Deliciously Darling Events

{Tasty} Mini Flower Sugar Cookies

OOO La La!

We made these flower sugar cookies for a recent party (click here to check out our Shabby Chic Sweet Shoppe collaboration with DecoPOMS). Not only are they cute but SUPER tasty! 

Something this good needs to be shared. I made these cookies using my basic sugar cookie recipe. Instead of using a cookie cutter, I just put the chilled cookie dough in a Williams-Sonoma petits fours pan and baked for 10 minutes. Voila - beautiful flower sugar cookies. The best part about these cookies is that they could be cut in half and filled with a jam (kind of like a sandwich) then decorated.  

After deciding not to decorate the sugar cookies with a basic royal icing, I went with a simple sugar glaze. I love it when I try a recipe and it works PERFECTLY. Seriously makes my day. The recipe for the glaze & pictures are below. Happy Baking (and Glazing...LOL).

Ingredients:

8 cups of confectioners' sugar, sifted

4 egg whites (I like to use the Trader Joe's brand of liquid egg whites)

1/2 cup of milk

2 tablespoons of vanilla extract

Food coloring as desired (pastel pink & leaf green shown here)

Directions:

To make the glaze, in a large bowl, whisk together the confectioners' sugar, egg whites, milk and vanilla until smooth, about 1 minute. Whisk in the food coloring.

Using a rubber spatula, transfer the glaze to a bowl with a pouring spout. Slowly drizzle the glaze over each cake, allowing it to completely cover the top and sides before glazing the next cake. Gently tap the wire rack on a flat surface to remove excess glaze. ((Note: I don't have a wire rack so I just used regular foil. Yes, I know I must get a wire rack ASAP.) Let the glaze dry completely, about 1 hour, before serving.  

Glaze recipe is courtesy of Williams-Sonoma. 

{Colorful} Flip Flop Cookies & Recipes

 

{Colorful} Flip Flop Cookies & Recipes

Got your swim trunks and your flippy flops on? Well these cookies are sure to put you in the beach mood! 

My little boy is “graduating” from Pre-School (today) and these cookies are for his end of year celebration at school! What to make for a beach / luau themed party? Flip Flops! These sugar cookies are so soft and fluffy but are firm enough to hold as a cookie pop. These sugar cookies are iced with royal icing and topped with a {homemade} marshmallow fondant flip flop. It is a really nice stamp of approval when your little one jumps up and down in excitement after seeing what you made for them!

As promised here is the modified recipe for my old fashioned sugar cookies courtesy of Gourmet Magazine, 2005:

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened – the higher quality the better!
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons vanilla

Instructions

Whisk together flour and salt in a small bowl.

Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes in a stand mixer or 6 minutes with a handheld. Note: I feel like this is one of the most critical steps in making a fluffy cookie – the butter has to be pale and fluffy!

Beat in egg and vanilla. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture, mixing until just combined.

Form dough into 2 balls and flatten each into a 6-inch disk. Chill disks, wrapped in plastic wrap, until firm, at least 1 hour.

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.

Roll out 1 disk of dough (keep remaining dough chilled) into an 8 1/2-inch round (1/4 inch thick) on a well-floured surface with a well-floured rolling pin. (If dough becomes too soft to roll out, rewrap in plastic and chill until firm.)

Cut out as many cookies as possible from dough with cutters and transfer to 2 ungreased large baking sheets, arranging cookies about 1 inch apart.

Bake cookies, 1 sheet at a time, until edges are golden, 8 to 10 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool completely.

Meanwhile, gather scraps and chill until dough is firm enough to reroll, 10 to 15 minutes. Make more cookies with remaining dough and scraps (reroll scraps only once) and bake on cooled baking sheets.

If using icing and coloring it, transfer 1/4 cup icing to a small bowl for each color and tint with food coloring. Spoon each color icing into a sealable bag, pressing out excess air, and snip a 1/8-inch opening in 1 bottom corner of bag. Twisting bag firmly just above icing, decoratively pipe icing onto cookies. Let icing dry completely (about 1 hour) before storing cookies.

Cooks' notes: 

• Dough can be chilled up to 3 days.
• Cookies keep, layered between sheets of wax paper or parchment, in an airtight container at room temperature 1 week.
• The original recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of vanilla but I use 2 tablespoons (yes – it is a lot of vanilla but it takes the cookie from bland to awesome).
• You have to adjust cooking time to what works for your oven and climate. The original recipe calls for 10 – 12minutes of baking but this gives me a super hard browned cookie. I like soft sugar cookies and I’m not a fan of hard cookies, plus I feel like my oven always cooks things faster than it is supposed to. If the cookie is going to be a cookie pop then I adjust baking time to 10 minutes.

 

I love making my own fondant because it tastes like marshmallows and not that strange vaguely sugar taste of regular fondant. Also, I can control the colors myself (did I mention it is a heck of a lot cheaper too!?) #winning.  I would love to claim credit for this amazing recipe – it is courtesy of Sugar Sweet Cakes and Treats. If you are into baking at all you will LOVE this blog. I have found it so helpful. There is a step by step tutorial to make Marshmallow Fondant (MMF) with or without the use of candy melts. Click here for the link: http://sugarsweetcakesandtreats.blogspot.com/p/marshmallow-fondant-mmf-recipes.html

 

Enjoy your baking!!!