Don't ask my how I stumbled across the blogs of some of the cookie bakers/decorators but I did and was inspired by their creativity to bake some cookie favors for my nieces baby shower last weekend. It was so much fun putting them together. I promise you can do it too!
One of the most frustrating things for me when I'm baking my Christmas sugar cookies is that I can never roll the dough out uniformly. The recipe will say to roll out the dough to 1/8 or 1/4 inch thickness. Heck, how can I tell if it's 1/4 inch without careful scrutiny with a ruler? Well, those clever cookie decorators had the solution. Paint stirrers!
Take two new and unused paint stirrers and cover them with foil. Tape them to your kitchen counter.
They should be spaced a distance that will allow your rolling pin to sit on top, thereby holding it in a raised position. Put a portion of the dough in the center and just keep rolling and the result will be a perfectly uniform piece of cookie dough! So clever. For thicker cookies you just use the 5 gallon paint stirrers.
My trust Kitchen Aid helped me mix up the dough.
Following an idea from one of the cookie bakers I decided to make rubber duckies cookies. Here they are in different stages of completion. The first task is to outline the cookie in roayl icing. After that dries you thin the icing and "flood" inside the lines. It's pretty easy although there's drying time involved.
Then I did the beaks in orange using thick royal icing. This area is small so no need to flood.
Another cookie baker showed how to do wings by drawing a line of orange onto the wet yellow icing and drawing a toothpick through. Next I gave the duckies blue eyes, packed them in cellophane bags and arranged them in a large basket.
Everyone loved them and it was a fun project. This put me in the baking mood so I decided to make some small cookie bites. These were made with some small cookie cutters that are probably meant for appetizers. One batch of dough made ALOT of cookie bites. I stopped counting at 120.
I decorated them with green leaves, pink "plop" flowers and some squiggly white. Actually the icing tips do all the work and these went pretty fast. I did them all in one evening after dinner.
Although everyone appreciated the rubber duckie cookie favors, they were CRAZY for the cookie bites. They are just really, really delicious and you can't stop popping them in your mouth. I use Wilton's sugar cookie recipe that was included on the packaging of my snowflake cookie cutters.
WILTON'S ROLL OUT COOKIE RECIPE
Visit some of the talented cookie baker/decorators and see if you don't get inspired.
I AM BAKER
THE SWEET ADVENTURES OF SUGARBELLE
THE DECORATED COOKIE
THE UNIVERSITY OF COOKIE
BAKE AT 350 (Check out her cute Scrabble tile cookies)
Remember, do something creative every day.
11 comments:
Love those duckies!! And, thanks for the hint of the Google reader. Was not aware of it....duh...but found a lot of my "things" were stored there. Thanks.
Love the duckies and cookie bites. So pretty and I am sure delicious, but I'd need a sample to verify my assumption. teehee.
Peace,
Donna
I have seen these little do-jobbies that are like thick washers that you put on the ends of the rolling pin. (But my rolling skills are so frantic, I'd end up with "tire" tracks running through the dough!). This is an awesome idea!!! You did a great job decorating all of the cookies---what a wonderful shower :)
Great tips! I think these cookies are darling and they'd work for Easter, too. I just saw the rolling thing done with biscuits somewhere...Oh, I know...Pat's at Mille Fiori Favoriti. The baker plopped his biscuit dough in a shallow pan and rolled it using the edges as his platform as you did with the paint sticks. Then he cut the biscuits in the pan. Thanks for all the info. Glad that you got to do something fun besides painting.
Lovely duckies!
OMG you have really been going through it. I think maybe eating handfuls of cookie dough would have been a good idea too. Great way to ease some stress. Your house will look awesome.
Check out Kris in Alaska at Grandma Tillie's bakery.
Her baking is art. Your cookies are art. I am trying to give up sugar and everybody on the planet seems to be baking cookies!
That paint stick idea is great--perfect pie crust.
Cute cookies! I love seeing everyone's decorating ideas and tips since cookies are my favorite. I have a collection of 600+ cookie cutters so you could say it's sort of an obsession of mine :)
Glad you got a break from painting!
So Cute!
I love those wee little cookie bites. I never make cookies I have to roll out but this may be a first for this old g'ma.
Oh I just loved this post! I'm now inspired to do cookies in the shape of a wedding cake for a shower I'm giving next month. Thanks for sharing these with us. My daughter has a rubber duckie bathroom with turquoise walls, etc. Maybe I should do these when we have guests. After all, what could be better than a bath and a cookie?
The duckies are soooooooo cute! And so are the bookie bites. You must have been a professional cookie baker in another life. Those leaves look perfect! What a great idea to use those paint stirrers. It makes perfect sense after you see it on the counter...lol Monday morning quarterbacking I guess :-)
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