Tag Archives: Sugar Cookies

Raspberry Sandwich Cookies

These are one of the most beautiful cookies I have ever baked. But physical beauty aside, they are also very delicious. Sometimes beautifully decorated cookies end up disappointing in taste. Too sweet and lacking in flavour complexity.

If you’re looking for fast holiday cookies, these are not for you. These take time, but you will be rewarded with intensely flavoured and beautiful cookies. These cookies were inspired by a recipe from the November/December Holiday issue of Chatelaine magazine. In the original recipe, the top of the sandwich cookies were dipped in melted white chocolate, dyed pink with food colouring. They were filled with raspberry jam. When my husband tasted them he said that they were good, but they needed more raspberry flavour.

I needed to figure out how to boost the raspberry flavour. Sandwiching more jam in the middle would not work. It would just ooze out. Adding a border of buttercream would act as a dam, holding in more jam.

I made a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream and flavoured and coloured it with freeze-dried raspberries, ground up into a powder. Freeze dried fruits are a great way to flavour buttercream. I used about 3/4 cup of freeze dried raspberries to the buttercream. If I added 3/4 cup fresh berries to the buttercream, it would be way too wet.

The second way I boosted the raspberry flavour was to mix some freeze dried raspberry powder into the melted white chocolate, for dipping the top of the sandwich cookies into. Natural food colouring with flavour!

Start with a vanilla sugar cookie dough. I like to roll the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper as soon as I make it, rather than chilling first and then rolling. I find it very difficult to roll cold dough. After rolling the dough, chill for at least an hour.

Once the dough has chilled, cut out your shapes. A fluted square cutter is very pretty for these.

Dip half the baked cookies into the raspberry white chocolate and pipe the other half with a border of raspberry buttercream. I used a small French star tip to pipe the buttercream. Fill in the centre of the buttercream with jam. Top each sandwich cookie with a chocolate dipped lid.

Store cookies in an airtight container in the fridge. They should be fine for 4-5 days. Let come to room temperature before serving. You could also freeze them for several weeks. A little box of these gems would make a beautiful holiday gift.

Click here to print recipe for Raspberry-Sandwich-Cookies Download

Embossed Brown Sugar Cookies

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There are times that call for a cookie studded with chunks of bittersweet chocolate, crammed with oats, dried cherries and Skor bars, or brimming with nuggets of Toblerone. And then there are times that call for a simple quiet cookie. A cookie that my dad would have loved. He liked plain things. I remember how bothered he was when Cheerios rolled out their product line extension and introduced Cinnamon Nut Cheerios in 1976, and then Honey Nut in 1979. I can only imagine, if he were still alive, how irked he would be by Dulce de Leche Cheerios.

These sugar cookies are made with brown sugar. They are a bit softer in texture than a typical sugar cookie made with white sugar. I think they have a more nuanced flavour profile than sugar cookies made with white sugar. They do not have the cloying sweetness that some sugar cookies do owing to the slight bitterness of molasses in brown sugar.

They are the perfect cookie to have with a cup of tea. My dad would have loved them

It’s no secret that I’m a habitual user of amazon.com. I adore the convenience of having everything I need shipped right to my door. I could easily become agoraphobic. So when an ad for this rolling pin popped up on the sidebar of my laptop I was both thrilled and disturbed. How wonderful that amazon could anticipate that I was about to bake sugar cookies and this rolling pin would dress them up perfectly. On the other hand, how disturbing that amazon knew I was going to bake cookies. Are they watching me? Maybe it was the sugar, flour and baking soda I ordered from them that tipped them off!
These cookies are not difficult to make but they do require attention to detail. Here are a few pointers to ensure success:

After making the dough, divide it in half and roll out each piece between 2 sheets of parchment paper. Chill the rolled dough for at least 45 minutes. It must be fairly firm before you can roll the pin over it. It will stick to warm dough.
After embossing the dough, cut into shapes with cookie cutter and chill again for about 15 minutes before baking. That helps to hold their shape.

Click here to print recipe for Embossed Brown Sugar Cookies.

Painted Brown Sugar Cookie Hearts

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I first learned about cookie painting when I saw the cover of the Bon Appetit December 2013 issue. When I looked inside and saw what was possible, my brain exploded with the possibilities. Who knew you could paint right onto the cookie, with an actual paintbrush? Kind of rocked my world.

I have never been exactly skilled with a paintbrush, but I figured even I could manage stripes. I began with the most delicious sugar cookie recipe I know, which uses brown sugar instead of granulated white sugar. Bake cookies and let cool completely.Mix up a bach of royal icing. Pipe an outline onto the baked hearts. Mine was a bit too thick. I’m sure you can do better than me.Thin some of the royal icing with a few drops of water to make a thinner consistency and fill in the hearts. Let them dry completely, preferably overnight. Consider this your blank canvas.To paint the cookies, you will need some clean paintbrushes in assorted sizes, gel food colouring (I like the Americolour brand) and some vodka. (Not for drinking, just to wet your brush with and mix with the gel food colouring to thin it out). Any clear extract (lemon or a clear vanilla) would also work. The reason for using alcohol is that it evaporates very quickly, meaning that the paint will dry quicker.

The Bon Appetit cookies were painted with luster dust, mixed with a bit of alcohol or extract. It comes in tons of colours. If you want to use luster dust to achieve that shimmery effect, here is a great tutorial on how to do it. I decided to do mine with just regular gel food colouring instead of the luster dust. Squeeze a blob of each colour you want to use onto an artist’s paint palette or a dinner plate. (I used a ceramic egg holder) Have a small glass of vodka ready for dipping your brush into. Dip the brush into the vodka or extract and then into the food colour gel. Have some paper towels ready to test the colour and adjust the amount of paint you have on your brush. Make sure you wash and dry the brush really well, before you change colours.I decided to up the adorable factor and write a message on my cookies. I used a thin tip paintbrush. Such a sweet way to declare your love this year.

Click here to print recipe for Sugar Cookies with Brown Sugar

Click here to print recipe for Royal Icing Recipe.

Valentines Day Marbled Heart Brown Sugar Cookies

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assortment of hearts 625 sq I would not describe myself as an overly affectionate person. (OK, all those who know me can stop choking with laughter now) Neither my husband or I are big on PDA’s . We don’t really celebrate Valentines Day, certainly not in a traditional cards, flowers or a box of drugstore chocolates (shudder) kind of way. My husband knows better than to show up with a bouquet of roses for me. I hate roses, especially red ones. Their aroma conjures up images of death and decay in my mind. However, if a big bunch of tulips were to come my way, I would never refuse them!

That being said, there is something about heart shaped cookies for Valentines Day that is just so sweet and endearing, especially if they are home made. I could not resist making these this year. I love to decorate sugar cookies with royal icing. I am not a huge lover of the overly sweet taste of royal icing, but I am a frustrated artist and the canvas of a cookie fills my soul with such joy when I hold a piping bag and begin creating.I had a few extra hands on deck last week to help me make these. My mom, who is very creative, was visiting. As well, my old babysitter, Sarah, who is a whiz with a piping bag, was also visiting. She was so excited when I told her what we would be making. She runs a dance school and bakes beautiful decorated cookies for all her students for any and every occasion. When I had tendonitis in my elbow, from a repetitive strain injuty (piping too many gingerbread snowflake cookies), she filled in as my designated piper.

Marbling royal icing is probably one of the easiest ways to create some spectacular looking cookies. There is no right or wrong way. You just have to let your creative freak flag fly here. The marbling technique basically boils down to using contrasting colours of wet royal icing. You pipe lines or dots or whatever you fancy, and just use a toothpick to swirl the lines or connect the dots. It couldn’t be simpler.You can use any sturdy cookie recipe, like gingerbread or a sugar cookie. I used my favourite sugar cookie recipe, which calls for brown sugar, instead of the usual white sugar. It adds a real depth of flavour. Adter making the dough, I divide the soft dough into 4 pieces and roll out each piece of dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper. Then I chill the sheets of rolled out dough before cutting. It is much easier to do this rather than chill the dough first and then roll it out.

I found the cutest set of cookie cutters at Michael’s.You will need some disposable piping bags, piping tips (#2 and #3 size) and couplers, some paste or gel food colouring and toothpicks. If you are planning to buy red food colouring, make sure it is the “no taste” red. In order to get a vivid red, you need to use a lot of the food colouring, and the regular red departs a very bitter taste.

It is best to make the cookies and royal icing the day before (or even several days) you plan to decorate them. Set aside a few quiet hours to allow your creative decorating juices to flow.

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Click here to print recipe for Sugar Cookies with Brown Sugar.

Click here to print recipe for Royal Icing.

For further inspiration check out these very talented bloggers:

Julia Usher

Colleen of Royal Icing Diaries

Sweetopia

You’ve Stolen a Piece of my Heart!

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This week I discovered something not very nice about myself. I get cranky if I don’t bake something every few days. I don’t necessarily have to eat it, I just have to bake and create something. I was feeling extra cranky on Friday so I pulled some butter out of the freezer, and already I felt a little nicer. I decided to bake something for Valentines Day. We’re not big on celebrating the holiday in our house, but as an excuse to bake, it’s a good one. I decided to bake sugar cookies in the shape if, what else, hearts! While I love the look of iced sugar cookies, I don’t love the taste. I find them too cloyingly sweet with all that royal icing.

Leaving the cookies plain just didn’t satisfy my creative needs, so I pulled out my heart cookie cutters and inspiration struck. I would cut little hearts out of the big hearts and fill them in with different coloured doughs. The tiny cookie cutters on the left are really aspic cutters, left over from my cooking school days when we had to make gross things like aspic. For those not familiar with this culinary delight, aspic is a jelly made from meat or fish stock. Often the fish one was poured into a fish mould and then decorated with little aspic shapes.

I knew I wanted to make my favourite sugar cookie dough, from Bon Appetit’s December 2000 issue. It is the only sugar cookie recipe I have seen that uses brown sugar instead of white sugar, and it gives the cookies a depth of flavour that white sugar cookies are missing. I decided to try out a new idea I recently learned from Alice Medrich in her book “Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Cookies”. Alice suggests grinding whole vanilla beans in a spice grinder and using it in place of vanilla extract. I was intrigued. Once all ground up, I have to admit it looked like something you might roll and smoke. 3/4 of a teaspoon of ground beans is the equivalent of 1 teaspoon of extract. It looked so cool in the dough, and the aroma and taste were so authentically vanilla.

I knew I wanted to have chocolate dough and some pink dough as well. The Bon Appetit recipe isn’t great for adding colouring to as the brown sugar muddies the colours. I made the Simple Sugar Cookies from my latest obsession, Karen DeMasco’s “The Craft of Baking.” I added melted bittersweet chocolate for the chocolate dough and pink paste food colouring for the pink dough. I made two versions of pink, one pale and the other shocking fuchsia .

After making the dough, I roll it out right away, between 2 sheets of parchment paper, and then chill it in the freezer for 20 minutes (or the fridge for about an hour). Then the artistry begins. I felt like I was playing with Play-Doh.

The finished cookies were just adorable and way less work (and way more delicious) than iced cookies. How could anyone feel cranky after receiving these cookies?

To print recipe for Brown Sugar Cookies, click Here.

To print recipe for Simple Sugar Cookies, click Here.

Of course, in keeping with my promise to eat healthier, we kept a few cookies to eat and packaged the rest of them up to give away. If my children are reading this, I have stashed a few away in the freezer for you when you come home!

Salt and Serenity

Tales from my kitchen