Late August cookies - Fishing, Ice Cream & Back to School

Last lazy days of summer

These cookies were made using Sweet Sugarbelle's sugar cookie recipe and royal icing recipe. ALWAYS my go-to recipe for cookies and RI - I use real vanilla extract in the cookie dough and add artificial vanilla to the RI. To me, both of these are no-fail recipes, always with excellent results.

Paris Themed Wedding Cookies

I was honored to make these Paris themed cookies for our niece's wedding party. I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe by Sugarbelle and her royal icing recipe. I've made so many cookies from these recipes that I have them memorized by now.

Fifties Themed Cookies

Fifties theme for a Sweet Sixteen

Vanilla sugar cookies with vanilla royal icing. The poodles were royal icing transfers.

Valentine's Day Cookies

1D party cookies

Vanilla Birthday Party Cookies

This was my first time making 1D cookies. When I was asked if I could make them, I have to admit that I didn't even know what 1D was! Thank you Google! Turns out, 1D, stands for One Direction, an insanely successful boy band - I guess I'm embarrassingly behind the times!

These cookies are made with Callye Alvarado's (SweetSugarBelle) sugar cookie recipe.

Callye is crazy talented! She is my cookie guru if there is such a thing!

I made Callye's recipe but I used Nielson-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Extract and because I love the little specks of vanilla seeds, I added a small dose of Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Paste The icing is vanilla royal icing. 

Spring Has Sprung!

Well, I thought "spring had sprung" but it was cold and snowing (almost invisible but still) on Tuesday when I brought these springy cookies to Ladies' group - it was the only thing spring like about Tuesday morning! The cookies came to mind when I decided to bring Strawberry Cake for my contribution to the food table. I just had to make strawberry minis to go with the cake - more as decoration than anything - they are just cute!

The cookies are an adaptation of my favorite sugar cookie recipe by Sugarbelle. I made them with Nielson Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla and Nielson Massey Orange Extract and 1 tsp. of grated orange zest. They were  very deceptive - they looked like strawberries but tasted like orange - what trickery!

I made some little blossoms for some of the "strawberries" with white fondant and added a dot of yellow royal icing for the center of the fondant blossom. 

Of course - in my tradition of "over doing" almost everything - I just had to add a few chocolate dipped "strawberries" to the plate of springiness :) I also brought some actual chocolate dipped strawberries to completely take it over the top, because that's just how I roll ;) Looking at my "daisy" cookies in this pic - they look like fried eggs ;( oops

Birthday Boy Cookies

I made all sorts of cookies for my grandson's first birthday party. He was the only little one there the rest of the guests were adults (about 16 of them) who could really enjoy all of the food we had served. Of course, I wanted everything to be special so as usual, I over did - what can I say? that's just me!
I made cookies shaped like # 1s and decorated like Tigger, his favorite of the Winnie the Pooh characters. I didn't have any number cookie cutters so I used a paper template and a knife to cut out the 1s.

I did baseballs with his name and his age - baseballs because his grandpa wants Ben's favorite sport to be baseball. I also did flower cookies on sticks which I displayed in pails of packed brown sugar.

I know - flowers are not "girly" but there were going to be ladies there and I thought they'd look cute as part of the table decorations. My daughter helped me decorate the flowers. I also did cupcake cookies and other flower cookies as well.

The birthday boy was oblivious to all of my hard work but it seemed to be appreciated by some of the guests - ultimately, I was happy with it and was just thrilled to be able to spend the day with the people who love Ben and wanted to share in celebrating his 1st birthday.

Birthday Girl Cookies

These cookies were made for a little girl who was turning 7 - her party theme was cupcakes, so of course the cookies had to be cupcakes in girly colors. 

These cookies were made using the sugar cookie recipe from Sugarbelle's site. This dough is easy to work with and tastes great with different flavorings - for these cookies, I used pure almond extract to flavor the dough and I used Wilton clear artificial vanilla to flavor the royal icing. I haven't found anything else that is "oil free" to use for the royal icing. If anyone knows of any other oil-free flavorings, please let me know, I'd love to try something different. I make my dough using a mixer, someday, my mixer will go ca put on me because of the volume of cookie dough, cake batter, buttercream and mostly - royal icing that I make. My goal is to be able to buy a KitchenAid stand mixer - they are beautiful  and seem to be the stand mixer of choice with most bakers. Someday.... I can dream :)

Just had to make a special cookie for the birthday girl herself :)

I don't have cookie cutters for the cupcake or the tiara so I did templates on paper and used them to cut out the cookie dough using a knife - it takes longer than using a cutter and is a bit of a pain but you gotta do what you gotta do!

Birthday Party Cookies

Roll-out cookies for a birthday party.
These were practice cookies - my grandson's birthday was coming up and I wanted to try making some party cookies. I didn't have cutters so I drew some cupcakes and party hats on paper and cut them out as templates. I just used a paring knife to cut the cookies out using the template - takes longer than using a cutter but you gotta improvise sometimes.
I used Lila Loa's chocolate roll-out cookie recipe which can be found at: http://lilaloa.blogspot.ca/2011/03/end-all-for-chocolate-cookies-recipe.html
and Callye's sugar cookie recipe found at: http://www.sweetsugarbelle.com/blog/2011/06/basic-sugar-cookie-recipe-2/
I also made these cookies....

and 1s which I also had to draw and cut out now, the flowers I had a cutter for those.

Valentine's Cookies

Chocolate roll-out cookies on a stick - with brush embroidery ruffle trim

Brown Sugar Roll-Out Cookies and Chocolate Chip Roll-Out Cookies

Chocolate Chip Roll Out Valentine's Cookies

SugarBaker's Chocolate Chip Roll Out Cookies via SweetSugarbelle

One of my first attempts at piping lace and brush embroidery.

Piped "lace" and brush embroidery on LilaLoa's chocolate roll-out cookies

Valentine Cookies

Roll out chocolate cookies from LilaLoa

Sugar cookies from The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle

Snowflake Sugar Cookies

These are the snowflake sugar cookies that I made for an order - they were for the staff of the Christian Elementary School my cousin's kids attend. They were picked up and delivered Dec. 21st. I hope they were well received. The first cookie order - obviously I was nervous and concerned whether they would be "good" or "good enough."
The cookie recipe and royal icing recipe came from the cookie Queen, Sweet Adventures of Sugar Belle. She has the most awesome resources on her website complete with tutorials. I also got some great advice/tips from Lime Juice Sweet Treats.
The links provided should give you all the info you need to make these yummy treats - of course you can make all kinds of amazing cookies using many different cookie cutters and decorations. Roll, cut and decorate!