Ever since I was little, I loved decorating cookies. It relaxed me. The process of rolling out the dough, cutting it and baking it isnt exactly my favourite, but.. I’ll do it when I have to. Usually I reserve this type of cookie for holidays or special occasions. Times in life when things get stressful and I need something to center me.

When I was young, I would help my mom in the kitchen all the time. I loved helping decorate and arrange things. She usually had a pretty good idea of what she wanted, so I didnt really get to help her with HER projects, but she usually made extra stuff for me and my older sister to play with. A few extra cookies, some miniature cakes.. something.

The older I got, the less time my mom spent in the kitchen. Baked goods were a way of the past, and everything in our house went low-fat, low calorie and low- flavour. It was the early 90’s, so there really werent any new products that inhanced flavour of those types of diet foods yet. Luckily my fneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comavourite type of cake was carrot cake, so.. that was one type of sweet I could depend on.

Cookies, however, were in short supply. My attempts at creating them on my own fell short, mostly because I made a huge mess and my parents told me if I was going to make cookies they had to be the kind that went from the bowl to the pan, no rolling out and making a mess involved. I ate a lot of snickerdoodles and peanut butter cookies, but my heart longed for the thin, delicate crunch of good old sugar cookie cutouts.

Sometime in my mid teenage years, I caught the baking bug. I started trying recipes and having parties so I could bake cakes and make goodies. My friends loved it. Something was missing. I bought fancy cookbooks with tons of photos. I made fancy cakes with spun sugar fluff balls on them. It didnt seem right. I was a country girl making city food.

One year for Christmas, my family decided to go old fashioned. Every gift we gave was home made. Luckily for everyone involved, we’re quite crafty people. I blame my mom for that. My dad is pretty enterprising as well. My mom and I decided that we should make cookies and decorate them, giving them to our friends and extended relatives as gifts.

We made all sorts of cookies. Snicker doodles, chocolate chip, jam squares, white chocolate raspberry crisps, double chocolate bar cookies, lemon bars.. And cookie cutouts.

We decided we would only use one cookie cutter shape to make it easier. With all the baking, we wanted the cookies to be simple to decorate. But I couldnt do that.

I chose a star shape. About the size of the palm of my hand, I Figured we’d put one in each gift basket and call it good. I wanted the decoration to be memorable so I started trying a few new things. I knew I would have to do the dishes when I was done, so purely out of laziness, I put the icing into ziploc bags and snipped the ends off so I wouldnt have to wash my mom’s cake decorating supplies.

It became my therapy. We baked so many of those cookies that it took me an entire day to decorate them all. Dots and lines and swirlies and swooshes, words and smily faces. I wanted the cookies to be universal, not just christmassy.

Luckily, everyone loved them. They loved the whole cookie basket. Everyone was asking about the star cookies though.

So I started making them for people’s birthdays. I started making them and bringing them to parties. I felt much more at ease, bringing something I’ve made forever, something maybe less fancy, but more me, that people still loved.

And now, whenever things get rough, I bake cookies. I make icing and put the different colours in ziploc bags and snip the ends off. I decorate intricate designs and fun patterns. It relaxes me.

So after the cheese making fiasco, I decided it would be a good idea to cool down with some cookie decorating. Here’s a few photos of the mini batch I made this morning-

And thats just a few of them! I made a whole bunch, I’m only about a quarter of the way through decorating them. I did mostly stars and hearts, a few toothbrushes and teeth, some barnyard animals and camels.. A mountain goat, a giant salmon.. Yeah, I borrowed a few cookie cutters from my mom’s cookie cutter collection. Seriously, she’s got some strange ones.

I even made cookies that are shaped like Idaho and Washington state. One of the United states, a dachshund, A key, a giant chicken, even dog bones, strawberries and a heliocopter!

I’ll post those photos separately tonight when I’m finished decorating them.

For now, I want to enjoy the last of this beautiful day outside. Maybe a late picnic on the patio.. or just some cookies and milk.

Here is my simple sugar cookie recipe, its a family recipe, so its pretty much guaranteed to be delicious.

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons almond extract
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream (or whole milk)

In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Sift together the flour and baking powder in a separate bowl, stir into the creamed mixture alternately with the heavy cream (or whole milk). Wrap the dough in waxed paper and refridgerate for 2 to 3 hours, until firm.

When you’re ready, find a nice clean flat surface (counter, silpat, cutting board) flour it liberally and roll out the chilled dough to about 1/4 inch in thickness. Select your cookie cutters and place them on a lightly oiled cookie sheet, baking them from 4-8 minutes (depending on thickness. Mine were really thin so I only baked them for 4 minutes) at 350 Fahrenheit.

When leave them on the cookie sheet or place them on a wire rack to cool. when they’re sufficiently cooled, mix together 2 cups powdered sugar 1 tablespoon orange extract and 4 tablespoons heavy cream. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved, you should end up with a thick paste. Add your colourings or use plain. Ice with a flat spatula or decorating tools.

The icing will take about 10 hours to completely dry. If you’re like me, and you just want a nice tasty cookie, you can eat them anytime.

So, there you go. Thats my recipe and I’m stickin to it. These are some seriously tasty cookies, not overly sweet, but very flavourful. Infact, why not add to the flavour by cutting two of the same shape, and putting a tablespoon of plain cream cheese between one undecorated cookie and one iced cookie. Trust me, its a very good snack!

-A.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 8:01 pm and is filed under March 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.