Showing posts with label Sugar Cookies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sugar Cookies. Show all posts

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Eleni's Cookies

I don't know what exactly took me so long to get to Chelsea Market. I'm sort of disappointed in myself! It's weird...I had known about it, but I neer really thought about it being a place to go to until it was recommended by someone at my gym. So, I planned it into my weekend schedule and I went yesterday.

My goodness! The bakeries are so cute. I also like the transparency to it. I really like looking at kitchens so it was lovely getting to see the dough kneading going on at Amy's Bakery. I didn't buy any bread from there, although I feel like I should have, but I did go into a lot of the other stores to try them out.

Now I'm not going to buy almond flour from anywhere but Buon Italia. I've never seen the flour so fine before...and it's way cheaper than the stuff I pick up at Whole Foods. Fat Witch's brownies were completely disappointing. You would think that if brownies were their specialty, they would be better. Afterwards, they inspired me to make this blondie recipe I've been working on for dinner and they were well received, so it wasn't all bad. I ate my first rugelach yesterday and the judges are still out on that one. Taste good, texture...ehh. But the real treasure of yesterday was finding this cow cookie at Eleni's. Most decorated cookies don't taste very good b/c they need to be firm. This isn't an exceptional cookie, but despite being dry and hard, it's got good flavor. It actually reminds me of something, but I haven't been able to figure out. Right now, my best guess is Nilla Wafers. So, it has more flavor than the typical cardboard tasting cookies...and well...it's a cow. How can I resist the cow? I also wanted to get this googly-eyed dinosaur, but I knew if I ate one cookie, I wouldn't eat the other so I wasn't about to throw away $4 just to own the googly-eyed dinosaur. That's for next time.


Sunday, January 18, 2009

Jessica's 1st Birthday Cookies!

Today's Jessica's first birthday! Jessica is my cousin Patty's daughter. Since my mom knows best about the proper gifts for someone reaching this milestone and b/c I'm broke, lemon-rind and I used our baking skills to provide gifts for the party itself. We made sugar cookies! I baked them and cut out the circle shapes, and lemon-zest took to frosting. She wrote "j" on them and don't they look so pretty?! I got a little too excited about putting them into the box so I didn't let them set properly...and when they got into the box, some of the frosting got mushed. =(

I'm still out on the quest for the perfect sugar cookie and frosting. There was one recipe I used a while ago with cream cheese that I really liked, but I didn't have cream cheese on hand so I turned to allrecipes.com to find a good alternative.



Rolled Sugar Cookies
1 1/2 c softened butter
2 1/2 c white sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
5 c ap flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

1) Cream together butter and sugar until smooth.
2) Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add flour, baking powder and salt.
3) Cover and chill for at least 1 hour.
4) Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut shapes with cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
5) Bake 6-8 minutes. Cool completely.

These cookies are a dream to work with. They roll well, they bake well, and after baking, they literally just slid off the sheet.




I tried two different frostings. This one is the glossy pink one above. It's very pretty, but I wasn't a huge fan of the flavor. The cookies weren't very sweet, and I can taste the corn syrup on the icing, so the overall flavor seemed to be the corn syrup!

Glaze Icing
1 c confectioners' sugar
2 tsp milk
2 tsp light corn syrup
1/4 tsp vanlla extract
Food coloring

1) In a small bowl, mix sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in corn syrup and vanilla until icing is smooth and glossy. If too thick, add more corn syrup. Add food coloring.

This one tastes better, but just isn't as pretty. =(

Frosting
4 c confectioners' sugar
1/2 c shortening
5 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Food coloring

1) Cream together sugar and shortening until smooth. Gradually blend in milk and vanilla with electric mixer until stiff. Color.

I hope the cookies are well received! Next time I make cookies, I'll probably go back to my trusty cream cheese recipe...it's sweet and soft...so it can handle the pretty glaze much better b/c the corn syrup taste isn't as overpowering.