All About the COOKIES: M-I-C-K-E-Y

Last weekend we had my son's family birthday party. He is VERY into Mickey Mouse right now, which is good because we just booked our trip to Disney World this summer! He is going to love it!

I thought I would try something different with the cookies this time. My family eats my cookies all the time so I thought I'd change it up for them :) I also wanted to try a chocolate sugar cookie recipe. I used a recipe from Joy of Baking

Chocolate Sugar Cookies:
2 3/4 cups (355 grams) all purpose
3/4 cup (75 grams) unsweetened Dutch processed cocoa
powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon (4 grams)baking powder
1 cup (227 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups (350 grams) granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanill extract

For Chocolate Sugar Cookies: In a large bowl whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder.

In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 3 to 4 minutes). Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and beat until you have a smooth dough.

Divide the dough in half and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for about one hour or until firm enough to roll.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in the center of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Remove one half of the chilled dough from the refrigerator and, on a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/4 inch (1 cm). (Keep turning the dough as you roll, making sure the dough does not stick to the counter.) Cut out desired shapes using a lightly floured cookie cutter and transfer cookies to the prepared baking sheet. Place the baking sheets with the unbaked cookies in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes to chill the dough which prevents the cookies from spreading and losing their shape while baking.

Note: If you are not going to frost the baked cookies, you may want to sprinkle the unbaked cookies with crystal or sparkling sugar.

Bake cookies for about 10 - 12 minutes (depending on size) or until they are firm around the edges. Remove from oven and let cookies cool on baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling. Frost with royal icing, if desired. Be sure that the frosting on the cookies dries completely before storing. (This may take several hours.) Frosted cookies will keep several days in an airtight container. Store between layers of parchment paper or wax paper.

Makes about 36 - 4 inch (10 cm) cookies.

Read more: http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateSugarCookie.html#ixzz1oGoIuw4B

The cookies were very good! I will definitely make more of these in the future.

Instead of using Royal Icing like I normally use, I thought I'd use fondant. I use the recipe I found at Bake at 350. To cover the cookies with fondant, I found this tutorial that I've used many times and it's so fun and easy.

I also made some cheese crackers in the shape of Mickey :) Here's the recipe. I just used the bigger circle cutter and made some smaller circles and then pressed them into the bigger one on the baking sheet. It didn't take much time at all and I think they turned out cute.

I also made some funfetti cake batter buddies. Oh. My. Goodness these are so good!!!

Caleb loves chocolate chip cookies so I thought he would like a cookie cake. I tried to make my own but it did not turn out at all. Anyone have a good recipe? So we got this one from the store. It had some icing and sprinkles on it but it didn't go with the colors I was using so I scraped it off and used my own.

I made this cookie dough dip at Christmas and thought that would be good to have too. It's so good! And the cookies to go with it are from The Pioneer Woman, also very good!

I also made some pizza bites but forgot to take a picture of them. They were gone very quickly!

And some more fun water bottle labels :)