to make a plate of FUN unique sunshine!

Since I did each cookie different, each felt like a work of art. After I finished each one, I would make my husband come look at how beautiful it was. He was trying to play his video games and I don’t think he appreciated the interuptions every 2 minutes…

Here are a couple close-ups:

This one was my favorite…

I forgot to take a picture of the cookies on the bright red platter so I took one on my phone and it turned out TERRIBLE, so you don’t get to see it. Just imagine it looking amazing. 🙂

*The cookies worked! The sun was out all day and it got close to 80 degrees!!*

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Tagged as firework cookies, icing, sugar cookies, sun, sunshine

June 5, 2011 · 1:16 pm

Graduation Cookies!

My little brother graduated from college and I made him cookies for his graduation party. He was on the crew team and it has become a big part of his life, so I also wanted to incorporate that into the cookies. Here are the new cutters I bought for his cookies (from cheapcookiecutters.com):

The only boat they had was a canoe and he does NOT row canoes. He gets so offended if you mistakenly call it a canoe or a row boat lol. So I didn’t get a boat.

I was worried about losing the tassel of the cap, but they were easier than I thought they would be.

The oars on the other hand, were a pain in the you -know-what. They are about 4 inches long but only about 1/2 inch wide at the paddle part. the mid section is SO skinny that I had to carefully straighten them all out before I baked them. I broke lots just trying to get them off the pan. Here is what survived:

When it came time for decorating, a few more oars got broken. Good thing I made a ton of those little s**ts.

School colors are dark green and yellow/gold. (I had a hard time getting the green to get dark enough.) The oars were so small I decided not to even outline them, and it worked out okay. I just kept the icing a little farther from the edges and didn’t do too much so it wouldn’t run down.

Here are the final products:

That crew one was my favorite. Too bad it was one of the last ones I did, I would have done more like it!

I did a few funny ones for my brother… he often sat in the seat in the boat called the “stroke seat.” They are kind of like the leaders of pace. I made one that said “Stroke it!” I thought it was hilarious, until I showed my brother the picture and he informed me that I had a misspelling:

The 2- is the symbol for a 2 man race in which each guy has only 1 oar. It’s the boat my brother finished the season racing. (It’s very difficult because if one guy is pulling harder than the other, the boat turns. They have to be precisely together, and the boat is only as fast as the weaker man.) I know my brother was proud of this title, so I did a few cookies with the 2-.

The “row row row your boat” was my husband’s idea. My brother didn’t laugh.

The only platters/trays I had that were big enough for this many cookies were red, and of course not everything goes with red, so I headed to the store to get a new platter or 2 that were more color neutral. I found this serving tray at Target with handles on the sides, and it’s perfect. A couple inches tall so it could actually hold even more cookies if needed!

I officially have a second order placed! A coworker’s husband just graduated so I will be making cookies for their party. Different colors, so it will be fun!

But first, I have a baby shower to make cookies for next week!

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Tagged as buttercream, crew, graduation, green, icing, oar, rowing, sugar cookies, yellow

May 28, 2011 · 4:56 pm

Baby Cookies!

I went to a baby shower today and I wanted to make just a couple cookies to give to the parents-to-be. Plus I wanted to try out my new ONESIE cookie cutter!! I was so excited about this one. Here is the cutter:

The baby’s name will be Jude Indigo Rule, and the parents are doing everything in green and brown (rather than the traditional blue).

I had SUCH a hard time getting my brown to darken. It just looked like tan/orangish. I finally added a little black and it got much better. My buttercream turned out a lot darker than the icing though because I always forget that buttercream darkens after a few hours. Oh well they still looked so cute! There was only 4 so I came up with 4 unique saying to put on them.

The first one is “Hey! Jude” cuz well, I had to do it…

The second is “Rock ‘n Rule”…

The third I did the initials…

And the last one is “iRule”… I just thought it was a cute saying, but I found out after I gave it to the mom-to-be that that is exactly how the dad-to-be introduced himself to her when they met. “Hi, my name is Russ, and I Rule.” Haha…

I put all 4 little individual wrapped cookies in a little gift bag. I had planned on tying them to the top of the gift I was bringing, but my treat bags were shorter than I thought.

It worked out better anyways cuz other gifts ended up stacked on top of it and they would have gotten broken. And plus it started raining and we had to grab all the gifts and run them to a car. Cookies need protecting! lol.

**This is going to be a cookie summer! Coming up: graduation cookies for 2 different parties and 2 more baby showers!

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Tagged as baby shower, brown, buttercream, green, icing, onesie, polka dots, stripes, sugar cookies

May 21, 2011 · 5:29 pm

First Cookie Order

My coworker’s daughter has worked for years, in one way or another, for the republican party. It’s a huge part of her life, and she is about to leave to start a 6 month internship in DC. For her last day of work, her mom wanted to surprise her with a couple dozen custom sugar cookies made by *me!*

We ordered these cookie cutters from cheapcookiecutters.com:

I was originally going to just do the washington capital cookies plain white with white nonpariels or something… my husband said that would look dumb, so he helped me figure out which details to include and which to leave out. It was a lot of piping, but I was really happy with how they turned out. The elephants were lots of fun, I had to just google for ideas. I have star sprinkles so I just picked out all the white ones!

Here is the final product:

These may have earned me a HUGE project this summer, we will see!

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Tagged as blue, buttercream, elephant, icing, red, republican, sugar cookies, washington

April 19, 2011 · 8:54 pm

Easter Treats!

After doing a lot of online searches for cookie ideas, I decided to try a new approach with my cookies. In the past I have covered the cookies with butter knives in my icing (similar to Royal Icing, but it was actually my grandmother’s recipe – and way yummier!) and then doing buttercream outlining and details (I picked this up from my aunt). I read a bunch of bloggers how-to’s on sugar cookie decorating with Royal Icing, and decided to try the “flooding” technique with my icing. It worked pretty well and the cookies look great. Unfortunately I did it one color at a time because of the thicker-outlining/thin-it-out-for-flooding part. This led to uneven amounts of cookies in different colors, and no use of sprinkles (I usually do about 1/3 – 1/2 solid colored with sprinkles. Next time I will think it out again to decide which way to go.

I did still do my buttercream for the details because I didn’t want to deal with thickening icing again and the buttercream is SOO easy and hardens just as nicely.

There ended up being about 70ish cookies: I did the names on eggs/butterflies for coworkers. One tray of cookies is going with my mother in law for Easter, and the rest are coming with me to my family’s Easter. (Since I took over making them – my gma used to do it – my family is obsessed with them and looks forward to every holiday.)

So here they are.. I really need to work on my cookie picture taking skills!

So I also chocolate dipped some peeps! I was inspired by this post and since one of my coworkers is OBSESSED with peeps I thought it would be fun to try. Here are the finished peeps waiting to dry:

And to end with a story…

I was baking my cookies and realized I didn’t have enough so I went to the store to buy more cookie dough stuff… While I was waiting for the dough to chill I started out on my icing. The finished ones went on a tray in my back bedroom to be out of my way. I shut the door so that the pets can’t get in there. So then I started in on my baking (music blasting as always) and finished up right before my husband got home. As he walked around the corner he noticed the back room door was open… my puppy got the door open, knocked down the tray of cookies and was nearly done eating them all! Final count at the end was a loss of 22 cookies! Needless to say I was beyond pissed. And the puppy was on a sugar high till 2am that night!

Take 2 steps forward and 1 step back!

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Filed under Candy, Cookies

Tagged as buttercream, chocolate covered peeps, icing, marshmallows, sugar cookies

April 9, 2011 · 8:53 pm

I Have a Blog!

I recently discovered how much I love making – creating – things.

I have been making sugar cookies since I was little, but I have been getting more and more fancy with it over the last couple years. My small addiction to buying cookie cutters has helped expand my cookie creating possibilities.

I have also experimented lately with other cookies, cakes, and candy. I decided to create this blog to show off some of my special creations!

Hope you enjoy…

P.S. here are some of my recent creations to kick off the show!