Jumbo Animal Cookies

So here's one final foray into sugar cookies before I embark on our October assignment: Project Pumpkin.

I loved these cookies for lots of reasons, but the biggest one was it only required one color of icing. After my Bon Voyage adventure, it was nice to commit to a single color. That made for a super easy piping experience, which was a nice change of pace after my maps, planes, and bears (oh my!).

To make these taste more authentic, I added half and half lemon and vanilla extract (mainly because I actually had lemon extract. I don't think it'd be worth buying just for this). The taste was really good, though my overzealous application of rainbow sprinkles overpowered the cookies a little.

The only other issue I encountered was not chilling my first batch of cut cookies long enough. My baked lions and elephants were a bit on the amoeba side. However, by my second tray my animal crackers actually looked like animals. And with the help of some piping, even the blobs resembled their ancestors.

Next time I'd make half white ones and half pink. These were a big hit at the office.

Here's a walkthrough:

Mid-tracing.

Flooded.

Sprinkled.

Happy Fall! B

P.S. I should also note that this idea was stolen again from Bridget @ Bakeat350. Thanks, Bridget! I promise to stop stealing your ideas. They're just too darn good.

Bon Voyage Cookies

My cookie dough was in the fridge, my decorating supplies were on the counter, and the Doppler radar was getting more and more ominous. I had planned to make a batch of Bon Voyage cookies to see off Kerri before she moved to San Francisco, but it was becoming clear that the weather was not on our side.

After throwing an impromptu goodbye bash at a bar before the storm, I was left with a batch of cookie dough and new cookie cutters that beckoned. So, I took one for the team and spent the rain-soaked weekend making cookies for me and D. All in all, I thought these turned out well for a first attempt. The design is inspired (okay, totally copied) by Bridget's cookies here. Her's obviously blow mine out of the water.

In addition to the maps, I also made airplanes and teddy bears, which called for making six (six!) different colors of icing. That was too many colors for my liking and by the end, I was so sick of washing out squeeze bottles that I started drizzling my flood colors into the borders. As you can see, that produced okay results. California managed to spread a bit beyond its boundaries.

I didn’t get any pictures of the planes. Those would have been cute, but I failed to really pipe the red trim. I think next time I would just do maps or planes, or at least spread the decorating over two days.

I used Martha's cookies and Bridget's icing. I used clear almond extract in the icing and I always use Corvosier in the cookies (because I'm a rapper).

Here's the best pic:

Happy baking! Madcap Baker B!

Our "first" batch of decorated sugar cookies!

So, here they are.  Our first sugar cookies decorated with royal icing.  We have to say that the first batch did not turn out that well.  Due to a so-so cookie recipe, too-thick royal icing, and a limited color scheme (white and yellow), we were less than pleased with our initial results.  Only two of those cookies survived.  We tried again with Martha Stewart's "Ideal Sugar Cookies," with much better results.  We also picked up some new food coloring and tested out a few new colors.  Our results for the second batch were a bit.... neon, but much better than the first.  We decided to use our leftover white piping icing from the first batch, hence the white outlines.  Also, a few cookies got squished before we photographed them (should have waited a little longer before covering them with plastic wrap).  Overall though, we were decently happy with this batch, and can even envision making actual nice-looking cookies in the future.

We're both planning on making another batch next weekend (in our respective cities).  One of the main lessons learned this weekend was that if you go into a cookie decorating session without a design, you'll get some wins and some real losers.  We realized how key it is to have a design in mind before starting the process.

That's it for our first post! Signing off -

Madcap E. and Madcap J.