Cookie Monster

Designer sugar cookies seem to be all the rage. Since I had a little time on my hands and plenty of sugar and butter, I gave it a whirl. There are a lot of tutorials on how to make these cookies, so I checked them out. Years ago I made Valentines Day cookies. They turned out pretty, but they were a bit messy. I used a royal icing with a low viscosity, mixing the colors to give a abstract look. The one element that I was missing was to start with a thick rim of icing to act as a barrier. I am recommending this tutorial if you would like to get started on your own cookies.

Finding a great tasting recipe is very important. It would be sad to bite into a beautifully decorated cookie only to find a tasteless, cardboard like cookie. To the rescue with Alton Brown. Since there was a recipe for royal icing along with the sugar cookie recipe, I just used that one.

This is an example of my second go at cookie making.

The picture does not do it justice. It is about 5" tall, almost as tall as Jenee. Cole was a big help. I laid the barrier icing down first, then put the eyes on and let them dry a bit. After that I "flooded" them with thinned out icing. We used a skewer instead of a toothpick to fill the icing in around the mouth and eyes. One thing we decided to do differently next time is to cover the whole cookie with the icing and let it dry over night and THEN put on the eyes and mouth. The black icing bled a little. Although, nobody complained when they were eating the cookies!

This is going to be an ongoing adventure. I need to start pawning these babies off on other families though. This is a calorie buster.