Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing: Take Forever!

Last time we made sugar cookies they were cool and everything, but I especially loved the cookies on which I devoted about 10 hours minutes each, carefully icing each one into a masterpiece. While Kajsa and Finn knocked out a gazillion Jackson Pollocks at a time and produced a lot of deliciousness, I made the most realistic wine glasses and bottles out of Cookie that I had ever seen. I decided to take a day off and dive into an abyss of artwork, sitting forever alone in my kitchen making beautiful cookies all day, because I have all the time in the world. WORTH IT.

I MADE THESE WITH MY HANDS

I began the whole process the night before Epic Natalie Cookie Day, on ENCD eve. I whipped up the same delicious dough Kajsa and I have been using; the one with almond extract. Delicious. This time around, I really wanted to use the wine glasses and bottles for cookie cutters again, but I couldn't find them anywhere in my house. So it was Off To Sur La Table with my enthusiastic teenage brother to buy a martini glass cutter, as a substitute until I found my other alcohcutters. And it was awesome!

WHO WANTS A MARTINI, AND A LION HORSE THING

I had a few other cookie cutters from my grandmother, who baked like she was Bob Marley. Flowers, circles, deformed figurines (witch? cat? I don't know). After baking forever I got frustrated creative and made my own freaking shapes with a knife, no metal shapes or anything. Most of these looked like continents, or gingerbread men. Or islands.

So I let all those guys cool off, while making my own royal icing instead of buying it from Sur La Table. I used a "healthier" recipe that didn't call for corn syrup, because honestly, who even has corn syrup? This one calls for a cup of powdered sugar and half a cup of white sugar as a base. Then add 2 tablespoons of water and 2 teaspoons of milk, along with a dash of almond extract if you're feeling risqué.

Without further ado, I made a bunch of colors...

BEAUTIFUL... Yeah that's a pizza

SOMETHING TO KNOW ABOUT THIS ICING: Stick it in the freezer for a few minutes. It's. So. Runny. I tried adding more sugar, microwaving, yelling, among other things to find a good icing consistency, but the freezer works the best. It's like magic. But don't leave it in there forever, I mean it's not like you want a sweet brick of sugary ice or anything weird, just a thicker icing. Stir it once it's out of the freezer and you're good to go.

And as far as colors go, I just separated my bowl of white icing into smaller dishes, adding colors as I please. A brown icing takes just a bit of cocoa powder and chocolate syrup, and then I made black by adding blue to that. 

I continued to create pride and joy, all over the place.  My favorite band got in on this, because I guess some of the random shapes I made (gingerbread men, probably?) looked like Green Day.

#BILLIELOVEME

Tré even has his drumsticks! Mike is also Hulk Hogan for some reason! And the heart grenade on the album cover is made out of sprinkles AND frosting. What am I doing with my life? Oh, right, being AWESOME. We ate the band and the bottle of Jack, but I just couldn't eat the album, so I left it on the ledge of a building on Powell street. Now more people can appreciate my art! GO FIND IT. 

Till next time! Off to make the banana bread again for Fathers' Day because it's his favorite.

Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing: Take 2!

       Saturday, we baked about 36 cookies. These weren't just any cookies, but particularly almond-extract-flavored sugar cookies! There was vanilla extract in them too, but that's not special or anything, Vanilla is always in cookies.

       It began with a dough. You will need two bowls for this experiment recipe, one big and one small. CALLING ALL INGREDIENTS! First you'll need to cream one stick of butter into a pulp, inside the small bowl. 

PAULA DEEN WAS HERE

       SECOND INGREDIENT: A CUP OF POWDERED SUGAR FOR THE CREAMED BUTTER'S FACE. Mix that really well, so once you have a nice and creamy pile of sugarfat, you can move on to the next bowl. Bowl #2, again, the bigger bowl, should have one egg, 2.5 cups of flour, a teaspoon of almond extract (WOOHOO BEST PART!!), and a teaspoon of vanilla extract (bawwwww). Oh yeah and salt. Just a little. Like a teaspoon, not a handful, come on, you should know this, you're a chef. After you've mixed it all together and it looks creamy (or maybe crumbly like ours did), put it in the refrigerator.

       Now, while that sits in the fridge, busy yourself with other entertaining things. We watched Labyrinth - yes, the one with David Bowie - for the allotted hour.

       After watching your movie or drawing or whatever you like for about an hour, take out the dough and start rolling it out. As you roll, make sure you have preheated your oven to 375 degrees, and prepared your cookie sheets. We got right to it with plenty of flour on hand!

What up, fishes?!?

       We kind of took a practical approach by only doing part of the dough at one time. We went by fourths. So we rolled out one fourth of the dough, cookie-cutted it, and then used the pink spatula there to transfer the cut dough onto our prepared sheets. Once a sheet was full, it was sent to the oven for 8 minutes - since ovens vary, the cookies should be in for about 7-9 minutes. From the first sheet on, we alternated cutting and removing cookies from the oven.

       I should note that it was ninety degrees outside while we were doing this and we both died of heat after the first two batches. It was HOT inside and outside. And we had to wear thick mitts, and handle hot sheets....

BUT IT WAS WORTH IT ALL!

         The cookies came out perfectly golden - not browned. They weren't as flat as we would've liked, but they still worked very well when icing. Oh, yeah, the icing! Well, we got a little lazy with the icing. Originally, we were going to make the icing from scratch; however, Sur la Table has some amazing icing-in-a-bottle that fit our schedule much better. Put the bottle in the microwave for about 20 to 30 seconds, and then kind of massage the bottle until the warmth spreads. The icing bottle has a glue-bottle type of top, where you twist and it pours out. We soon figured out that, if we loosened the top just a little, the icing cooperated much better.

You see that cupcake? Natalie spent FOREVER on THAT cupcake.

       Once we had finished icing all of the cookies, the icing proved to be very temperamental. We had the cookies in the fridge, again, for about an hour, but most of the cookies simply refused to set. Long story short, we had to wait overnight for the darn things to stay shiny and pretty. Our main batches (see above picture) were beautiful and largely very simple in decoration. Nonetheless, Natalie had bought a couple of cutters and focused mainly on making her cookies absolutely gorgeous - which, they absolutely were!

She did this with a toothpick, sprinkles, and food coloring.

       By Sunday, all of the cookies were set and perfect and delicious. After I got home from taking Natalie home, there were only three cookies left from the 25 cookies I had warned my family to not eat all. I really wasn't surprised - they are delicious! - but I had to hide the remaining three just to be sure I actually got a chance to eat some!

       

       Stay tuned for more fun with the College Kitchenettes! Don't forget to check out our new poll: What's your favorite summer dessert?

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