Thanksgiving Break

I call it Thanksgiving "Break" because that's the only kind of Thanksgiving I've ever had. It doesn't really count as a break this year because I've been (cough) unemployed for about 6 months. Well... technically 3. So for me it was just a chance to get home and eat delicious food and visit all of the people I have been missing for the past 6 months. I got to see almost everyone I wanted to, the only thing I could have wished for was having more time with each and every one of them! Unfortunately I have no Thanksgiving cookies to post. For some reason, that just really didn't entice me. I did make horse cookies and purse cookies.... as well as tractors/pigs/and Haule trucks for a couple orders but NO turkeys. And really, I was ok with that. I don't really like how turkey tastes and I'm not crazy about brown. Fortunately enough I am super excited for Christmas! I have been pinning away Christmas cookie ideas and thinking of some on my own. I was am so ready for the holiday that when I got home from the airport Joe and I immediately went out and bought a tree and lights! Christmas cookies will be up soon... :)

Sugar Cookie Recipe

Ok... so I toiled with the idea of putting my recipe on here for a while and finally decided that I needed to. I thought "pay it forward". It's not like I came up with this recipe on my own or that it's a family secret I'm not allowed to share (which by the way it drives me CRAZY when someone says they won't share their "secret" recipe or "secret" ingredient). I don't think I'll ever be like that. Now.. I did have to tweak this because of the high altitude but it should work for you. This dough is awesome to work with and if you're like me... when you want to get something done you need to do it at exactly the time you feel like doing it. So the beauty of this recipe is that there's no waiting... you don't even have to refrigerate it AND it doesn't get all sticky to you or your countertop! Perfect! This recipe is DOUBLED so if you don't need to make this many cookies then 1/2 everything!!!! This recipe will make 4-5 dozen cookies depending on size.

4 sticks softened butter

3 cups powdered sugar

2 eggs

6 tsp flavoring (I use 4 almond and 2 vanilla)

6 cups flour (this is where high altitude changes it. I made it with 4 1/5 cups before I moved)

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder (this is also something I had to adjust. The original recipe uses 3-4 tsp!)

 

 

 

 

Add your butter and powdered sugar to the mixing bowl... START OUT SLOW. I cut my butter and then pulse the mixer on and off several times until they start to become more incorporated... otherwise powdered sugar is going to fly everywhere... just trust me on this one!

 

Combine until nice and creamy

 

In a separate bowl combine eggs and flavoring

 

Thoroughly mix and add to butter mixture. Mix until batter looks like this...

 

 In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Stir and slowly add to butter mixture. When you're adding flour spoonful by spoonful because your mixture doesn't have a very large opening, do you ever get impatient and just dump 1/2 the flour in? Yeah... me either.

 

 

Your mixer is probably going to have to work pretty hard to get everything combined so I always crank mine on high after a while .... especially when I have doubled the recipe.

 

When everything is combined, your dough shouldn't be very sticky. You should be able to press your fingers into the dough and not have any stick to your fingers. If it is sticking to you, just add more flour until it doesn't stick. Start with 1/8- 1/4 cup more.

 

While your dough is setting up go ahead and wash the dishes, get your supplies ready, and line your baking sheets with parchment paper. It is much easier to scrape your dough off of parchment paper than it is the counter... feels more sanitary too

 

Dough will be sticky enough that it will cling to your roling pin without some flour on top! Sugar cookie dough is meant to take on more flour, so don't worry! Also... After I have rolled out my dough and cut shapes from it 2-3 times I add fresh dough to the dough that has been folded and floured several times.

Roll out to 1/4 inch thickness (this is where those handy-dandy yellow spacers on my rolling pin come in handy)

 

See? The dough pulls right away and you have a nice clean edge! (Don't forget to flour your cookie cutter initially or the dough will stick to it and ruin your shape.

 

 

Bake at a 400 degrees (slightly higher for high altitude) for 4-5 minutes (this is getting really picky but I bake mine for 4 min and 15 seconds for normal sizes of 2-3 inches). Of course you know your oven. You really shouldn't have a lot of browning on the cookie. Of course... longer for bigger cookies and shorter for smaller cookies. EXPERIMENT! That's how everyone perfects a recipe.





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Cutter? No Problem!

I recently got an order for 5 dozen cookies in the shape of a number 1. Simple enough, right? Well... it turns out that most stores around here only have that number in a very small size. I have two and they are both only about 1-1.5" tall. The order was for numbers that were 3-4 inches long. I scoped out amazon and found the perfect cutter there for $13. But I needed it for this order within a day. The shipping plus the cutter would have been almost $50! That's when I decided that I needed to get creative. I went to Walmart and bought a large piece of oak tag paper, drew out a number 1... FREEHAND because I don't have a printer... and ta-da! I had to hand cut 60 cookies. It took a couple hours to complete the process but I had my good friend, Lauren, on the phone and so she helped the time pass. To cut out the cookie this way all I had to do was line the counter with wax paper, lay the oak tag one on my rolled out dough, and take a small knife and cut along the line. Here's how they turned out!

Very simple, but this was a blessing since I had to do 60 of them. It really didn't take long! In the order my customer requested fushcia and a "curry" yellow from the paper source, They were pretty close!

Dressing up Gingy

I am starting to realize that I LOVE dressing up gingerbread men. You can turn them into any person or hero! You can make them look realistic enough without taking away the "gingerbread man" effect! I've done plenty of superheros, but I was super excited when I got an email about doing a gingerbread man order that I could be even more creative in. She asked me to make 2 dozen gingerbread men cookies.... however I wanted. Since the order was for two different people, I thought.... two different themes!

Joe's Talent

Tonight I was decorating some zebra print cookies for an order and I had a huge gingerbread man that I thawed out in the freezer. When I was finished with my cookies I had some leftover frosting and decided the gingerbread man did not need to be re-frozen so I asked Joe, "Hey, I have a cookie leftover, do you wanna decorate it?" His response? "YES! YES!" Haha. He practically flew out of his seat. He loves it when I have leftover cookies and icing so he can get creative. Like always.. he did a really good job.

 

I should also note... that Dierks has finally taken a liking to Joe. Probably because he finally took my advice and stopped chasing the cat around the apartmet. They are pretty good friends now :).

Craft Fair Success!

Last night I spent a good 6 hours making 50 more cookies for the craft sale thinking that I wasn't going to have enough. BOY was I wrong!!! Although I only sold 20 cookies and pretty much broke even with my sales... I gave out a lot of business cards! The Hello Kitty cookies were the biggest hit, followed but Spiderman and Darth Vader. I had a great time with Joe and he was sweet enough to go get us lunch and sit patiently from 9-5 during the hours of the fair. It was nice to get some feedback on my cookies and have so many people ask questions about orders! Hopefully I will be getting more local orders soon. Joe insisted on taking my picture at the table, so here it is. Also.. I'm sure you're wondering what I did with all those leftover cookies. I gave some away to people around me but the majority of them were donated to the church youth group to enjoy tomorrow (that was Joe's idea). Like I always say "what a guy!"

Cookies for Sale!

About a month ago I got a message on Etsy from a lady that is heading a craft sale at her church here in Albuquerque. She asked if I'd like to be a part of it and sell my cookies, and I just couldn't pass up that opportunity! Thanks to my beautiful mother and my bestie, Marin, I now I have PLENTY of business cards to hand out as well! I decided to take on the challenge of making enough cookies for this craft sale stress free. I have no idea how many I need to bring so my goal was 100. I believe that after tonight I'm somewhere around 80-something. I thought that would be enough. Along with that I'm going to have a slideshow and of course, my cards to give out. The church also asked that I donate something to be auctioned off so I thought it'd be a great time to try out cookie pops. It was a success. Since I planned on making so many cookies I decided that super detailed (my favorite) would not be a good choice. If I was going to make this many cookies in one week then they would have to be quick and easy. The cookie designs that made the list are....

• Hello Kitty (third time trying to make them and I finally succeeded)
• T-Rex
• Stegosaur
• baseballs
• basketballs
• butterflies
• hearts
• alien faces (of course this was Joe's suggestion)
• zebra print
• leopard print
• Spiderman faces
• ladybugs
• pumpkins
• Darth Vader

Am I missing any? Oh yeah, I guess the flowers for the flower cookie pops! WHEW! I know that looks like a lot, but I tried my best to combine colors so I wouldn't have to over do it. That was actually how I tackled this whole thing... thinking about which colors could be used on multiple designs that would be easy. Still.... I have about every color in the rainbow on my cookies. Now... a lot of these cookies you've seen before so I'm only posting the ones I was really proud of.

Joe helped me to figure out how to do this last night at Michael's Craft Store. I think it turned out neat! And surprisingly sturdy!