GingerBread Cookies

The holidays as fast approaching and I thought I would try a new cookies recipe.  I have never made gingerbread cookies before and I happened to come across a good recipe in a cookie book I was reading.  The dough was pretty simple to make and waaaay easier to handle then my traditional sugar cookie dough.  The cookies held their shape perfectly.  Oh, but a great trick to getting the cookies to keep their shape is to eliminate the baking soda from the recipe.

Here are the undecorated cookies!

I bought a couple of new cookie cutters recently and I was so excited to try them out.  I ordered a snow globe, a candy, a Santa head and a mini mitten.  I didn't use the Santa head, but I am planning on making some holiday sugar cookies and I was saving the Santa head for that.

I, of course, first mixed my colors and then started decorating.  I had seen online gingerbread men cookies used for reindeer cookies, so I had to try it out.

You start by just making the head and waiting for it to dry.

You can then add the antlers, eyes and nose.

Another cookie I wanted to try out that I thought might be funny was a melted snowman cookie.  I started out by making large and small circle cookies.  I put the small one on top of the large one and then covered it in icing.

I made random icing shapes to show that they are melted.  Honestly, to me, these look like eggs.

Once the white is dry you can start to add all the other extras on the snowman.

Final melted snowmen.  My brother thinks they look a little sad.

The snow globe cookies take a little bit of work, due to the fact that you have to do it one step at a time. Each part needs to dry completely before moving on to the next portion of the cookie.

First step of the cookie was the snow.  I actually think I should have started with the sky, but I know for next time.

I did not make the penguins.  They are royal icing ad-ons that I bought.

 Here are the final snow globe cookies!

The most fun cookies to decorate were the gingerbread men and the mini mittens.  Those cookie shapes really allow you to be creative.

The one cookie that didn't really work for me was the candy cookie.  I bought the large size cutter, and I wish I had gotten the small size.  I feel like the large cutter made it a bit harder to decorate.

The final cookie shapes I made were the small snowmen and the bra and panty for my friend Rob.

I was running out of white icing, so I tried something a bit different.

Rob's holiday titty cookies!

Here are some more cookie photos!

Here are the cookies packaged in bags!

I got small bags and put 2 mittens in each.

I will be making Chanukah cookies out of the sugar cookie dough because Chanukah gingerbread cookies just didn't seem right. I will be posting that blog next week! 
I wish you all a season of tasty baked goods!  

Holiday Cookie Fiasco!

So, I thought I had this brilliant idea to bake my holiday cards this year.  Well, I gave it a try and it wasn't such a great idea after all.  First off, paying for the edible images seemed to be a bit pricy.  I was thinking about buying my own printer and edible ink, but I wanted to test out my cookie before purchasing everything.

I went to Gloria's Cake Supply and had them print out one sheet of icing paper for me.  It was $10 for one sheet.  I called a million other places, but most bakeries wouldn't print the sheet for me.  They only wanted me to order a cake.  Once I got the sheet printed the pictures didn't look quite as high quality as I was expecting, but I knew I could fix that in my design later.  It was just a matter of adjusting my font and making it bigger.

Edible Icing Sheet

Close shot of the 4x6 picture.

Close shot of the 3x5 picture.

 
I also didn't have a cookie cutter I wanted to use yet, so I had to cut the shapes by hand.  Here are the cookies I cut out and iced with plain white icing.

After these dried over night, I cut out the pictures and applied them to the cookie using a brush and water.  They actually stuck to the cookies pretty easily.

4x6 cookie

Mini Square Cookie

3x5 Cookie

Small Rectangle Cookie

Now it was time to add a border.  Red seemed like the perfect color to me.  I had trouble getting the icing just the right thickness.  I tried and tried and ended up making it waaaaay too thick, but I did manage to get the border out.

I added various borders to the other cookies and a couple of hearts.

4x6 Cookie

Once they were finished I wanted to send at least 2 through the mail to test my packing techniques.  I sent the large 4x6 cookie to my friend Erin and the small 3x5 cookies to my mom.  Both of them ended up cracking.

4x6 Cookie sent to Erin

On top of the cookies cracking it cost $3 a cookie to send it standard mail.  I think I might be able to figure out a way to send them without breakage, but the cost of shipping is a little steep to send out so many holiday cookies.  I have decided to stick with real holiday cards this year!  I will definitely bake some more cookies for this wonderful season, but they won't be my holiday cards.