I have a confession to make: I love seeing sugar cookies being decorated and pimp up. I even have lots of books about cookie decorating from simple to very elaborate cookies. I even have an extensive collection of books just dedicated to cookie decorating.
Its been exactly 10 months since the last time I made and decorated sugar cookies. Since February is a love month so I'm entitled to be cheeky and not to mention I get to use the adorable cookie cutter that I hoarded like some lunatic. Honestly, I'm sane! I just tend to be an obsessive collector of different stuff like, baking books, baking materials, chocolates and etc. weird stuff. What I love about this particular cookie cutter is that they are big, have lots of different variety and they are in girly girl pink and violet color! What's not to love, right?
Now that I have a cookie cutter in mind the next dilemma that I encounter is which cookie recipe should I use? After a minute or so of pondering, I chose Toba Garrett's. She is this amazingly talented person who I was fortunate enough to meet when she was here in Manila several years ago. I wasn't able to attend her classes then...fast forward to today still haven't got the chance to. For now, I'm using her book to guide me through the processed.
The cookie of which I posted the recipe below actually taste good even though I missed read the recipe. Instead of putting chocolate liqueur, I put in chocolate extract so it kind of over power the cookie and the smell is very strong. Personally speaking I like it, oddly the cookie turned out quite soft kind of like a thin sheet of brownie. It's not bad, I just want to be sure that it should actually have that kind of texture. For the frosting, let's just say I had a hard time coz the red color keeps on bleeding to the white color. One of the biggest mistake that I did is that I was so concentrated on my decorating that I didn't noticed that it was raining outside. Since the air is very cold and humid, the royal icing took such a long time to dry. Looking at them now, I can say ohh they look so pretty but when I was doing those I was like "Why am I doing this again?"
As you can see from the photos they don't look perfect but then I'm so happy with the outcome and I like how it taste not overly sweet. Will I be making these? In a word YES!
Adapted from Toba Garrett
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 tbsp. chocolate liqueur
- 1/3 cup dutched-processed cocoa powder
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- Preheat to 350F. Cream together butter, granulated sugar and packed brown sugar for 2 minutes. Stop and scrape, cream the mixture for additional 60 seconds.
- Beat in the egg and chocolate liqueur. beat until the liquid is absorbed and well combined.
- Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Add the flour mixture 1 cup at a time to the creamed mixture. Add the last cup by hand.
- Divide the dough into 2 balls. Wrap 1 ball in a clingwrap until ready to use. When ready to roll, sprinkle flour onto the countertop and roll out the cookies dough to 1/8 inch thick.
- Cut out the dough to any shape you like.
- Place in a cookies sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Bake for 6-8 minutes until the edges of the cookies start to brown.
- Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet.
these are beautiful! and your royal icing looks PERFECT!
ReplyDeleteThese are ADORABLE! I am SO bad with royal icing and so impressed at your skillz!
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