Frozen Themed Sugar Cookies

Powdered Sugar Icing 

No Fail Sugar Cookie

Funfetti Cookies

Red Egg Sugar Cookie Favors

In the Chinese culture, a child's birth is celebrated after a month with a Red Egg and Ginger party.  As a symbol of happiness and life, the parents hand out red eggs to their guests.  Instead of handing out actual red dyed eggs, my friend requested sugar cookie favors in the shape of red eggs.  I do not have much experience with sugar cookies but I took on the job of making 100 of them thinking it was going to be easy.

I ended up making 3 batches of rolled sugar cookie dough and 2 batches of sugar cookie frosting.  It also took the help of my sister, her boyfriend, and my husband who helped cut the cookies, flood them, and package them.  All of this work and I can't believe I was only making one type of cookie and one color of frosting.  Much respect to the other bloggers I follow that make those sugar cookies with all sorts of colors and designs all the time!

Halloween Ideas

I can't believe tomorrow is Halloween already.  Thought I'd round up a few Halloween favorites seen around my blog as I didn't get a chance to bake up anything this time around.

Halloween Sugar Cookies

Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies


Pumpkin Cupcakes

What are you planning to bake for Halloween tomorrow?

Desserts for a Bridal Shower

The week following my first wedding "cake", my sister, again, talked me into doing something I have never attempted to do.  I helped her put together SEVERAL different desserts for her friend's bridal shower.  The theme was Fall In Love sprinkled with Disney; given the wedding would be in September and the honeymoon in Disneyworld.  Over a span of two days, my sister and I worked together to make the following desserts:

Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Leaf Shaped Fondant Toppers

Lemon Cupcake with Raspberry Frosting

Caramel Apples

Candied Apples

Candy Dipped Pretzel Rods

 Minnie-esque Sugar Cookie Favors (Pictured w/o the Personalized Names)

On top of all of this, my sister with the help of a friend also made all of the decorations; from the banner to the tissue pom-poms to the food label cards with Disney Characters on them.  She even went as far as making leaf shaped tortilla chips!  It was a lot of work but definitely a lot of fun helping put together a full on themed party.

Angry Birds Sugar Cookies

It's my friend's 30th birthday today and I'm flying out to San Diego as we speak to help her celebrate this weekend!  I didn't want to risk making a cake or cupcakes and having it confiscated at the security check point; so, I decided on something I can easily pack into my carry on bag, sugar cookies.  She is as addicted to the Angry Birds game as I am so I knew this would be a cute and fun gift.

After sketching out the images and writing up the schematics, I got a bit nervous with how much work it would be for me.  My sugar cookie decorating skills are very limited.  But then, I realized that I could just use fondant!  Having never tasted fondant on a sugar cookie, I definitely made sure that these cookies were nice and thick.  I even found the greatest way to measure the thickness of the cookies; I rolled the dough out in between two chopsticks I had laying around which measured 1/4 inch thick exactly!

Halloween Sugar Cookies

I couldn't possibly let Halloween pass on by without baking something for the occasion.  So, I gave another try at decorating sugar cookies.  I think this time around I got a better handle on working with sugar cookie dough and royal icing.

What I found very helpful was rolling out the dough in between two parchment papers to desire thickness and placing it on a cookie sheet and placing it into the fridge to chill.  This speed up the process and made the dough very manageable.  HOWEVER!  I did make one mistake which was rolling the dough out too thin.  The icing to cookie ratio was quite overwhelming even for a "sugar" cookie.

Have a fun and safe weekend!

Sugar Cookies
slightly adapted from Cake Central
Makes about 2-3 dozen cookies

1 cup unsalted butter

1 cup white sugar

1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract

3 cups all purpose flour

1-1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add egg and extracts.  Mix well.

Shift dry ingredients in a medium bowl and add a little at a time into the butter mixture.

Mix until flour is completely incorporated and dough comes together.

Roll out dough in between two parchment papers.  Place dough and parchment paper on a cookie sheet and place in fridge to chill.  Continue until all of the dough has been used up.  First batch should be chilled and ready to cut into desired shapes.

Bake at 350F for 8-10 minutes.

Reroll leftover dough and repeat the process.

Royal Icing

slightly adapted from Wilton

Makes about 3 cups of icing

2 tablespoons of meringue powder

4 cups of confectioners' sugar

6 tablespoons of warm water

1/4 tsp of almond extract

Beat all ingredients until icing form peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with heavy duty mixer or 10-12 minutes with hand held mixer at high speed).

For stiffer icing, use 1 tablespoon less water.

For flooding, add 1 tsp of water at a time until proper consistency is reached.

Birthday Cupcakes and Cookies

Hooray for birthdays!  I could always use an excuse to bake.  This week, I whipped up carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for one friend and sugar cookies (from i am baker) with powdered sugar icing (adapted from i am baker) for another friend.

Given I've already made these exact cupcakes a few times for this one friend as they are her favorite, for her birthday, I personalized them a bit with marshmallow fondant toppers. 


As for the cookies, I found this 4 piece set at Michaels that included a cake, a cupcake, a gift box, and a party hat cutter.  The dough was a lot easier to work with than the dough I used for the Star Wars sugar cookies.  The powdered sugar icing was less fussy than royal icing but still held up really well too.  I could see more sugar cookies in the future with these results.

Star Wars Sugar Cookies

I'm working on something HUGE this week but I can't let the cat out of the bag yet.  In the meantime, enjoy looking at these awesome sugar cookies (from Cake Central) my sister, my brother and I made for an avid Star Wars fan.

The cookies themselves tasted amazing but the royal icing (from Wilton) took it to another level.  It sort of holds the cookie together as they have a soft, melt in your mouth texture.

The cookie cutter set came from Williams-Sonoma.  It also included Boba Fett but he had one too many colors which we didn't want to figure out.