Christmas Sweets Themed Cookies

I made three sets of Christmas Cookies this year. I’ve posted two so far, and since tonight is Christmas Eve, I guess I had better get a move on and post the third set!!

Enjoy your Christmas if you celebrate, and if you don’t enjoy your time off with your family 🙂

I’m going to be (except for the hockey jersey cookies I promised to someone!!!) stepping away from the kitchen to spend the week with my kids and my niece and nephews (the youngest who is almost 6 months old now, and I last saw him when he was just 8 days old!). I have some fun things in mind for the week, so if something turns out awesome, I’ll be sure to share it with you. But for the most part, I will see you in a week with my cookie for our January cookie challenge (are you working on yours?).

Winter Cookies And An Easy Packaging Idea

I made these cookies for Bryan’s managers at work. I won’t go into the fact that I made four sets, then he told me he has five managers. We’re not talking about that.

This morning, I ran out to Target to get little platters and basket bags to wrap them up, but you can imagine that on December 23rd, the pickins were slim. I found these really cute boxes in the Christmas gift wrap section, and, although they were a little pricy at 4$ each, they were actually exactly what I was looking for.

1. Cut a cake board to fit inside the box.
2. Cover the cake board with a doily and lay out the cookies the way you want them.
3. Cover the whole thing in plastic wrap and pull tight enough to hold everything in place, but not so tight that cookies break.
4. Fold a piece of tissue paper to fit inside the box.
5. Lay the wrapped board with cookies inside the box and cover with the tissue paper, like you would a shirt.
6. Place the lid on top.

I thought about just laying the cookies inside the box on some crinkle paper, but last year, some of his managers didn’t work on Christmas, and their cookies wound up sitting for a few days. I wanted these to stay fresh for a while.

Originally, I made those mitten cookies for Ellie’s class party this past week, and I made a little tutorial to show you how easy they actually are.

You need: mitten cookies, ribbon, thicker flood consistency icing in one color, piping icing and thicker flood icing in a second color.

1. Bake your mitten cookies, making sure to flip one over so you have one for each hand. Before baking, cut a little hole with a straw.
2. Loop a ribbon through the holes and tie a knot.
3. Outline the hand of the mittens.
4. Flood in your main color.

1. Quickly, working one or two cookies at a time, pipe horizontal stripes with your second color flood icing.
2. Drag a toothpick along the top of the icing, going through all of the horizontal stripes.
3. Wipe the accumulated icing off of the tip of the toothpick with a paper towel and drag along the icing in the other direction.
4. Continue through the entire width of the mitten hand alternating direction.

Last, use your piping icing to pipe a ribbed cuff along the edge of the mitten- being careful around the ribbon. When that dries, tie your ribbon into a bow.

This was the last set of Christmas cookies I made this year, but I still have one more to share tomorrow. Enjoy your Sunday, I hope you don’t have any shopping to do today!

 

Pink Cookie Cutter Challenge

It was so much fun to be invited to play Cristin (of Cristin’s Cookies)’s cookie cutter challenge. She made this adorable pink (of course!) cookie cutter and sent it out to each of us, asking us to create what we saw in the cookie cutter. The only rule was that we couldn’t share our design with anyone except Cristin until we all posted them together.

When I got my cutter, I immediately saw something in it. Then I turned it upside down and saw something else. It took me a while to get a chance to make my cookie, so I was one of the last to submit my picture.  I couldn’t believe, as Cristin was receiving the pictures and raving about how different each design was, that there was any other way to make these cookies. I couldn’t see anything other than “this” when I held it in one direction and “that” when I held it in the other.

Here is “this”

I call her “Abigail the Snuggle Bug”. Named after Cristin’s snuggly little granddaughter, wearing Cristin’s favorite colors.

Here is “that”

This one is Baby Ladybug Girl, inspired by this cookie that I made for Cristin’s virtual grandbaby shower based on the book “Ladybug Girl” by Jacky Davis and David Soman. I loved this idea, but I wasn’t happy with the way my Wilton black sugar pearls bled into the red.

And here are 15 other interpretations of the same pink cutter.

Cookie Cutter Challenge

#1 – Aymee of Wacky Cookies – www.wackycookies.com

#2 – Melissa of Simply Sweets by Honeybee – www.simplysweetsbyhoneybee.com

#3 – Tiffany of Tiff’s Tasty Cookies – www.facebook.com/tiffs.cookies

#4 – Ansa of Sweet Treats by Ansa – www.sweet-treats-by-ansa.com

#5 – Shannon of The Sweet Shop Cookie Company – www.facebook.com/thesweetshopcookiecompany

#6 – Kristina of Kristina’s Kreations – http://www.facebook.com/pages/kristinas-kreations/251226944912844

#7 – Kate of Kooking in Kate’s Kitchen – www.kookinginkateskitchen.blogspot.com

#8 – Kim of The Cookie Puzzle – www.thecookiepuzzle.com

#9 – Margaret of Decorated Cookies (dba Edible Canvas Creations) – www.facebook.com/ediblecanvascreations

#10 – Stephanie of Ellie’s Bites Decorated Cookies – www.elliesbitesdecoratedcookies.wordpress.com

#11 – Lene of Not Your Everyday Cookie – http://notyoureverydaycookie.wordpress.com

#12 – Tammy of Fluffybutt Cookie Emporium – www.facebook.com/pages/fluffybutt-cookies/272728056090697

#13 – Laura of Laura’s Cookies – www.facebook.com/laurascookies

#14 – Flaget of Cookies with Love by Flaget – www.facebook.com/pages/cookies-with-love-by-flaget/242124942466772

#15 – Karen of SugarDeaux Cookies & Cakes – www.facebook.com/sugardeaux

#16 – Cristin of Cristin’s Cookies – www.cristinscookies.com

Easy Elegant Christmas Cookies

I made three sets of Christmas cookies this year (well, two are done and one will be finished this weekend), and this is my favorite, hands down. Probably my favorite all time Christmas set.

I think I like them best because they are so simple, and still make an impressive impact. The best part is those large cookies. They can be made using one color, three colors, or a thousand colors (if you’re really ambitious and you don’t hate mixing colors like I do!).

You need a cookie and your icing, in piping and flood consistency. Outline and flood your cookie, let dry for several hours. Then pipe on whatever words strike your fancy. So simple and with one color, you don’t even have to worry about bleeding!

What are your favorite cookies so far? (Feel free to link them up in the comments.)

Easy Christmas Trees

A few months ago, I accidentally made a batch of cookies and only added enough sugar for a half of a batch. Fortunately, they happened to be squares, not some obscure shape, so I was able to freeze them just in case inspiration should strike. You can always find a use for plain squares. Then I saw some cute Christmas tree tee shirts made with ribbons, and I was inspired to pull out one of those squares.

You’ll need

• squares or circles outlined, base coated, and dried
• Stiff green icing and a petal tip (size depending on the size of your cookie- this was a 101)
• Red and green confetti sprinkles
• Yellow star sprinkle
• Stiff brown icing with a star tip

1- Pipe a ruffle along the bottom of the cookie, leaving room for the tree trunk. Add some confetti sprinkles using tweezers.

2- Pipe more rows of ruffles with sprinkles, making each row a bit shorter to create a triangle. Attach the star sprinkle to the top  with a dab of icing.

3- Add a trunk with your star tip.

That’s it! Wouldn’t these be cute packed in a cellophane bag with some small red, green, and white circles?

 

 

Marshmallow Filled Chocolate Covered Chanukah Cookies

I’m pretty sure that the title of this post says it all, so I’ll just get on with the picture.

I said in a previous post that most of these ideas can be translated into any holiday theme or, like these, just made for anytime. For instance, I just used two chocolate cookies, cut into Chanukah shapes (see Lila Loa’s page for the go-to chocolate cookie recipe I love).I  tinted a little marshmallow fluff with some blue food coloring and I added about 1/4c powdered sugar to one cup of fluff to theoretically make it easier to mix in the food coloring. I’m not sure it made a difference. Then I took a bit of the blue fluff and spread it between two cookies. I chilled them in the freezer for about 20 minutes to keep the fluff from oozing out the sides, then I coated them in melted milk chocolate. Then I left them overnight in the fridge to set the chocolate(overnight because I made them around 11pm) and when I woke up, I had (a half of) one for breakfast and it was good.

Obviously, you could use any cookie recipe, any color fluff, and any percentage chocolate. But since we are having these for our last night of Chanukah dessert, I made Stars of David and Dreidels.

I hope you enjoyed these Chanukah cookie posts! Now it’s on to Christmas cookies 🙂

Chanukah Cookies

Yesterday, I sat down at the computer to write this post and I couldn’t do it. Ellie was still at school and all I could think about was having her home. Ben was in his room, not napping, and I just wanted to go upstairs and hold him until he fell asleep. So that’s what I did. I’m sorry, but I knew you would understand if my post about cookies was a day late. Thank you.

When I was trying to come up with a plan, I had a solid six ideas. I had another floating around in my mind, but for the eighth, I was drawing a complete blank. Ellie actually said to me, “What about the miracle of Chanukah?”. That’s when I had the idea to handcut cookies in the shapes of the letters on the dreidel- the letters which are an acronym for the hebrew phrase meaning “A Great Miracle Happened There”.

At first, my idea was to make a platter of smaller cookies, but I knew I wouldn’t have time to make them for the party we had last weekend, so I decided to just make larger cookies, and one of each letter.

Don’t underestimate the freedom of handcutting. If you make hundreds of cookies of the same style, it would make sense to order a custom cookie cutter, or make one yourself. But for one or two accent cookies? Just go for it.

One more Chanukah cookie to go!

Cookie and Donut Menorah

Just a quick post tonight with Chanukah cookie idea number six. It’s traditional to eat foods fried in oil on Chanukah. It celebrates the miracle of one night’s worth of oil burning for eight nights. Besides cooking potato latkes (potato pancakes fried in oil) we make sufganiot, or jelly donuts. We’ll pretend, for the sake of tradition, that I fried these sufganiot, not that I made them in the cake pop maker.

I hope you are enjoying these posts as much as I enjoyed putting them together! There are two more nights of Chanukah, and I have two more cookie ideas for you. 🙂

Shiny Chanukah Cookies

When we moved into our townhouse, about two and a half years ago, we bought ourselves a Wii Fit as a housewarming gift. We have a nice finished basement to put it in and I still had a bunch of baby weight to lose. It worked great! I used it daily and I was dropping some weight while having fun! Then I accidentally kicked the side of my daughter’s rocking chair, broke my toe, and took a break from the Wii. This was almost exactly this time two years ago, around the time I shifted my baking hobby into high gear and that put an end to the weight loss! And the Wii, although not entirely forgotten, collected a little dust. Until now. Last night’s Chanukah gift was “Just Dance Disney” and, I’ll tell you it’s a better workout than any of the Wii Fit games. So, we moved it from the basement to front and center in the living room and I’m hoping it will play a part in the “sweat for thirty minutes a day” philosophy of the get motivated-and-get-your-butt-moving facebook group of cookiers I belong to. Anyway, that was just a little update of where we are gift-wise. Here’s today’s cookies.

This was a platter of cookies that I made for an old friend of mine to take to a family Chanukah party.

I love how I was able to get the muted color simply by spraying the cookies with Wilton’s pearl mist. The coins were sprayed with silver.

Are you celebrating Chanukah? What has been your favorite gift so far (either to give or to get)? I am so excited to use the cookbook Bryan got for me (The Smitten Kitchen), in fact if I can finish the cookies I need to make tonight- Christmas Cookies!!!!- I may flip through it a bit and make my meal plan for the week. If you don’t celebrate Chanukah, how is your gift shopping going? Are you done yet?

Cookie Boxes For Chocolate Gelt

I hope that if you celebrate Chanukah, you are enjoying you week, and the time with family and friends. If you don’t celebrate Chanukah, I hope you are having fun preparing for your holiday, and that you can find some inspiration in these Chanukah cookies. A lot of these ideas can be translated into other themes, just by using a different cookie cutter! For instance, I made these cookie boxes to hold the kids’ chocolate gelt (the gold and silver wrapped coins used to represent money when playing the dreidel game), but I do intend to make them again, using a different shape to hold candy canes later this week 🙂

This was only my third attempt at building a 3D cookie, so if the edges are a little messy, that is something I hope practice will take care of. But I did get a picture of the process for you!

You’ll need two large already decorated Star of David cookies (the same size, you may need to trim the edges a bit by pressing the cutter back around the cookie as soon as it is out of the oven and still warm) and eight small squares (trim these the same way). Then, using a stiff royal icing, begin to attach the squares to the outline of the star. Hold each square in place for about a minute until it sets enough to stay in place. When all sides are attached (leaving the top open to be able to slide in the candy) place the second star on top, securing it with an outline of icing.Let dry overnight before attempting to stand or fill the cookie.

Enjoy your fourth night of Chanukah!