sugar cookies

Baby Shower: Strawberry Cupcakes, Lemon Coconut Cupcakes and Flower Sugar Cookies

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This past weekend I got to help host a baby shower for a good friend.  Everything turned out wonderfully.  I think the mommy-to-be felt showered with love and lots of pink and ruffles!

One of the ladies suggested a onesie making table.  I ordered some adorable iron-on appliques and bought onesies in various sizes.  When people were done they could pin them up on a clothesline.  Here is the Etsy shop I ordered them from, NanaBleu.

The space we used for the shower didn’t need much decoration, but I made these Martha Stewart tissue paper pom poms.  We hung a few and scattered the rest around the room.  Here is the link to the craft.  The instructions say to use 8 sheets of tissue, but I discovered that 10 made for a much fuller pom pom.  Use different widths of paper to create different sized pom poms.  Now that I know how to make them, I think I am going to use some in baby girls nursery!

For dessert I made strawberry cupcakes using the Sprinkles cupcake recipe that I also used to make this strawberry cake.  One batch of batter and frosting is the perfect amount for a dozen cupcakes.  If you’re not a generous froster, you will have some frosting left over.

These lemon coconut cupcakes were a bigger hit than I expected them to be.  I breathed a sigh of relief when someone said she loved them since it was the first time I’d tried the recipe.  I tinkered with the recipe a bit, which isn’t always a smart move the first time you make something.  Thankfully it was a good decision and they were delicious.

These flower cookies were party favors and turned out well.  I used a new sugar cookie recipe.  Big mistake.  The dough softened too much during the rolling and cutting which made getting them from board to cookie sheet a very frustrating task.  I think I might have muttered some not so nice language under my breath more than once.  On the bright side, the cookies tasted better than my usual sugar cookie.  I’m just not sure if the frustration is worth it.

Lemon Coconut Cupcakes

Adapted very little from Taste of Home

Makes 15 cupcakes

Ingredients

Lemon Coconut Cupcakes

  • 3/4 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs, room temp
  • 3 teaspoons grated lemon zest
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup sour cream, room temp
  • 1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

  • 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
  • 4 tablespoons butter, softened
  • 2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 4 teaspoons lemon juice
  • 2 1/2 to 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut, toasted

Directions

Cupcakes

  1. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in lemon peel and vanilla.
  2. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl; add to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream. Beat just until combined. Fold in coconut.
  3. Fill paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full. Bake at 350° for 18-22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely.
Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
  1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter until fluffy.
  2. Beat in grated lemon peel, vanilla and lemon juice until combined.
  3. Gradually beat in confectioners’ sugar until smooth; stir in 1/4 cup coconut if desired.
  4. Frost cooled cupcakes; sprinkle with remaining coconut.

Sailboat Cookies and Life Preserver Cupcakes

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My sister Lindsey came down to Houston to help throw a baby shower for a friend of hers, and she asked me to make cookie favors.  I made these sailboat cookies to go along with the sailboat (but not all out nautical) theme.

Here are the invites, made by my sister Lisa.

And here are the finished cookies in their cellophane bags complete with Merci! tags, also by Lisa.

I had to share these cute and kitschy cupcakes.  These were kind of a pain to make.  The life preservers are mini donuts, cored (very carefully) with an apple corer, covered in white candy coating to make for a smooth surface and then piped with red icing.  We put a blob of frosting in the middle of the cupcake, placed the donut on top, and then frosted using a star tip around the donut.

And a start-to-finish on the cookies, Day 1 to Day 3.

If I could make a living doing this, I would.

 

Candy Corn Sugar Cookies

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Candy corn is one of those things that you either love or hate.  I love it.  Ben hates it.

I know they’re supposed to taste like honey, and I guess they kinda do.  But they really just taste like sweet, sugary deliciousness to me.  If you’ve never tried candy corn mixed in with salted peanuts I highly recommend it; a great combination of salty and sweet.  They’re also good covered in chocolate.  You can find the chocolate covered ones at Central Market.  When I was visiting family in Austin I bought some in the bulk section.  They are evil…in a really good way.

Anyway, we have no Halloween plans.  Since we don’t have kids to take trick-or-treating and we’re not the kind of people who dress up our dog our plan is to stay home and pass out candy if we have any kids come to our house.  We haven’t spent Halloween here yet, so we don’t know how busy our neighborhood is.  I kinda hope no one comes…more Kit Kats for me!

Anyway, I get daily cookie recipes from Martha Stewart, and this is what came today.  The recipe is a small batch and I had all the ingredients so I figured I’d go ahead and make them.  They are adorable little cookies, and they taste pretty good.  So, this is how I celebrated Halloween this year.  Enjoy!

Candy Corn Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

Makes about 36

  • 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, very soft
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 large egg yolk
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
  • About 36 candy corns

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place butter and sugar in a medium bowl; beat with a wooden spoon until combined. Beat in egg yolk, vanilla, baking powder, and salt. Add flour, and mix until a dough forms.
  2. Scoop out level teaspoons of dough, and roll into balls (chill dough briefly if it becomes too soft to handle). Place balls on baking sheets, 2 inches apart.
  3. Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are firm and cookies are dry to the touch (do not let cookies color), 9-10 minutes.
  4. Remove from oven; gently press a candy corn into center of each cookie (surface of cookies may crack slightly). Cool on sheets 1 minute; transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Daring Bakers: Fall Inspired Sugar Cookies

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It is a miracle that this is actually going to post today.  The icing on these lovely cookies is still wet, and my fingers are dyed a nice reddish orange.  But, it is done, and it is delicious.

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

Thankfully I am an old pro at this sugar cookie decorating thing.  Well, I am not a pro but I have all the necessary cookie equipment and I don’t make as many mistakes and I did when I first starting doing this.  I have an icing recipe I like and trust, and I know how long the process takes to do it well.  I could have used an extra day to really make a polished looking and impressive cookie, but the two days I gave myself was just enough time.

For this challenge we were to make a basic sugar cookie and decorate them with a September theme.  I am sure I am not the only one who immediately thought of fall and the changing seasons.  So, I decided to try something I had not tried before…marbling my icings.  I wanted to create a fall colored leaf with all the lovely red, orange and yellow hues that display themselves this time of year.  While some are better looking than others, I was really pleased with the results.  I simply dropped a few colors of icing on the cookie and spread them around with a toothpick to create the marbling.

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Superbowl Cookies

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Our good friends Tim and Jackie had us over for the Saints v. Colts game Sunday night.  There was so much food!  The spread included black bean chili, queso, chips & salsa, veggies, layered Tex Mex salad, hot wings, and cookies.  This is one of the main reasons I love the Superbowl.

I brought the yummy layered salad and these cookies.  I made plain sugar cookies using left over sugar cookie dough that I’d stashed in the freezer, and some chocolate sugar cookies.  Both recipes come from the Joyofbaking.com.

The chocolate dough was easy to prepare and easy to cut out.  They baked up pretty evenly and tasted good.  I did find them a bit drier than the plain sugar cookie, but still tasty.  I made sugar cookie helmets honoring both teams, and chocolate cookie footballs.

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Perfect Cut-Out Sugar Cookies

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This is the recipe I used to make the bird cookies for my sister’s baby shower that I was unable to attend.  See here and here for the nitty gritty details of that debacle.  I have been making decorated sugar cut-out cookies since college when I took a cookie decorating class at Central Market in Austin.

Decorated sugar cookies are time consuming, but they are pretty simple once you know a few tricks and they are a lot of fun to make.  They are also very much worth the effort.  I will write more on those tricks later.  For now, you can satisfy your need for cookie decorating tips here at baking911.com.  This is a good site, although a bit hard to navigate due to the amount of ads.

Some recipes that I have tried for sugar cookies are not meant to be a cut-out sugar cookie.  For example, this cookie was delicious, but spread too much during baking to be a cut-out.  A heart would end up looking an amoeba.  No good.  “I ‘heart’ you!” is not the same as “I ‘amoeba’ you”.

The dough for a cut out cookie has to be firmer so that it can stand up to rolling, cutting and baking without losing its shape.  This usually means less butter and more flour.  You also do not want a lot of leavening because decorating a cookie that had risen too much in the oven can be tough to decorate.

This cookie recipe was perfect for my bird cookies.  The cutter I used is quite large, which can be troublesome when transferring a cut-out piece of dough to the cookie sheet, but this dough was so sturdy!  I got the recipe from Joy of Baking.  This site has a lot of delicious sounding recipes with the majority including pictures, which, in my opinion is very nice. I look at the site quite a bit but I haven’t tried many of the recipes.  I plan to try more things from now on.  Let me know if you try something delicious from the site.

I have made some lovely cookies in my time, but these birds are not the best.  They are just OK.  I used mini chocolate chips for the eye.    My mistakes include:

  1. Frosting them at 10pm
  2. Using old gel colors (resulting in the neon hues)
  3. Thinking no one would see them

Give yourself some time to decorate your cookies and make sure to let them set before trying to add more detail or transporting them.  I also make extra cookies to practice with so that I can see what’s going to look great and what isn’t.

I usually like to outline my cookies first, then fill them with glaze.  But I didn’t have the time with the birds which is why the one above is spitting up purple.  Keep up with my blog for the secrets!  I always use a glaze of powdered sugar, water or milk, corn syrup and almond extract.  I also am committed to Wilton gel colors.  They provide a vibrant color, so be careful!  Pink can become PINK too quickly!

These cookies are what I aspire to create some day.  Aren’t they beautiful?  I really love the natural colors and details.  The eggs are adorable.  You can get all the details about these cookies here and about Eleni’s in New York who made them here.  My neon pink birds will do for now!  At least mine tasted good.  That is one of the most important things isn’t it?

Cut Out Sugar Cookies
  • 3 1/2 cups (460 grams) all purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon (4 grams)baking powder
  • 1 cup (227 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cups (300 grams) granulated whitesugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  1. For Sugar Cookies:  In a separate bowl whisk together the flour,salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
  2. In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 3 to 4 minutes). Add the eggs and vanilla extract and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and beat until you have a smooth dough.
  3. Divide the dough in half and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for about one hour or until firm enough to roll.
  4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
  5. Remove one half of the chilled dough from the refrigerator and, on a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/4 inch (1 cm). (Keep turning the dough as you roll, making sure the dough does not stick to the counter.)  Cut out desired shapes using a lightly floured cookie cutter
  6. and transfer cookies to the prepared baking sheet. Place the baking sheets with the unbaked cookies in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes to chill the dough which prevents the cookies from spreading and losing their shape while baking.  Note: If you are not going to frost the baked cookies, you may want to sprinkle the unbaked cookies with crystal or sparkling sugar.
  7. Bake cookies for about 10 minutes (depending on size) or until they are brown around the edges. Remove from oven and let cookies cool on baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling before frosting.