Lucky Treats

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Made with Altitude!

I am on location in Santa Fe, NM for 2 1/2 months, and I just couldn't resist the urge to make St. Patty's Day cookies. Luckily I have a wonderful boss, who is renting a pretty awesome house. The kitchen is a dream come true for me, since it is way bigger than what I use at home with a huge island. You could roll dough for miles! Since I, of course, didn't bring any of my supplies with me, I called my mom and had her fedex a package of cookie baking goodies. My boss, was very conveniently, going out of town the weekend before St. Patty's day, so I was free to be at his house all day. Since it was my first time making cookies in altitude, I was a bit worried about how it would affect everything, but I soon found out.

I didn't have a rolling pin, so I had to roll out the dough using a bottle of wine, which works perfectly! One bottle for rolling dough and one for drinking!

I did my usual, roll out dough, freeze for 10 minutes, cut out shapes and then freeze again for 10 minutes.

As each cookie sheet of cut out clovers came out of the freezer, they went right into the oven for 9 minutes.

I made 2 batches of dough and ended up with about 52 cookies. While the cookies were cooling, I started making the icing. For some reason, not sure if it was the altitude, but I couldn't get the consistency quite right. It may have been me being a bit impatient, but I made it work.

Since I didn't have a lot of time to complete so many cookies, I wanted to go a simple as possible, just using light and dark green as well as white.

Once the cookies were completely cooled, I used the amazing wood island in the kitchen and went to town. I ended up breaking a couple of stems off, but I just reattached them with some white icing. No one ever noticed!

Empty cookie.

Outlined cookie.

Filled cookie.

I placed a white dot and a light green dot on the cookie and used a toothpick to make a heart.

I just kept decorating until they were all completed. It was a long day, and a long process but always an enjoyable one. I literally just listened to music, drank wine and decorated cookies. It was a good Saturday night.

I had a couple of round cookies, since I didn't have enough dough to make clovers. I got creative and made them St. Patty's day cookies.

I hope everyone had an awesome St. Patty's day! I know I did!

The following week, my boss really wanted gingerbread cookies. Now, it obviously isn't the season for that, but I said I would make a batch if they didn't need icing and they could be clovers. Well here is the result of that Friday night! Another bottle of wine and a whole bunch of cookies.

Very strange combo, but still soft, chewy and delicious!

Happy Baking!!

Monday, January 19, 2015

Holiday Party!

This year I didn't have a lot of time to make my usual batch of holiday cookies, mainly because I was asked to make 150 cookies for a holiday party.

I made 150 mini snowflake and gingerbread men cookies! It was like a mini Santa's workshop. I love the mini cookies because they tend to go a lot faster especially when you have so many to get done.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we...

First things first, I started by baking the snowflake sugar cookies.

Once the dough was made, I rolled it out between 2 pieces of wax paper and placed it in the freezer for 15 minutes. I then removed the top piece of wax paper and start stamping out the cookie shapes.

I threw the tray of cookies back into the freezer for 10 minutes and then immediately threw them into the oven. The freezer time helps the cookies hold their shape.

I spent one day baking all of the snowflake cookies and the next day I spent baking all the gingerbread cookies.

I LOVE making gingerbread cookies. Not only are they delicious, but the dough is very easy to work with.

Mixing the dough!


Dough mixed!

As you can see I did the same process as I did on the sugar cookies.

Once a cookie sheet was filled up, they went straight into the freezer and then into the oven!

Time to get baked!

The house smells like heaven when baking gingerbread treats! I literally can't get enough of it!

Fresh out of the oven.


Closer shot of cookies fresh out of oven.

Since I had so much cookie dough, I decided to make some other mini shapes just to give out to a few people. The holidays really are the perfect time to bake special treats for people you care about.

Since all of the cookies were baked it was time to decorate, which is the most fun!
I started with the snowflake cookies, since they only needed to have white icing.

I covered all the cookies with white icing.

Once all of the snowflakes were covered with white icing and completely dry, I took half of them and added a glittery tint.

This is the edible glitter that I added with a brush.

The glitter is super easy to apply, once the cookie is dry, and it gives it a nice shimmer.

Glitter tint on cookie.

Pipped lines.

Pipped lines with pearl.

After the glitter was added I pipped on snowflake lines and added one pearl to the middle of each cookie.

The other half of snowflake cookies I didn't add the glitter to. I pipped the snowflake lines on and, while they were still wet, covered them in white sanding sugar.