Bowling Pin Cookies

Well, I fell in love! How about you?

I was even more creative than usual today! I started the day making paper bags from a roll of paper out of the craft room. The paper bags will be loot bags for the bowling birthday party. So I stamped them with stars and added a black explosion shape with a white bowling pin pasted on. They looked so good, that I decided to make bowling pin cookies for the "loot". So I made a batch of sugar cookies. Then I found an old, split, metal cookie cutter that was shaped like a mushroom. I reshaped it into a bowling pin, and voila!

I was only planning on making one bowling pin per child (8) because I thought I would have to cut them all by hand. After my miraculous creation of a cutter, I went crazy and did up the whole batch! 4 1/2 dozen, I think. Then I iced them with royal icing. (Found out it is hard to ice a cookie while taking the picture of doing so!)

Anyway, there are the white bowling pins... well, not quite, eh?

So, I tinted some piping gel red and started giving these guys their stripes.

They looked great! But not really fun.  So I added smiles and eyes to 10 of them, to decorate the place settings at the party.

The cookie recipe I used was originally in the Sesame Street's "Big Bird's Book of things to Do" (or something like that) that I got when I was 7. The recipe was called "Cookie Monster's Cookie Dough". Of course, what ELSE would Sesame Street call it? So, here it is:

Cookie Monster's Cookie Dough

Blend in a mixing bowl:

     3/4 cups butter, softened

     1 cup sugar

Beat in:

     2 eggs

     1 tsp. vanilla

Add:

     2 1/2 cups flour

     1 tsp. baking powder

     1 tsp. salt

Mix all together. Chill for 1 hour. Roll out chilled dough to 1/4 inch thick (or slightly less) and cut into shapes. Place cookies on cookie sheet so there is 3/4 inch between cookies. Bake at 400 degrees F for 6-8 minutes. (My little bowling pins took exactly 6 minutes!)

Now, go eat some COOOOOO-kies! Gobble, gobble, gobble, yum, yum, yummmm.

or, if you're like me, you want to ice them. I covered 2/3 of my bowling pins with this recipe:

Royal Icing

1 egg white

pinch of salt

1 tsp. lemon juice

1 1/2 cups icing sugar

Mix all ingredients together and use immediately or cover closely and refrigerate. This icing hardens quickly.



That is also the recipe I use as cement for my gingerbread houses. Not only does it harden quickly, it does get quite hard. If it is too stiff, you can add a wee bit of lemon juice. Have fun creating!