Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Shapes, Letters and Numbers on a Cake

Playing catch-up. If you'd like to see my latest cookie creations, please visit my Facebook page: A Random Act of Cookie.  

February - Mini Cookies on a Cake - Shapes, Letters and Numbers
2 dozen mini ginger spice sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Lunar New Year 2014 (4712)

Playing catch-up. If you'd like to see my latest cookie creations, please visit my Facebook page: A Random Act of Cookie.  

January - Lunar New Year Cookies for a School Celebration
2 dozen vanilla sugar cookies, 2 dozen chocolate sugar cookies


January - Lunar New Year Cookies for a Family Party
3 dozen ginger spice sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Silly Monsters

Playing catch-up. If you'd like to see my latest cookie creations, please visit my Facebook page: A Random Act of Cookie.  

November - Silly Monsters Cookies for a 1st Birthday
2 dozen vanilla sugar cookies, 2 dozen chocolate sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Lego Bionicles

Playing catch-up. If you'd like to see my latest cookie creations, please visit my Facebook page: A Random Act of Cookie.  

October - Lego Bionicles Cookies, Kopaka and Lewa
2 dozen vanilla sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Owls and Paint Palettes

Playing catch-up. If you'd like to see my latest cookie creations, please visit my Facebook page: A Random Act of Cookie.  

September - Owl Cookies for a 2nd Birthday
5 dozen vanilla sugar cookies


September - A Colorful 4th Birthday with Paint Palette Cookies
1.5 dozen confetti sugar cookies, 1.5 dozen chocolate cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Thank-you Minis, Dr. Seuss

Playing catch-up. If you'd like to see my latest cookie creations, please visit my Facebook page: A Random Act of Cookie.  

August - Last-day-of-preschool mini cookies for teachers
5 dozen vanilla sugar cookies, 5 dozen chocolate sugar cookies




August - A Dr. Seuss 1st Birthday, 5" favor-size cookies
3 dozen vanilla sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Disney's Brave-themed Birthday

July - Disney's Brave-themed 5th birthday cookies
4 dozen vanilla sugar cookies, 1 dozen chocolate sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - 90th Birthday Hearts

July - 90th birthday; heart cookies
1 dozen vanilla sugar cookies, 1 dozen chocolate sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Plumerias and Pink Ribbons

June - plumerias for a luau
2 dozen vanilla sugar cookies
The plumerias are sugar transfers.  I printed out plumeria clipart images, placed a sheet of parchment paper over the images, then traced the flowers with royal icing.  When the icing dried, I carefully peeled the flowers off the parchment paper and placed them onto freshly flooded cookies.


June - pink ribbons for breast cancer survivor
2 dozen vanilla sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Monarch Butterflies

June - Claire's birthday; monarch butterfly cookies and cake
2 dozen vanilla sugar cookies, some topping a cake and cupcakes

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Surf's Up!

April - Jack's birthday; surf-themed cookies
2 dozen vanilla sugar cookies and 2 dozen chocolate cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Easter Peek-a-Bunnies

March - Easter; peek-a-bunny cookies, mini butterfly cookies
2 dozen 100% whole wheat vanilla sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Tet 2013

February - Lunar New Year; lantern cookies, snake cookies, cherry blossom cookies
2 dozen large and 1 dozen small vanilla sugar cookies, 2 dozen large and 1 dozen small chocolate sugar cookies

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Shabby Chic, Pumpkins

I brain farted and forgot to post these last year.

August - 1 month party for my cousin's baby (the Vietnamese version of a welcome baby party); shabby chic cookies
4 dozen 100% whole wheat vanilla sugar cookies.


September - 1st birthday party for a friend's daughter; shabby chic cookies
4 dozen vanilla sugar cookies.




October - Halloween playdate; pumpkin cookies
2 dozen vanilla sugar cookies.

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Ferrari Farms Ladybugs

July - cookies for Todd's work department potluck at Ferrari Farms; monogram and ladybug cookies
6 dozen 100% whole wheat vanilla sugar cookies with rainbow jimmies thrown in just for fun.

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - July 4th Fireworks and Butterflies

July - More Independence Day cookies; USA and fireworks cookies; patriotic butterfly cookies
The square ones were for hubby's work (1 dozen triple vanilla sugar cookies), and the butterflies were for Claire's dance class (1 dozen vanilla sugar cookies).

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Tulips, Daisies, Butterfly, Retirement, Sea Turtles, 4th of July Flag with Star Spangled Banner

May - a Random Act of Cookie for the Werner family; daisy, tulip and butterfly cookies
1/2 dozen vanilla and 1/2 dozen chocolate sugar cookies.


May - Chu Long's Retirement / Welcome Home party; freehand happy face and wine glass cookies
3 dozen chocolate sugar cookies
 

June - Claire's Birthday; turtle cake and turtle cookies
She's been obsessed with baby sea turtles lately, so that was the theme of her party.  The cookies were for her classroom. Devil's food cake birthday cake, 3 dozen triple vanilla sugar cookies.


July - Independence Day; flag cookies
I didn't plan out the lettering as well as I could/should have so I ended up having to put in filler squiggles. Oh well. At least there are fifty stars in there. :-) 2 dozen vanilla sugar cookies.

Off Topic - Decorated Cookies - Trains, Valentine Hearts, Leprechauns and Shamrocks, Easter Eggs ,Bunnies and Chicks, Teacher Appreciation

As some of you already know, I've been decorating cakes as a hobby since I was 10 years old.  My mom even bought me my own decorating tool caddy with, like, a dozen different tips to use, a handful of couplers, flower nails, and those oh-so-fun-to-clean piping bags.  Every so often I'd pick up a copy of the latest Wilton decorating magazine and I had a blast, it always felt good to be able to zone out in front of a blank cake canvas and get my creative juices flowing.

Nowadays, 30 years later, I still do decorate the occasional cake, but it seems like the chore of cleaning grease-based frosting from tips and couplers (at least we have disposable piping bags now, or else I'd have completely quit a long time ago) over-rides my desire for creativity.

Earlier this year, as I was planning my little one's first birthday party, I was trying to come up with a fun party favor when I came across decorated sugar cookies online.  Well, sure, I've seen lots of them before, but never gave them much thought until I decided to make some for little one's party.  The flooding part is different than frosting a cake, but the piping technique is very similar.  And royal icing, unlike buttercream, is just sugar, water and meringue powder, no grease and easy to clean!

So here's what I've done over the past 4 months.

February - Train cake and cookie favors for little one's first birthday party
Still learning about icing consistency, it was too runny but the cookies still turned out cute. Can you believe I baked and decorated 60 trains?!  Crazy first attempt at decorating cookies.  5 dozen vanilla sugar cookies.
 

February - Valentine's Day playdate; heart cookies
Much better icing consistency.  These were time consuming but so much fun!  1 dozen chocolate sugar cookies.
 

March - St. Patrick's Day playdate; leprechaun and shamrock cookies
1 dozen chocolate and 1 dozen vanilla sugar cookies.

 

April - Easter brunch at in-laws; bunny, baby chick and egg cookies
18 chocolate sugar cookies.



 May - Teacher Appreciation Week for big one's teachers; square and daisy cookies
1 dozen chocolate and 1 dozen vanilla sugar cookies.

 

That's it for now.  I'm having so much fun with this that I wish I had more time to do it more often.  I'll post more as I make more.  I need a place to keep these pictures for reference, and I can't keep up with two blogs, so they'll make the occasional appearance on here.  Thanks for bearing with me.

Crispy Anise Cookies

I love biscotti, how they're light, crispy and crunchy, how they're not too sweet, and how they're perfectly dunkable in a mug of hot coffee.  But oh how I hate the time and effort (and mess!) it takes to bake them twice (because, you see, biscotti = twice baked).  So I decided to try my basic biscotti recipe as a drop cookie.  Genius, isn't it?  Ok, maybe not genius, but it is delicious and oh-so-dunkable.

My basic recipe uses just anise for flavoring, but you could easily mix it up with all sorts of add-ins.  How about chocolate chip almond cookies (replace anise extract and seeds with almond extract and mix in 1 cup of toasted blanched almond slivers and 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips)?  Or cranberry orange cookies (replace anise extract and seeds with vanilla extract and mix in 2 tablespoons orange zest and 1.5 cups of dried cranberries)?  Or peppermint cookies (replace anise extract and seeds with peppermint extract and mix in 1 cup of crushed candy canes)?  I'm drooling already.

Crispy Anise Cookies
Yields approximately 4 dozen.

Ingredients:

• scant 3.5 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 large eggs
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons anise extract
• 2 teaspoons anise seeds

Directions:

• Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
• In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
• In another bowl, beat the eggs and sugar on high speed until it becomes light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.  Beat in the anise extract and seeds.
• Add in half of the dry mixture and mix until incorporated, then add in the rest of the dry mixture and continue to mix until incorporated.
• Drop by teaspoonfuls onto the parchment-lined baking sheets.  Bake for 20 - 22 minutes until lightly golden.
• Remove from oven.  Once the cookies are cool enough to touch, transfer them to a wire rack and let cool completely.  Store in an air-tight container.

 Left: cranberry almond cookies (2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 1 cup toasted slivered almonds, 1 cup dried cranberries)

Right: chocolate chip almond cookies (2 teaspoons almond extract, 1 cup toasted slivered almonds, 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips)

Palmiers

I grew up all over the world, but my most memorable experiences came from the 5 years we spent living in Côte d'Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), West Africa.  Côte d'Ivoire used to be a French colony and gained its independence from France on August 7, 1960.  When we lived there in the early-to-mid-80s, there was still a lot of French influence, including many boulangeries and patisseries turning out crusty loaves of French baguettes and flaky desserts.  One of my favorites was the palmier, a light, airy, flaky, sweet, crunchy "cookie".  Its base is a puff-pastry-type dough, which, while simple to make in theory, takes a lot of time, something I don't have much of these days.

Enter my Google search, which led me to where else but the Food Network website.  The two palmier recipes that stood out to me were from two of my favorite chefs: Ina Garten and Anne Burrell.  They use frozen puff-pastry sheets from the grocery store.  YAY!  Not exactly the same as the authentic stuff, but close enough and pretty damn good.

What I ended up baking today was a mesh of these two recipes.  Ina's recipe is more traditional, but when I saw that Anne puts cinnamon in hers, I had to try it that way.  Sans orange zest.

Oh, and if the thought of light, flaky, crispy pastries filled with sweet, crunchy caramelized sugar has you distracted and wondering if this recipe is South Beach Diet approved, sorry, but it's not.

Palmiers
Taken from this recipe and this recipe.
Makes approximately 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (optional)
• 1 pinch of kosher salt
• 1 package of Pepperidge Farm frozen puff pastry (2 sheets), thawed
• 1 bag (12 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Directions:

• Combine the sugar, cinnamon and salt together in a small bowl.
• Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the sugar mixture onto a pastry marble.
• Open up one of the thawed pastry sheets directly onto the sprinkled sugar mixture on the marble.  Sprinkle another 1/4 cup of sugar mixture onto the top of the pastry sheet.  Make sure to coat every bit of the dough with sugar.
• Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough into a large rectangle, about 1/8-inch thick.  You want to press the sugar mixture into the dough while rolling.
• Take one of the short ends of the rectangle and fold it so the end reaches halfway to the middle of the rectangle.  Then fold it again so you reach the middle of the rectangle.  Do the same to the other side.  Then fold one side onto the other as if you're closing a book.  (You'll have a 6-layered flat "log".)
• Transfer the "log" to a baking sheet and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
• Do the same for the remaining thawed pastry sheet.
• Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees F.
• When ready to bake, remove one of the "logs" from the fridge and place onto a clean flat surface like a pastry marble.  Slice it into 1/4-inch pieces (approximately 24 pieces per "log"), and lay each piece flat onto a Silpat-lined baking sheet, about 2 inches apart.
• Bake for 12 minutes, then flip the cookies and continue baking for an additional 3-6 minutes, depending on your oven.  You want the cookies a nice golden brown.  Check them often towards the end; when I did 5 minutes mine turned out slightly burned, but 3 minutes was perfect.
• Let cool for 5 minutes on the pan, then once the cookies firm up a bit, transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
• For optional chocolate dip: Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler over simmering water.  Dip completely cooled cookies in the melted chocolate and lay them on parchment paper to set.
• Store the cookies in an air-tight container.