Graduation Cap & Diploma Cookies

Less than a week to go until my son's graduation ceremony! His last day of school was actually today!

With so many things going on I just haven't had time or motivation to bake. I had lemon sugar cookie dough in the freezer that I used to make these. My daughter and partner in baking, Katie, actually flooded all of these cookies for me! My 4 year old wanted to get her hands into the fun and actually helped pipe the top outline on some of the graduation caps and diplomas! I helped guide her tiny little hand a bit, but she did great and had lots of fun!

I planned on these being my last cookies for awhile, but actually had a request to make a batch of these for a senior graduation camping trip before we take off on our vacation! I am pretty excited that my cookies are wanted! So look for more cookies similar to these soon!

CONGRATULATIONS

CLASS

of

2012

and

to my dear son Steve, you have made it to the finish line, just waiting for the ceremony now! It seems like just yesterday he was graduating preschool!

   

~Christina, Katie, & Jess

(we all had a hand in making these!)

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Rose Brownies with Mint Frogs

Spring break is going on here and I have been having a blast with the kids! I don't want to spring break in the kitchen, but I just had the urge to make a little something sweet without a lot of time! I used a dark chocolate brownie mix and substituted coffee in the mix for the water and sprinkled the top of the brownie batter with a spring sprinkle mix before baking. After baking I let the brownies cool fully before cutting the circles with a cookie cutter.

The decorations were quite simple since I always save my "dud" royal icing flowers. Royal icing flowers will keep practically forever in an airtight container once they have fully dried and that is how I store the flowers that didn't turn out so perfect to use for stuff like this. I melted white candy melts and colored green with candy coloring and added creme de menthe candy flavoring to the candy. The candy was drizzled on using a piping bag with the tip snipped off. I immediately placed a rose on top of the of the brownies while the candy was still melty.

I had leftover melted green candy and decided to make up some frogs to go on the brownies, however the roses were already stuck down, and there wasn't enough room left on top of the brownie for the candy frog, so they are just hanging out on the side!

 ~Christina

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Movie Quote Cookies

Hi there! This week is spring break and we are busy having fun, so it is the perfect time to share with you my little adventure to Happy Hour Projects last week! Happy Hour Projects is one of my favorite about everything blogs, Adrianne does so many wonderful projects over there, stop by and visit her if you haven't before! Together we host fun holiday craft and recipe link parties together, be on the look out for another one when holidays approach! This month is a big month for Adrianne with her Script Frenzy challenge and since cookies are currently my favorite sweet to make, I decided to make cookies from 3 of Adrianne's all-time favorite movies, keeping with the script theme.

The quotes on the cookies above are from one of the movies. Keep reading to find out which one! These are made using a basic sugar cookie recipe and royal icing.

 

There are many different cut-out sugar cookie recipes out there. You can view my favorite cut-out cookie recipes on the Mrs. Fox's Sweets FAQ page. I like changing up the basic sugar cookie recipe using different flavorings. Once you have decided on a recipe, cut out, baked, and cooled your cookies you are ready to decorate. For the set of cookies that I am using for the quick tutorial below, I am using a glaze type icing, also found on my FAQ page.

To decorate the cookies you will need a few disposable piping bags, size 1 and size 2 tips, couplers, and I also like to have the covers to keep the icing from leaking on the table and to keep it from drying out.

Once the icing is in the bag, it needs to be closed off so that it doesn't leak out the other end. This can be done with a clip or rubber band.

Outline cookie with size 2 tip and let dry for about a half hour. This outline will prevent the inside icing from running off the sides when flooding in the next step. This glaze type icing is a little more difficult to to work with than royal icing and tends to spread out more, but it is also softer and taste better to me than royal icing.

Still using tip 2, fill in cookie being careful not to overflow the outline. These will need to dry for 8 to 12 hours before decorating with edible ink pens. Without using white coloring, the glaze icing is also a little translucent, but I thought it kinda worked here looking like parchment once it dried.

Once the cookies had dried, I used edible markers to write the quotes from...can you guess the movie?

Keep reading to find out what movie these are from!

These final cookies were made using royal icing. Since I outlined in black, I let the outline dry overnight to make sure that it wouldn't bleed. The next day I flooded the cookie with white, and later than evening piped the quotes on using tip 1. Can you name this movie?

 

These movies were all movies that Adrianne and I both grew up watching. I had a fun time with my daughter watching them all again before creating these cookies!

Movies from top to bottom: A Knight's Tale, The Princess Bride, and Labyrinth

Did you remember any of them?

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Easter Bunny Cookies

It's Easter Bunny time and here are my bunny cookies!

For these cookies I used 2 teaspoons of lemon extract in my regular sugar cookie recipe. This is my first time using lemon in them and I love the flavor. I would have liked it to be a little bit stronger and may bump it up to 3 teaspoons of lemon extract next time for the batch. They are decorated with royal icing.

The bunny cookie cutters came in a set with a carrot cookie cutter. I originally planned on icing the carrots too, but I have been making so many cookies lately that I ran out of icing. I didn't want to make a batch just for the 5 carrots I cut out, we enjoyed those "as is" and even undecorated they were yummy with that lemon flavor!

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&

Bunny Hop Easter Link Party

This Weeks Cravings- Easter Cookies

Featured at: Hear the Bells' & Petals to Picots

Butterfly & Flower Cookies

Spring is officially here! I am so glad about that! I am just not a cold weather person and I am so glad to be decorating spring themed cookies!

Naturally, the colors are similar to some of my Christmas Cookies...lol! I am finding that I have a particular cookie style. I seem to gravitate towards brighter, more vivid colors and patterns when designing my cookies. I don't like using a ton of different colors in the same batch and usually stick to 3 or 4 colors max.

I also love using fondant accents in my cookies. Fondant is a great way to add extra dimension to cookies.

These cookies are chocolate flavored with royal icing. The chocolate cut out cookie is one of my favorites and the flavor reminds me of chocolate Pop Tarts! If you haven't already, check out my FAQ page to view the recipes that I like to use for my cookies!

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Featured at: The Artsy Girl Connection

Pot O' Gold Cookies

What pot o' gold would be complete without gold Disco Dust? Nothing like a little glitter to make the gold shimmer! I do have a hard time getting a good photograph when I use the Disco Dust though!

These cookies were made using my favorite basic sugar cookie recipe and royal icing. For a list of my favorite recipes visit my FAQ page!

May the Luck o' the Irish be with you!

 

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Mickey & Minnie Mouse Cookies

MICKEY & MINNIE MOUSE!

I have pretty much spent the past week feeling under the weather and still on the mend. I will be so glad when this roller coaster weather is over! It took me a few days, but I did manage to use some leftover icing and peanut butter cut-out cookie dough to make these cookies!

I have made Mickey Mouse Cookies using this Mickey Cookie Cutter that I got from Disney World before and had quite a hard time with the ears staying straight when moving the dough to the pan. This time to solve that problem I cut out the dough right on the parchment lined cookie sheet removing the excess dough. This made the process a lot easier! I experimented a little and made the dots on Minnie Mouse two different ways also. One way was putting the white dots on the wet red icing so they sink into the red icing and the other putting the dots on top of the dried icing, which made them pop out more. I still liked the first way best.

Everyone was glad to have a sweet in the house once again, but this is going to be another slow week, I am still drained! Wishing you all escape this cold season unscathed!

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Featured at: Crazy for Crust

Red & White Flower Cookies

Once I got going with Valentine's I just couldn't stop! My daughter thought these looked tropical, so I thought I would share these last since they could be any occasion!

For these I once again used the Sugarbakers' Chocolate Mini-Chip Cookies recipe. You can find the recipe at The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle! The Ghiradelli Mini Chips made them perfect!

I had premade all of the royal flowers with leftover icing from the Valentine Brownies topped with Roses last month. After the flowers dry for 2 or 3 days, they can be stored in an airtight contain close to forever!

The cookies were outlined, flooded, and decorated with a size 2 tip. After the cookies were dry I glued on the flowers with royal icing. These could be done in any color for any occasion!

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Valentine's Graffiti Cookies

More fun Valentine's Cookies! My daughter decorated these fun cookies for her boyfriend for Valentine's to go along with the Personalized Valentine's Cookies!

These were made by decorating a cookie with royal icing and letting it fully dry and then drawing on them with edible markers! Of course he loved them and he even shared them on Facebook before I did :)

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Personalized Valentine's Cookies

Valentine's Cookies for the happy couple!

Happy Valentine's Katie & Garrett!

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Words of Love Valentine Cookies

Another fabulous find! Recently I made Girly Cookies and Princess Castles & Tiaras Cookies with a Wilton shaped cookie pan. Well, I found another shaped cookie pan, again on clearance at Michaels, this one was on sale for just $3.99!

The pan has all of these shapes and all you have to do is squish sugar cookie dough inside. The pan directions say to fill either 2/3 or 3/4 full. I do like to fill the cavities pretty much all the way full. Bake 10 to 12 minutes according to pan instructions. It's that easy! I had wanted to take a picture of the cookies before I decorated them, but forgot!

These are a nice size cookie bar, they measure at about 5-1/4 inches in length!

Easy to decorated since it just involves tracing the design imprinted from the pan! I have really began to like this type of pan. I used tip 2 to outline, fill and decorate.

Hugs and Kisses!

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Valentine's Brownies

Don't you hate it when you have a good idea, something simple, and then everything goes wrong?!

This is only the 2nd time since finishing my decorating class last summer that I have even attempted royal icing roses. They did take a bit for me to grasp the technique in class and without practicing much since then, I just kinda lost it! I can still make all of the other flowers just fine, it's just this rose! My teacher said that it took her a year to finally be happy with her roses, so I still have 6 months to perfect them, right? Anyway, I had leftover icing from cookies and making roses and other flowers seemed like a good way to use it up. Out of the 5 roses I made, I am happy with only one. To help my self esteem, I finished off the icing making 3 dozen super easy Apple Blossom flowers. Extra royal icing flowers last pretty much forever and are always nice to have on hand to throw on cookies, cupcakes, anything really to add some cuteness!

Back to this project....The canvas for my roses would be brownies, something simlar to what I made when I made the Ghost & Monster Halloween Brownies in the fall, except with roses. I used the same box brownie mix that I always use, except I sprinkled heart sprinkles on the batter before baking. My daughter said "easy peasy" as I had mixed the batter, "we should make easy things more." I baked the brownies as always and for some reason they were too moist! I put them back in the oven. No help. I ended up refrigerating them to firm them up enough to cut the heart shapes out with cookie cutters. They were still not a crisp clean cut like I had hoped, the brownie was simple too soft.

Despite all of my mishaps with these brownies, I continued on and placed my not-so-perfect roses on top with just a dab of icing. They all disappeared super fast with no complaints! Don't worry, if you don't have your rose down yet either, Wilton makes perfect little roses that you can place on top of these brownies! Now I still have 3 dozen Apple Blossom flowers to use up!

The moral of the story: Not everything turns out perfect or even remotely as planned, but even not-so-perfect sweets taste yummy!

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Hearts On Sticks Cookies

I couldn't resist titling this post "Hearts on Sticks!" Sounds creepy, I know, but that is what they are right?

Something about putting anything on a stick just makes it more fun! Cake Pops, Cotton Candy, Apples, and of course COOKIES! To make these, just prepare and out sugar cookie dough as you would for any cut out cookie. Gently twist in a lollipop stick and bake according to recipe directions. I have also seen wooden cookie sticks available, but I just stick with paper sticks since they can be used for candy, cake pops, and cookie pops.

 I guess it is the pinstripes but something about these reminds me of baseball!

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Featured at: Cupcake Apothecary

Dove Wedding Cookies

I have a large bin of cookie cutters that was passed down from my mother in law. While looking to see if I could find a cookie cutter for my Love Birds Cookies, I found this dove cookie cutter and just had to use it!

I wanted the cookies to be elegant, so stuck with white and added pearl dust for a little sparkle. I am a sucker for sparkle! Of course the photograph doesn't show the brilliance of the sparkle as well as I had hoped, especially with all the dark and rainy days that we have been having.

I did try a couple other designs, other than the swirls, but in the end the I liked the swirls on the wings the best.

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Love Birds Cookies

These are my latest cookies! I saw birds with beanies, scarves, and an Eiffle Tower on a plate and that is what inspired this idea! However, my birds turned out a little less plump.

My first plan was to find a bird or paisley shaped cookie cutter that would work and just make the birds with the hats and scarves, but all I could find was doves and ducks.

I tried to roughly sketched a design to see if it was even possible for me to make it look decent and it did look better in the rough sketch, but the space was limited the cookie so I changed it up a bit. No pattern, no predrawing on the cookie, I just winged it! Before the details were added these cookies didn't look very promising!

Then I thought 2 birds together in love would be cute!

and here is the whole collection!

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