Day 275 - Cookies

10/2/2010

These wonderful cookies were made by Mae for our Rocky Mountain Cut-Ups meeting.

She used a vintage Reddy Kilowat cutter. So cute!

Day 177 - Cookie Cutter Bouquet

6/26/2010

The table centerpiece for the convention banquet.

Cookies were decorated by Shirley, Julia & Shannon Roberts;

Kathy Pacheco and Arlene Lewandowski.

Day 93 - Cookie

4/3/2010

California cookie decorator Shirley Roberts sent these special cookies for our Rocky Mountain CutUps (local cookie cutter collector's club) meeting today. The theme of the meeting was "Hanky Panky Tea Party". She made her cookie look like a hanky using the RMCU logo in the corner. They were a big hit! Thank you Shirley.

Day 79 - Cookies

3/20/2010

"Brown Sugar Shortbread" and "Melting Moments" cookies made for the FACC pot-luck dinner. The cookie stamp is one I made as a thank-you gift for volunteers at a Girl Scout day camp I was a business manager for in 1986.

Brown Sugar Shortbread

1 cup butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 1/4 cups unsifted flour

Cream butter and sugar thoroughly. Add unsifted flour. Beat at low speed until combined and well mixed. Form

one inch balls. Place 2" apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Stamp with cookie stamp and bake at 350o for 10 to 12 minutes.

Melting Moments

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 cup sifted flour

3/4 cup butter or margarine

Stir together cornstarch, sugar, and flour in a bowl. Mix in butter or margarine to form a soft dough. Chill about 1 hour. Form into one inch balls, and roll in granulated sugar. Stamp immediately with cookie stamp . Bake at 350o for 20 to 25 minutes.

Recipes from Rycraft Cookie Stamp Recipes

Day 23 - Cookie

1/23/2010 My friend Shirley decorates wonderful cookies. She made this cute cookie using a cutter designed by my friend Kathy and made by our tinsmith friend, Elenna. The inscription is for our convention coming up in June in California.

I am a member of the national Cookie Cutter Collector's Club and the local Rocky Mountain CutUps. We love cookie cutters and many of our members also are very talented cookie decorators. Shirley was one of the demonstrators at our 2006 convention in Pittsburg, Kansas.

The photographic challenge is in taking close-up photos.

Making cookies

I have a confession to make: I really am not very good at making cookies. Now, don't get me wrong, my cookies taste very good. I take cookies to most pot-luck dinners that I go to and get rave reviews. What I mean to say is that my cookies aren't beautiful like those made by my friends Shirley and Christine. Their cookies are works of art. Shirley has done demonstrations of cookie decorating for the national convention of the Cookie Cutter Collector's Club. If you have been to one of the CCCC conventions in the last decade, you have seen her cookies. Christine brought some airbrushed beauties to the Spring meeting of the Rocky Mountain Cut-ups last year. I almost didn't want to eat them. In fact there are many cookie artists in the Cookie Cutter Collector's Clubs. There is one collector that sells extra cutters on eBay who uses wonderful decorated cookies as a selling point for the cutters.
You would think that as a very active cookie cutter collector, I would be better at making cookies. The other day, I got home from work and decided to make some cookies for the Super Bowl pot-luck for those of us who were working on Sunday. So I found a football shaped cookie cutter (I have at least 3 or 4 in my collection) This one had the impression of the laces so I had to roll the sugar cookies out thicker than I usually do so that the impression would show. When I baked them they raised up from the baking powder and baked together so some of my footballs had sharp corners! I really didn't have time to decorate them with icing and I didn't have the right color of dusting sugar or sprinkles so I had slightly off shape plain sugar cookie footballs. I then decided to try to make some little spritz footballs. I mixed up a batch of my ginger spritz cookies and put the dough into the cookie press with the oval die. At first the dough was a little too soft so I added some flour to make it firmer (no, cooling the dough doesn't work with this recipe). Then the dough was a little too stiff. I've had this cookie press for over a decade and when I tried to press the dough out, the plastic screw part on the handle section cracked! I was heartbroken. I love that cookie press. It is a Wilton "Bite-Size" cookie press. I can make a batch of Spritz (butter) cookies using that press in one hour, start to finish, and I often do. Spritz cookies come out cute, no decorating needed. Sometime I use colored sugar or sprinkles to decorate them but they are pretty anyway, especially when I color the dough. The ring holding the die to the end of the press had cracked a few years ago and Kathy's husband fixed it by using a hose clamp. The "Bite Size" press is no longer available but I was lucky to find another one on eBay a while back so I do have a back-up. The oval die didn't work as well as some of the other shapes but the cookies looked like little footballs. Everyone thought the cookies were cute and tasted wonderful. It is just, for me, sometimes I wish I had the talent and patience to make the beautiful cookies that some of my friends make!