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 :)

Ok so I finally took pictures to show how I ice my cookies. I'm working on it now so it will be up very soon!

Pin It

Thomas the Train

My son's 3rd birthday party was on Saturday and we had a Thomas theme. He loves Thomas! Here are the cookies I did:

I originally saw the idea here quite a while ago and thought if we had a Thomas party that I would make them. They were so fun! I'll show you the cookie cutters I used at the end of the post. My little "expert" was able to tell me who he was when he first saw the cookies so I took that as a compliment :)
I made some cupcakes too, I used a box mix but made the buttercream icing.

I had so much fun planning this party! I enjoy crafting and designing so this was perfect for me. Since my daughter was in the hospital the week before, I had to cut a few things out that I wanted to do. But here were the little favor bags with the cookies wrapped up inside.

I made these water bottle labels and they were so easy! When I first looked into how to make them, I saw that most people use waterproof labels. But I saw this tutorial and realized I could make my own! So I just printed these out and cut them and then used packing tape to seal them. Like she says in the tutorial, they're not completely waterproof. I had kept them in the fridge until right before the party and then put them in the ice chest and they worked great!

So here are the cookie cutters I used. The engine part is a wedding cake cutter and I used the small circle cutter and did the same technique as I used here on the rainbow cookies. Then the larger circle cookies is the face. I baked and decorated them separately and then when the cookies were dry, I used royal icing to attach them to the engine part of the cookie.

We're having his family party this weekend and I'm doing a different theme. It's his newest favorite...a certain little mouse with big yellow shoes :) I'm excited to plan for that one too!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here are some Valentine cookies I did last week. My friend Jill saw a picture of them somewhere but I'm not sure where, otherwise I would say where I got the idea!

I just barely got these done before my daughter was in the hospital for 4 days. We found out she had RSV at the end of last week and over the weekend it got a lot worse. She was admitted to the hospital on Monday and got to come home on Friday. It was very scary for a few days but she's doing much better now! I was looking forward to doing more Valentine cookies and some baby shower cookies last week but I just wasn't able to.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Last week I did some cookies for my friend Amy's daughter's birthday. She had a Wizard of Oz theme. Kelly took some really cute pictures from the party. It turned out so cute!!! All of Amy's parties are so adorable. You can see Kelly's post here.

I didn't have a rainbow cookie cutter so here's what I did:
I couldn't find my big, plain circle cutter so I used this scalloped one, which I thought would be cute anyway.

Then I used a small circle cutter and cut a half circle out of the big circle. I did that on both sides straight across from each other. I didn't measure or anything, just eyeballed it. Then I cut a whole circle out of more dough...

And filled the little notches. I did this on wax paper on the counter but it's better to do this on the cookie sheet that you're going to bake them on because they will fall off when you move them. Then I just kinda smoothed them together so they would bake together.

This picture is a little blurry but then I cut off the bottom part of the big circle at the bottom of the little circles. And there you have it, a cookie ready to be made into a rainbow!

Cowgirl Cookies

I made some cookies this week for a sweet little cowgirl turning 6!

Welcome Baby Elijah

On Saturday, a lot of my friends from my Sunday School class hosted a baby shower for our sweet friend Elizabeth, who is expecting baby Elijah next month! We are so excited for her! She is our pastor's daughter-in-law and it is their first grand-baby. So fun!

I stole this picture from my friend Kelly's blog. I got done with the cookies the night before and just put them in the containers to take the next morning so I never had a chance to get some out and take pictures. But Kelly has other pictures from the shower on her blog too.


I made a lot of cookies because we didn't know how many people would come. I thought I would just do some small cookies because we had cake, cupcakes, fruit, and some other savory finger foods. But I did an E on some and I wrote out his name on some. I tried matching the nursery colors.

I'm back!

Hello! I'm back! We welcomed our sweet baby girl in October and I've been enjoying being a mom of 2.

I've been anxious to get back to making cookies though and I'm so excited to start! I have a few things coming up that I'm excited to make cookies for and to share. I actually haven't finished posting cookies from last Spring so I'll post those in the meantime. I even have a little tutorial too!

Hope ya'll had a merry Christmas and a wonderful start to the new year!