Police Men cookies

Did you know that when you try to tint royal icing black, using Wilton paste food dye, it looks more like purple? Well, it does. So my police men for the Police/Lego themed birthday party look a little purple. I made the good old "Cookie Monster Cookies" and "Royal icing" to decorate these little gingerbread shaped guys.

I know that some of them look more like garbage men or sailors or something else, but I tried. Their hats are fondant and gum paste mixed together and molded into shape. Very time consuming, especially the hats and the ties. That was my fun for the day!

Happy Easter Cookies!

Today was a major baking day here. I made Easter cookies with the children, and two kinds of squares and pizza. I'll highlight the cookies today and save the rest for the next blog entries. I made the "Cookie Monster's Cookies" again and we shaped them like eggs, bunnies, chicks and butterflies. I did up a batch of royal icing and split it into three colors - pink, yellow and blue.

While I let the children decorate most of the chicks, I decorated the eggs. It was wonderful to have three different colors, in three separate bags, all with the same tip. Made for a pleasure to work them. I was going to make them all the same but just started changing each one after 3 the same. It was fun. Along the way, I had to ice the chicks for the children to decorate. They were dunking them in sprinkles. They had fun too. I'm keeping those in our special family can that we can eat right away! Here are how my eggs turned out.

 Here's how the other cookies turned out. Not quite like the Easter Bunny does it, but not bad!

Have a blessed Holy Thursday and I'll show you some more yummies tomorrow!

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!