Tag Archives: sugar cookies

May 31, 2013 · 8:00 am

Graduation Cookies 2013

These high school graduation cookies were made for Jayla. School colors were purple, black, and white. I tried to do less black and more of the other two colors because sometimes too much black icing scares people. 🙂

I have been practicing using different fonts lately. This is one of my favorites. 🙂

Since I do everything freehand, this post by Lizy B helped me a lot!

Do you follow me on facebook, instagram, twitter, and pinterest?

For anyone who has missed it on Instagram, here is a little pregnancy update. 🙂 The pup likes to be in all my photos!

The turquoise wall behind me is the baby’s room. We’re not finding out the sex, so we wanted a bright neutral color that we can add to later. All of the furniture will be white.

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Tagged as buttercream, graduation, icing, purple, sugar cookies

May 29, 2013 · 9:30 am

Easy Rolled Sugar Cookies

These cookies are perfect for the beginner sugar cookier. They are glazed, but not delicately so, and covered in the all-important sprinkles!

I was throwing them together Monday morning for a little BBQ at a friend’s house, so I didn’t have a lot of time (or energy) to spend on them.

ALSO, I know I am getting annoying with this, but I have a new sugar cookie recipe. I have been using this one for a while now, and it’s absolutely perfect. I linked it up here and changed the links on my other posts.

I’m also going to actually share my “recipe” for my icing. I finally took the time to measure how much of each ingredient it takes to make it the perfect consistency… rather than just guessing every time.

Basic Sugar Cookie Recipe

Basic Icing Recipe

For these easy cookies, I rolled the cookies extra thick with my 1/4″ dowels. I chose to do stars because it was Memorial Day, but any basic shape will do.

Spread the cookies out on a wire rack and set it on top of another pan or a piece of waxed paper.

Mix up your icing and put into a squeeze bottle or zip-top baggie with the corner cut. Drizzle haphazardly across the cookie in the same back-and-forth direction. I just used white icing for simplicity, but colored icing, or multiple colors drizzled together would look super cute!

It doesn’t matter if it’s messy looking because we’re going to throw sprinkles on top.

Here is a shot of my beautiful icing and sprinkle party after-math. I wish it was acceptable and appropriate to lick the pan.

The cookies dried well enough in just a couple hours and were ready for our Memorial Day BBQ.

These exact cookies would obviously be perfect for 4th of July too.. but now I am thinking Halloween or Christmas or any other holiday these could be cut with a basic shape and different color combos!

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Tagged as easy cookies, icing, sprinkles, sugar cookies

May 22, 2013 · 4:12 pm

Proposal Cookies

A coworker asked me to make her proposal cookies based on this idea. Here are a couple more examples.)

I chose to go with a scalloped “lacey” edge.

The wedding color is UCLA blue (which is a very specific color according to my husband), so I used that for the flower in the girl’s hair.

The “diamond” is a white sugar pearl that I colored with silver lustre dust, because silver dragees are illegal here in California. 😦

These cookies were much harder and stress-evoking than I expected them to be. Black on white is always a challenge, but because the design was so basic, it really took effort to make steady lines and dots to make them look effortless.

I would love to see something like this again, but in color.

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Tagged as buttercream, icing, sugar cookies, wedding, white

April 26, 2013 · 8:00 am

Soft Sprinkle Sugar Cookies

My goal when making these cookies was to mimic an amazing Mrs. Fields cookie I had a couple weekends ago while I was in Tahoe. While these turned out nothing like my beloved Mrs. Fields cookie, they were still so yummy and fun and easy that I had to share!

Soft Sprinkle Sugar Cookies – slightly modified from Spark Recipes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 sticks (1 cup) of butter

1 egg

1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 tsp lemon extract

2 3/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

4 tbsp milk

Directions:

1. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and extracts and mix to combine, scraping if necessary.

2. Add the salt, baking powder, and baking soda, then slowly add the flour 1/2 cup at a time. Once fully combined, slowly add the milk.

3. Scoop dough into approximately 1″ balls. I used my small cookie scoop. Roll the tops in sprinkles (I used jimmies) and place 2 inches apart on a parchment or silicone lined baking sheet.

I went a little crazy with the sprinkles.

4. Bake at 350* for 10 minutes, then let cool completely on the cookie sheet. The centers will be soft so you want them to set before trying to move them.

My husband loved these! As did my coworkers and ex-coworkers. The batch made about 5 or 6 dozen, so I had plenty to share!

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Tagged as easy cookies, sprinkles, sugar cookies

March 26, 2013 · 8:00 am

Santa Cruz Wedding Treats

Last October I made treats for the dessert table for a friend’s Santa Cruz Beach Wedding. Unfortunately I was not able to make it to the wedding because it was out of town and during the week. Another friend who was in the wedding party delivered the goodies for me, but I forgot to take any photos before I handed them over. The wedding photos just came in, so I wanted to share the treats now!

I made 2 different flavors of mini cupcakes. The tiffany blue ones were bubblegum flavored (see here) and the pale yellow ones were lemonade flavored (see here).

Of course I also made cookies. The couple has a beloved boxer that actually took part in the ceremony and was in all the pictures. The bride asked for cookies of their pup, and this is what I came up with.

I had a hard time trying to get the facial features down, so I decided to stick to the basic outline and the coloring. (He has pale grey spots on his body.)

The wedding favors were classic S’more Pops (see here and here). I made simple little tags with the Bride and Groom’s name and their wedding date.

Thanks Katie for letting me use your pictures! Like I mentioned, I forgot to take photos of these treats… all photo credits go to Grandeur Photography.

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Filed under Cakes, Cookies, Marshmallows

Tagged as bubble gum, buttercream, icing, lemon, s'more, sugar cookies, tiffany blue, wedding

March 19, 2013 · 8:00 am

Sesame Street Birthday

Drew just turned 1! He was still in the belly for the baby celebration that I made the green onesies for from this post.

The party theme was Sesame Street, and I got to make all the treats!

Of course there had to be character cookies. I don’t have the cutters, so I made do with what I had. Cookie Monster and Elmo were created with a flower cutter and an egg cutter. For Big Bird I just bent my balloon cutter a bit to make the beak straight.

For these characters, I knew black outlining was the way to go. It really make the features and colors pop.

As always, I free-handed the designs. Cuz that’s how I roll.

Last minute I decided I had to have cookie cereal to go on the cookie monster cookies. I got the idea from cupcakes like this that I’m sure just about everyone has seen at some point. It’s pretty genius whoever thought of it!

I also made cupcakes in the same colors as the characters. Piped simple swirls, and make custom cupcake toppers.

My husband actually made them on the computer for me and I just cut and put them together. 🙂

My most favorite part was the smash cake! Mama asked for it to be Cookie Monster, so I swirled it in bright blue frosting and piped the happy little face on the top.

Then I stuck cookie cereal to the sides. 🙂

Mama said Drew loved his cake. Once he got started, it was hard to get him to stop!

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Tagged as blue, boy's birthday, buttercream, icing, red, sugar cookies, yellow, yellow cake

March 4, 2013 · 8:00 am

Blue Bird Cookies for Tea

I recently started a new job. It’s the main reason my posts have been less frequent and erratic. It was a good move for me and offers excellent growth potential and benefits… but I have been and will continue to be working long hours. Somehow I worked 40 hours a week and found time to make all of the treats you have seen over the last (almost) 2 years… now I am working a minimum of 50 hours a week and just can’t seem to keep this blog regular. My apologies friends and family, I hope to find my energy and niche again soon so that I can get back to my passion!

These cookies I made for one of my former coworkers. She was attending a tea and was put in charge of one of the many tables of 8 ladies. Each table was decorated differently, and my coworker’s theme was birds. She decorated the table in black, bright blue, and cream colors. The cookies were made to match!

My only previous experience with birds were these parrot cookies. With those, I had a cartoon character to go with, and I just incorporated ideas from real parrots to get the profile right. With these cookies, I had no image to start with, and couldn’t find a similar shaped cookie from which to draw inspiration. I struggled with the sketch but eventually landed on something that was doable. I was actually pretty happy with how they turned out.

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Tagged as bird, blue, buttercream, icing, sugar cookies

February 28, 2013 · 8:00 am

Yo Gabba Gabba Cookies

Syler turned 2 this last weekend! Last year I made these Monkey cookies from this post for his party. This year his birthday was Yo Gabba Gabba themed!

Last summer I first learned Yo Gabba Gabba when I made this very special cake for a very special friend of mine. Since then, I have been scared to make Yo Gabba Gabba cookies. Not only are the characters all uniquely shaped, but as a group they total 10 colors!

When Syler’s mom asked me to make Yo Gabba Gabba cookies for the party, I was relieved that she liked the idea of doing simple circle shaped cookies with just the basic elements of each character.

Each cookie was bagged and tied with tags as his party favors.

Mama said Syler loved his cookies!

As part of Lilaloa’s February challenge of Sketching your cookie designs before you cookie them, I thought I would share my sketches. I typically do these before a complicated set, or if I am not sure the exact shape of something (for example when I’m doing animals) so I can play with it until I am happy with the outcome.

So glad Georgeanne had such a fun challenge for February and I got it in in just the nick of time!

I will post more of my sketches soon. Every cookier has their own way of doing things and I’d love to share my method in case it helps anyone else!

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Tagged as blue, buttercream, cookie favors, green, icing, pink, red, sugar cookies, yellow

February 26, 2013 · 9:30 am

16th Birthday Cookies & Cake Balls

Alyssah turned 16 this week! Her mom is an old coworker of mine and decided to trick her for her sweet 16. Alyssah was told that there was just no money for a birthday party this year… but in reality there was a huge surprise party planned!

We went with zebra, hot pink, and turquoise as the “theme.”

This was my first time making zebra cookies. I contemplated a few ways I could do it before settling on outlining each stripe and filling them separately.

They came out better than I imagined, and each one was unique because I just free handed the stripes.

The rest of the cookies were filled in hot pink and bright turquoise, with alternating mongrams, 16’s, and her name.

Don’t they look cute together? I am in love with this set.

Last year for Alyssah’s birthday I made these Red Velvet Cake Balls. Her mom asked for cake balls again, so this year I went with yellow cake and chocolate coating.

I colored the chocolate coating black (or as black as I could) so that they would match the cookies. Then I drizzled the tops with turquoise and hot pink to match the cookies.

Alyssah was so surprised at her party! Her parents told her they were going to her aunt’s house for dinner. All her friends were hiding under the tables and behind furniture so they could pop out as she walked through the door!

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Tagged as blue, cake balls, chocolate, girl's birthday, pink, sugar cookies, yellow cake, zebra stripes